Hiring Gene Ha

I got an email recently from someone who wanted to hire me. I kinda got over-involved answering him and thought I'd post the exchange. His name and his project name have been XXXXXed out.

Comments - I'm sorry I don't know how else to get in touch with you--

I have a project II'd like to run past you, if you're in a position to get into something new.

It's called XXXXXXXX.

I think it would be up your alley.

Please let me know,

Best Regards,
XXXXXX

Dear XXXXX,

That's really sweet, but you'll have to work on your sales pitch if you want to lure a professional artist. Here's some things you can include, in order of importance.

Do you have experience writing? Direct the artist to your previous work to prove that you can write a great story. If you're a really great writer with published stories artists will be honored to work with you.

I make my living from comics. That's how I pay my mortgage and buy groceries. Have you already secured a publisher, or do you have enough capital to pay several issues worth of artists' pay? In other words, are you or someone else ready to pay my mortgage and buy my groceries?

What is your idea and what makes it cool? This is the least important element. Every artist is prejudiced to think his own ideas are better than your own. It'd have to be insanely good to make a comic book artist quit his day job to bet his career on you. Of course, the idea is worthless if you don't have the writing chops to realize it properly.

If you don't have a published work or a publisher ready to hire you, try finding a publisher first. This is harder nowadays, and it's never been easy. Then let the publisher convince the artist to work with you by offering up their money.

If you're really sure that you're a genius, consider self publishing. Be ready to start small. Find an unknown artist who's ready to work cheap or free, just to see his work in print. Don't expect that artist to meet deadlines: he probably has a day job.

If you don't want to sell your car to finance the venture, consider web comics. Some people have created epic storylines online.

Finally, I'm quite busy working on my own dream projects. As I said, most artists are prejudiced that way. Best of luck,

Gene Ha