Dave Sim didn't just practice self-publishing: he made a cause of it, publicly and for years.Conference tours, activist texts published in its own issues, concrete support for other authors who were getting started. He converted an economic constraint intopolitical argumenton the ownership of works — and this campaign mattered more, for the medium, than most of the stories published at the same time.
It is perfectly possible to read his work without knowing any of this, and most readers do. But we do not understand why his name comes up so regularly in discussions about copyright and ownership of creations without knowing this episode, which occupied a good part of his public career.
This article describes this campaign, what it stood for, what it achieved, and why its results remain debated forty years later.
Context: what an author didn't have
To understand the issue, we must remember the ordinary contractual situation in American comics until the 1980s.
An author working for a publisher ceded all rights to what he created. A character invented by him definitely belonged to the house. He received nothing from reprints, nothing from derivative products, nothing from possible adaptations.
He did not have physical ownership of his work either: the original plates remained with the publisher, and their return to the designers was itself the subject of long conflicts.
This regime seemed normal because it was universal, and because no active author had ever known anything else. A young designer who signed his first contract was not giving up anything: he was accepting the conditions of the profession as they were presented to him, without having the slightest reason to imagine that they could be discussed.
This is precisely what a campaign can change: not the law nor contracts, but the feeling that a situation is self-evident.
What the campaign stood for
Ownership of creations
The central argument: an author who invents a character must own it, and any arrangement that takes it away is a bad arrangement, regardless of the amount offered.
La viabilité économique
The second argument, more concrete: the numerical demonstration that an author could make a living from his production by publishing, with margins higher than those of a traditional contract.
The transmission of know-how
Publishing yourself requires skills that no one teaches: printers, distribution, accounting, inventory. Part of the campaign consisted of distributing them.
Le soutien concret
Beyond the speech, material support for other authors who were getting started — advice, visibility, sometimes more.
Why the demonstration was credible
A campaign for self-publishing led by someone who was not successful would not have convinced anyone. Three elements gave weight to this.
La durée.By the time the campaign is in full swing, the series has been running for years without interruption. It is not a project but a result, and it can be verified by anyone.
Les chiffres.The argument was based on concrete orders of magnitude — printing cost, distributor discount, margin per copy — rather than on principles. This is what made it actionable for an author who was hesitant.
L'engagement public.Having announced a specific end for the series added credibility to everything else: someone who keeps an unverifiable promise for years becomes difficult to suspect of exaggeration about the rest.
These three elements reinforced each other.The campaign borrowed its strength from the work itself, which explains why it carried more weight than equivalent arguments formulated by others.
What the campaign actually achieved.No immediate legal or contractual change — that was out of his hands. But a displacement of what seemed normal.
After a few years, an author negotiating a contract knew that an alternative existed and that it had worked for someone. It is a negotiating power, and it cannot be measured in any statistics.
The limits of this assessment
Peu de réussites comparables
Many authors have started by following this example; very few lasted more than a few years. The demonstration was valid for its author, not for everyone.
A survivor who speaks
A campaign led by the successful says nothing about the unsuccessful. The bias is structural and rarely reported at the time.
A distribution system that has changed
The model relied on specialized distribution which was then concentrated. The conditions that made it possible have not remained the same.
Un porte-parole devenu encombrant
The author's subsequent positions led part of the community to distance themselves, including from what he otherwise defended.
What the campaign concretely asked of the authors
One aspect distinguishes this campaign from general discourses on independence: it was operational. She didn't just say that you should edit yourself, she explained how.
The questions addressed were completely banal and that is precisely what made them useful. How much does a print cost depending on the print run. What discount does the distributor grant, and when does he pay. How many copies must be sold to cover a print run? Where to store what's left.
None of this information was secret, but none was accessible either. An author contemplating independence had to piece them together alone, making costly mistakes — and a single miscalculation on a print run was enough to end the experiment.
Disseminating these figures therefore amounted toremove a barrier that was not financial but informational. This is a type of action that is underestimated: many doors remain closed not because they are locked, but because no one has explained how to open them.
This practical dimension also explains why the campaign produced a wave of attempts. She didn't just motivate, she made the project executable — which, in turn, made the failures of those for whom it was not executable visible.
Le problème du porte-parole
This last point deserves to be treated frankly, because it poses a question which goes beyond this case.
The author's later positions on gender relations, widely rejected and considered by many to be misogynistic, damaged his public position. A part of the community has stopped quoting him, including on unrelated subjects.
This poses a real difficulty:What do we do with a fair argument defended by someone we no longer want to quote?
One answer is to dissociate — the argument about ownership of works does not depend on its maker, and it would still be valid if someone else had made it. Another is to observe that the credit of a campaign rests partly on the person who leads it, and that the two cannot be entirely separated.
Both positions are defendable. What is certain is that retrospective erasure does no one any favors:understanding how the environment got to its current situation requires knowing who pushed what, regardless of what we think of him.
What remains today
Forty years later, several elements of this campaign have become so trivialized that we forget that they were discussed.
Ownership of creations by their authors has become a norm in a significant part of the market - to the point that a publisher who refused it today would have difficulty attracting established authors. This was not the case in the early 1980s.
The idea that a creator can publish alone, with a viable economic model, no longer surprises anyone. The tools have changed – crowdfunding, online sales, printing on demand – but the principle is established.
Still, attribution is difficult. This campaign was not alone: other authors, other structures, other conflicts pushed in the same direction at the same time.Granting it the exclusivity of this change would be as wrong as erasing it.
What this brings to a reader today
Two concrete things, for those who approach this work or this segment.
A reading key.Knowing that the author publicly defended independence sheds light on choices that would otherwise seem eccentric: the length, the commitment to a term, the refusal of any external offer. These were not whims but a demonstration in progress.
A grid for the independent segment.Many self-produced works exhibit the same traits — unusual length, atypical formats, lack of visible compromise. Recognizing that it's a pattern and not individual eccentricities helps you know what you're buying.
Finally, this calls for particular caution: in this segment, the object we hold in our hands has often been written, drawn, printed, stored, shipped and sold by one and the same person. This explains its material particularities - a paper chosen for its cost, a format dictated by a printer's discount, a binding which favors economy - and why they are not evaluated at all according to the criteria of industrial production.
What to remember before buying in this segment
Three practical consequences, which result directly from this model.
Initial draws are conservative.No one finances a big print run for an unknown title when the money is theirs. This is what creates the rarity of first issues, much more than a deliberate strategy.
Reprints are frequent and poorly documented.An author who withdraws his own issues does not always keep a public record. Requesting the print reference is therefore systematically necessary.
Availability depends on an individual.A prolonged breakup provides information on someone's cash flow or availability, never on the rarity of a security. This is the most costly misinterpretation in this segment.
Questions fréquentes
Mainly that the author of a creation must own it, and that any arrangement which takes it away from him is bad regardless of the amount offered. There was added an economic component - the quantified demonstration that one could make a living from one's production by publishing oneself - and a practical component, the dissemination of know-how that no one taught.
Because it was based on a verifiable result rather than on principles: at the time of the campaign, the series had been filming for years without interruption. The arguments were also based on concrete orders of magnitude – printing costs, discounts, margins – which made them actionable for a hesitant author.
No, and this is the main limitation of this assessment. Many authors started out following this example, very few lasted more than a few years. A campaign run by the successful says nothing about the unsuccessful — a structural bias rarely reported at the time.
The question has no simple answer and both positions can be defended: dissociating the argument from its bearer, or observing that the credit of a campaign rests partly on the person who leads it. What is certain is that retrospective erasure does no one any favors — understanding how the community got there requires knowing who pushed what.
Ownership of creations by their authors has become a norm across a significant portion of the market, and the idea of a creator publishing alone with a viable model is no longer surprising. Attribution, however, remains difficult: other authors and other conflicts pushed in the same direction at the same time, and granting the exclusivity of this change to a single voice would be as false as erasing it.
A prolonged breakup tells you about a person, not a title
This is the most costly misinterpretation of the self-published segment.