HowTo Start A T Shirt Printing Business

NOTE: View the updated version of this article here.

In these times of economic uncertainty, there are lots of unemployed people with little prospect for getting a job, and plenty of young people starting out in similar straights. The current economic mess is pretty rotten, but I believe it is possible to start a successful T Shirt printing business in times like these, because I did it myself!

When I graduated college in 1980, we were in the midst of a deepening recession. It was a cyclical downturn, not as bad as today, but wait! I was living in Eugene, Oregon. The lumber industry was really in the dumps, making the Eugene economy really dreadful. Unable to find work, I began freelancing T Shirt jobs while searching for a more secure position. When I sold my first shirt job, I simply got a down payment from the client for the necessary supplies, and I was off & running (lucky for me, it was an easy one color print!). Here we are 28 years and several economic downturns later. Sure I did great in the boom times, but my T Shirt printing business always put burritos on the table in the down cycles too.

If you have a garage, basement or spare room you can use, you're ready to go. We'll look at screen printing 101 in a minute. First, I will make a radical claim. After investing just a couple to a few hundred bucks in basic tools and equipment, you will be ready to print your first job. I believe a profit can be made from the get go in the Custom Screen Printing business. I direct your attention to my blog entry, The Zero Overhead Model for a description of my business model. Be sure to take a peek also at The Win – Win Deal, a sort of philosophical underpinning to how I conduct my business relationships.

A business is nothing but a web of relationships. I have a business because I have healthy relationships with my clients. They talk, I listen. Sure, you should do lots of marketing, study the various techniques and theories, but I guarantee if you circulate and talk up your business day in, day out, you will attract clients. Be sure to pass out business cards left and right!

Now let's dig into the screen printing overview. Whether you are an out of work fancy pants graphic designer or a DIY punk rocker, one of the best small scale entrepreneurial businesses to start is a T-Shirt printing business. The initial investment can be modest, and a profit can be realized quickly with proper care to details. A screen print on a T-Shirt looks great – screen printing ink is bright and dynamic. I'll mention ink jet printing and digital imaging later, but the thrust of this piece is screen printing (a.k.a. Silkscreen).

Here is a list of materials you will need for your first project: Wood (or metal) frame stretched with screen mesh, piece of foam rubber to fit inside frame for exposure process, screen printing ink (Union water base in is good to start with, or Speedball brand can be found in some art supply stores), squeegee, light sensitive emulsion, Light source (a halide work light is good), glass & weights to hold the glass down on the frame, and your design on transparency or film (the design should be positive, not negative on the transparency). Oh, and T Shirts to print on.

A well stocked art supply store can sell you all the basic screen print materials listed above. It is recommended to comparison shop, as the prices may vary dramatically. Also check with your local industrial screen print supplier (under “screen printing/supplies” in the yellow pages or online). If you are serious about setting up a shop, you want to buy from an industrial supplier like Midwest Sign & Screen.
Here are the steps to produce your first screen print project. Clean your stretched frame with mild soap, rinse and let dry for at least an hour. Coat the screen with light sensitive emulsion (check instructions for light conditions appropriate to your emulsion). Coat both sides then scrape away excess emulsion. Let dry overnight. If you didn't buy a pre-stretched screen, you will need to put your screen fabric on the wooden frame, so taut that you can bounce a coin on it. You can use a staple gun, but take care not to rip the screen mesh with the staples.

Put your art/design on a transparency. Either draw with india ink on translucent vellum, or print the design on vellum or other heavy transparent paper on a laser printer. Inkjet printers often do not create an opaque enough image for burning a screen. Warning: Some laser printers are too hot, and will melt vellum!!! If you draw on vellum with india ink, go over your lines or brush strokes twice to insure opacity. I successfully used a HP laserjet for years to create transparencies. It was necessary to use the HP brand cartridges; the generic/refilled ones did not make a dark enough film to successfully burn a screen. You can also send your graphic file to a film output service bureau for your film positive.

Burning the screen: SEE DIAGRAM at top of article. You need to do this step in the dark. I used Ulano Fotocoat TZ, an emulsion you can use in low light, check the instructions for your emulsion. Put your foam rubber on the floor or a table. Put your coated screen frame over it on the inside side of the frame (leaving the flat side of the frame pointing up). Put your transparency upside down on top of the screen. Put your piece of glass over the transparency, and weight it at the edges with books or some other heavy objects. If you have ink cans, they will do fine because they are heavy. Hang your light source about 18” above your screen and turn on for recommended exposure time. Develop with warm water. Spray the screen until the image area is free of emulsion. If your screen doesn't develop, use more water pressure. Blot both sides with newspaper when done developing, to remove excess emulsion. If your emulsion comes off too easily, ruining your image, increase your exposure time. For years I used a tanning bulb to burn screens, it had the power necessary to burn a fine screen, including halftone dots! Later I used two halide work lights, those suckers are pretty hot so use caution!

Let the screen dry. Put over T Shirt and add ink to one side of the screen, creating an “ink reservoir”. Holding the screen frame down firmly, pull 2 – 3 strokes and lift to check your print. Clean screen immediately when finished. You can do multiple prints. If your print smudges, try a finer screen mesh. If insufficient ink gets on the T Shirt, use thinner ink or a more open screen mesh. I used to print one color jobs in my dorm room with no press, just the screen frame and a squeegee, it kept me in beer money and date money!

A word about inks, for years I used a homemade press and waterbase inks (Union brand is good). Most commercial T Shirts are printed with plastisol, a plastic base ink. You will need a dryer to cure plastisol. I recommend an entry level spot dryer, it maybe runs 5 – 600 bucks. Shop around. I was in the biz for a decade before I got one! If your business takes off, you will eventually want a spot dryer and a conveyor dryer.

Injets and digital technology. Yes, you can print backwards on “T shirt transfer paper” with an injet printer and iron the design on a shirt. It's a cool way to go for short run, full color. Also, there are now machines from U.S. Screen that do digital imaging direct on shirts. They are great machines but start at 17K or so, we are talking serious capital. Sure, I want one, but it just ain't in the cards for me at present. By contrast, my 6 color, 6 station workhorse manual printer was a marvel, and it cost only $3600.00 brand new. Paid for itself in a couple months, and it's still running today 9 years later in my buddy David's shop.

The other diagram is my design for a homemade three color T Shirt press using thick plywood, masonite, screws, nails, sawhorses, and screen frame clamps. It's funky, but you can print tight register three color jobs on this rig with practice. You may want to sell only 1 color jobs until your level of craft improves, and you can confidently handle multi color work.

So let's build a press—start with a 4' X 4' piece of 3/4” thick plywood. Cut the shirtboard area away with a jigsaw. This is a lot of jigsawing, start with a fresh blade. The channels should be 2.5 – 3”. The indents at the back of the shirt board are for the material at the bottom of the T Shirt to have a place to fall as to not interfere with the print. Round the corners at the front of the shirt board so as not to catch the shirts as you load them onto the press. Run a 3' long piece of 2” X 2” under the shirt board /press table for support. Bevel the front of the support board, again so it doesn't catch shirts as you load them on the press.

Top the shirt board area with a piece of 1/4” masonite to create a smooth printing surface. Nail down with brads at the edges, out of the live print area. Buy 3 sets of screen clamps from a screen print supply house and mount them on 1/4” masonite too, so they are at the same level as the shirt board area. With this homemade press, you will be making your own screen frames to fit the peculiar size of the press. Painting stretcher bars work pretty good, or just buy 1” x 2” or 2” x 2” wood to make your frames.

There are many fine rotary manual presses for T Shirt printing available, both new and used. I recommend checking the Screenprinters page of industry links of suppliers for presses, dryers, shirts and equipment. NOTE! This is the most important link in this post, it's a virtual bazaar of everything you need to get into this business. Remember too, all the suppliers want to sell you as much stuff as they can. It's fun to get all the latest gear and equipment, but experience tells me that a profitable shop buys only what it needs to produce the work it has.

A note about pricing jobs. I started out as a hungry student who needed to learn how to make a decent print, so naturally I came in at the low end of the price scale in the shirt biz. Once I got the quality thing down, I charged a higher than average fee. There is always a market for quality. Most buyers are looking to push your price down, especially after years of low cost Walmart stuff from China!

Don't work cheap, it will just piss you off. Talk to people in the field to see what the going rates are. A screen printing press should generate at the very least $50 per production hour for a small scale shop, really $100 is do-able. If you can put together 10 - 20 production hours per week you will be fine. There are lots of other business tasks to eat up the rest of your time, believe me.

If you are seriously considering trying a business like this, do not hesitate to email me with any questions. I will answer them as well as I can.
Copyright 2008 Steve Lafler.

El Vocho gets chubby

I just posted a nice chunk of new material to my online comic El Vocho. In fact, I've done 24 finished pages (of course, it gets all chopped up online).
The old school method of publishing a graphic novel in progress, of course, was to issue a series of comic magazines as the work was created. That's what I did with my BugHouse material in the 90s as I buzzed it out.
These days, the economic model is completely different--the graphic novel is the elegant, efficient mode of print packaging (I need sell only about 400 books to get to profit!!!), and the "new media" (?) is here to flog, disseminate and otherwise bang people over the head with your message.
In any case, there is now enough of El Vocho up there to be entertained and amused, and to get a handle on the characters. I recommend digging into the archives on the El Vocho blog site, start at the beginning and read the chapters in order. IF you like it, spread the word!

Anyone who really knows me will tell you I'm a bit the wild eyed zealot, so I will just go ahead and say this: El Vocho will save the world! Or at least, it's a story about saving the world. From what?! From Big Oil, and our horrible addiction to oil, of course! Por Su Puesto.

I hope to complete the book and publish it as a GN by next summer. I'll be in the U.S. for at least a month then and will be looking to get around to promote it.

Steve Lafler

Steve's Online Gallery

I've posted my inventory of paintings at stevelafler.net, I'll be adding stuff to this page as it emerges from my studio.
Featured here are Jelly fish vortex and Mr. Transtastic.

There is a range of work old and new, all offered at decent prices.

I handle billing / payment via Paypal. Shipping is via DHL, which is included in the prices as marked. DHL takes two days to zip stuff from my home in Mexico to the U.S.
It's my policy to offer a money back guarantee if any work arrives damaged.

Cave Paintings & Howlin' Wolfman

Since moving to Oaxaca last year, it's been my ambition to begin painting again. I'd actually taken a degree in painting some 29 years ago, so the will to sling paint around has a precedent in my life.
I've painted in fits and starts for the past six years, and it's been both gratifying and frustrating. The process of creating color images with paint is so thrilling, but of course difficult as I have yet to master the tools and techniques.
In any case, I've been at it for a few weeks here and tonight I'm posting some of the early results. As I continue, I will be marketing the new work via various web channels.

Once I have a decent inventory I'll begin a gallery search; I hope to find at least one west coast and one New York/east coast gallery to represent me (any hot gallery tips, please zip me an email).

It will be a gradual process, as I'll court the muse on her own terms--and meanwhile I continue work on my next graphic novel, El Vocho, which is of course a full time job in it's own right.

As I create more canvases and get my marketing figured out, I'll post more here about my budding painting career.

Images ©2008 Steve Lafler, all rights reserved.

Thomas Friedman Articulates Argument Against McCain

I heard an interview with NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Fresh Air last night. The dude rocks, he argues for a green energy revolution with candor and wit. Oh, let's not forget he has a command of the facts, too.

He articulates the most concise arguments I've heard yet against a McCain presidency, pointing out the absolute lunacy of the "Drill, Baby. Drill" chant heard at the Republican convention. Continuing oil addiction makes for bad politics, bad business, and would be bad for the environment, the economy and your health. But the oil industry has the army of lobbyists, and pays for the campaigns of the weasels in Washington, so we hear utter idiocy like "Drill, Baby, Drill".
Don't take my word for it, check out Friedman's new book Hot, Flat and Crowded, and his N.Y. Times column.

I wrote in this blog a couple years back about the coming boom in clean energy, Friedman points out that tax credits from the federal government need to lead the way. McCain consistently votes against this, even when it would mean piles of new jobs in his state!

Go Obama!

Shotgun Wedding

A song for John McMcain and Sarah Palin, as follows:

There once was a reformer whose name was John McCain
Now he's the candidate but he's plainly not the same
No, John is not the same

Now maverick John went to choose himself a veep
He didn't tell nobody--the veep secret he did keep
Oh, veep secret he did keep

John vested Sarah Palin, he did it on his own
Asked for no opinions because of his thick dome
Oh, because of his thick dome

Now Sarah's on the ticket, she has a pregnant kid
Let's have a shotgun wedding, before John flips his lid
Oh, before John flips his lid
Oh, before John flips his lid

(Sung to the tune of Jack-A-Row)

Living the Dream: The Expatriate Entrepreneur

For many, the grass is always greener on the other side. Me, I tend to be content where I am as an entrepreneur who creates his own job. However, the wife and I have fostered a dream for years of living a gracious expatriate life in the elegant colonial city of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Situated in a highlands of southern Mexico at the confluence of three mountain valleys, Oaxaca has a history of several thousand years of continuous culture amidst it's charming colonial splendor. Serena and I spent half of '97 living and working here, and vowed to return.

Things were different in '97. We were both engrossed in creative work that did not require daily communication with the outside world. As the internet was barely out of diapers back then, Oaxaca truly felt remote from the bustling atmosphere of our Oakland, California home. I had left my business affairs in the capable hands of a trusted associate. This worked well in terms of sustaining the business, but the carrot I offered was most of the income while I enjoyed my half year off to work on a graphic novel. It worked short term, but the lack of income brought me home after six months.

As of this writing, it's been just a few days shy of a year since we moved permanently to Oaxaca with our young family to live our dream of an expatriate life here. I am happy to report that it is eminently doable. Both of us are working from our new home via internet and phone with few problems, enjoying the relative strength of our earning power in a charmed area with a lower cost of living.

First of all, a note to parents on the move. Serena did a pile of research on schools in Oaxaca, and we were able to find a fine private school for our two kids for under $500.00 U.S. per month for both. With the sorry state of education in the U.S. at present, we are very pleased that our kids are learning a second language and critical thinking skills here. There are schools available for a range of prices with a variety of approaches. Our school is more writing and creative based, yet still offers a fine academic experience.

Now, to the meat of the matter, how the heck do I run my business from Oaxaca?! There are a few key details to the nuts and bolts of it all. First of all, I picked up a deal of a laptop from Dell. I recommend buying a “refurbished” computer from Dell, as you get a (basically) new computer that someone returned for one reason or another. Dell gives it a thorough check and resells it at a deep discount. It is a great value and I needed to replace my five year old desktop machine in any case.

In Oaxaca, we had two choices for internet, Infinitum from TelMex, the phone company, or cable from Cablemas. We had a rental house for the first several months (before buying a house) with Infinitum internet. It was decent high speed internet, but I will say that the speed of the service varied. Who knows why? Also, the modem broke and TelMex was more than happy to sell us a new one! Ha, service with a smile for a price.

When we bought a house recently, we went and talked to TelMex. It was about $200 U.S. just to open an account, and then it would take 4 – 6 weeks for them to show up and get us rolling. Thanks, and goodbye TelMex! We went to Cablemas, they opened an account for 15 bucks and we had internet, fastest I've ever had, the next day!

Next up, phones. We have a Skype account and a Vonage account. Both offer impressive capability to call the U.S. or anywhere else for a pittance. With Skype, you need to buy a microphone for your computer. Big deal, I picked one up for 5 bucks. You download the software and give them a card number. Boom, we were calling the U.S. for 4 cents a minute the next day. The only problem is you don't have a phone number where people can call you, you have a Skype name. Anyone who has a Skype account can call you, provided you are at your computer with the sound on!

With Vonage, I signed up for an account offering 500 minutes per month for about $19.00. It cost maybe $70 to open the account. You can pick the area code for your phone number, I picked the S.F. Bay Area since most of my clients are there.

Vonage offers various pieces of equipment to use for calling, you can get a flash device phone that plugs into your USB port, or you can order a router that hooks up to a phone. The latter may be better as it can be set to ring, so you don't have to be at your computer with headphones on to get a call.

Thus it is pretty easy these days to hook up basic office services abroad. What else might you need? Oh year, clients! It is my good fortune to have a roster of truly great clients who I have done business with for years. By respecting them and delivering value, we have built relationships of long standing that are beneficial to all parties. They hold up their end by paying the invoices!

As my business is custom screen printing of T Shirts and sportswear, it's necessary for me to have great suppliers and associates, too. Again, it's my great fortune to have two printers working with me. Both are consummate professionals who I can count on. We have many years of working together behind us. The key thing with my clients and suppliers is that we have built trust with each other over time, thus all these people are willing to continue dealing with me from a distance.

With my wife's work, the case is even more interesting. With a background in travel writing, journalism and teaching, she opted to try her hand at freelance writing from Oaxaca. There are plenty of interesting jobs teaching English available, however the pay scale is on the low side.

Amazingly, Serena has built a clientèle that delivers decent paying work to her just since our arrival. She has outstanding credentials as a writer, and she can deliver the goods. She sifts through writing jobs offered from a variety of sources, including craigslist. It does take a lot of time and patience for her to find decent gigs; I'd say that 98% of the writer listings on craigslist are looking for a freebie.

As it took me several years to build a viable client base, I'm fairly amazed at the work Serena has been able to generate in short order.

An important consideration in any work from abroad scheme is how to get paid? The easy, surefire answer is to use Paypal. Both Serena and I bill clients through the online payment service with no problems.

As some of my clients are businesses that prefer to pay by check, it's incumbent upon me to maintain some accounting functions stateside. Here again, I recruited a trusted associate of many years standing to handle deposits, payables and some basic office traffic directing. He puts in an average of 4 - 5 hours per month (my business is small and simple), and I pay him well for it--he provides a critical lifeline to commerce in the U.S. and is truly a key man.

I'll conclude that it's quite possible to freelance from abroad if one is highly motivated and has ample resources to launch the whole venture. Good luck to any who try! Anyone with questions can post a comment and I'll answer as best I can.

Steve Lafler

Sophomore novel from "Lucky Man" Ben Tanzer

Early in 2007 I published a fantastic debut novel from writer Ben Tanzer, Lucky Man, on my Manx Media imprint. Now Ben is back with a new novel, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine, on Orange Alert Press.
Here is a description of the new book:

Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine takes place in an early nineties New York City and follows the romance between Jen and Geoff the novel's two main characters. It is a story about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the value of friends, the reason its best to go out for coffee on first dates and what exactly defines being on the rebound. The characters riff on their favorite books, channel Yoda and Bob Dylan, deal with siblings and try to make sense of a world that shouldn't be as confusing as it seems to be. They also seek greater self-awareness and debate why Dallas will always be superior to Knots Landing, even as they find love, lose it and find it again.

Interested parties can pre-order the book by visiting this link:
http://oapress.blogspot.com/2008/07/pre-order-pre-order.html
Go Ben!

Buying Real Estate in Mexico

Once upon a time, I was between apartments in San Francisco. The shared housing scene was tight and I could not find a place to live. Some friends of means had a huge loft space up on Bush St., borderline between Pacific Heights and Japantown. They would be spending the next several months in their place in SoHo, NYC—would I be interested in house sitting their enormous, elegant loft for several months while they were away?

Of course I accepted, and greatly enjoyed spending the fall of '85 in that gorgeous spot. I've lived in many places both splendid and dismal since, but I've always wondered if I'd get another crack at “loft living”.

Here we are, almost 23 years later, and I'm sitting in a new construction modern boxy townhouse in urban Oaxaca—my wife and I just bought this joint, having finalized the deal last week. The place is big and rather sparse, but has stylish modern touches and just enough classic Mexican elegance (a nice inner courtyard with sliding glass doors on three sides!). Best of all, there is rooftop access with a safety wall that we plan on developing into another living space with garden, hammock, yoga area and perhaps even a Tiki bar.

Certainly this is a more rough and tumble neighborhood than the Pacific Heights/Japantown locale, but it's a more private street with less traffic than Bush St. in San Francisco; there is a hum & vitality here that is hard to match. This place is in point of fact the loft living I used to imagine for myself, located in the splendid cultural mecca that is the city of Oaxaca.

Oaxaca is the seat of a vibrant indigenous culture. The Zapotec and Mixtec peoples (among others) having been hanging around for several thousand years so far. Art is alive here, the markets burst with a wild array of local crafts–pottery, carvings, masks, weaving, paintings and more. There are galleries featuring a wide array of styles and sensibilities, and many outstanding museums.

To be a Oaxacan painter of note is a mark of honor and dignity. The respect and stature earned by the greats is traditionally paid back to the native village with the construction of parks, schools and museums as a natural gesture of thanks and community service.

The city was also the scene of a year of revolt in 2006, as a teacher strike widened to a general strike against the corrupt state government. Roving goon squads working for the Governor shot several demonstrators, and indeed killed Brad Will, a journalist from the United States. Ultimately, the federal government sent in forces to quell the rebellion and support the Ulises Ruiz, the Governor.

The feds paid lip service to protecting the people and keeping the peace, but no one was fooled by the rhetoric. It is a testament to the energy, strength and resourcefulness of the people of Oaxaca that the city has quickly sprung back from these dark days with a somewhat booming economy and cultural life. No one knows what lay ahead politically for Oaxaca. The teacher strike is a long standing tradition in Oaxaca. My understanding is that the government would usually throw them a bone, an inadequate pay increase. It was the new Governor Ulises who decided in '06 that the teacher strike needed to be crushed. As I write this in late May, the teacher strike for the year is on again in the Zocalo (town square), and who knows what will happen this time. Has Ulises learned anything? I doubt it.

I will say I feel easily as safe here, if not safer, than I did living in Oakland.

IN any case, having spent several months in Oaxaca in '97, Serena and I always knew we would return, but this adventure and commitment is far and away beyond what we could have imagined for ourselves, yet here we are. For us, this is a perfect environment for our shared adventure in creating a freelance, Bohemian life for ourselves and our little family. It's not lost on us that our expenditure of about $200,000 U.S. For this new house is less than half of what it would have run in Portland, Oregon where we most recently lived. I won't even speculate on what it would run in the Oakland where we had lived for many years, let alone San Francisco or New York.

As we are about to spend our third night in the new place, it's the perfect time to reflect on the whole experience of buying real estate in Mexico. Last week, we went to our Notario's office downtown to sign the final papers with the seller, and then it was off to the bank to fork over the bucks. Actually, it was earlier that morning we met our selling agent at the house for a final inspection, to see that our requests had been met before headed to the Notario's to seal the deal. Standing in the kitchen with my wife Serena, talking to our agent Luz, I slid into a crystalline mental acuity, a timeless hyper-awareness of the moment. Part of me was at a remove, observing the scene, commenting “Steve, here you are buying a house in Oaxaca, Mexico. How do you like that, motherfucker!?” Quite a bit, thought I! I felt intensely alive, delighted, surprised and a bit alarmed.

Where Serena and I are concerned, I am fond of saying that I believe I won the relationship lottery. We are truly simpatico—strikingly different people with many shared values and tastes, we have a shared sense of mission and routinely accomplish amazing stuff together. So it was no surprise to me to be standing next to this remarkable woman at the Notario's office that morning, buying a house in lovely Oaxaca de Juarez.

Time now for a brief breakdown of what it takes to buy a house in Mexico, and some of the differences with buying in the U.S.

Some folks reading this will wonder what we are doing in the office of a Notary buying a house. In Mexico, real estate deals are handled by a Notario. This is a very different position that a Notary in the U.S., the Notario in Mexico is more like a lawyer specializing in real estate transactions. They handle the title search and legal transfer of title, and the write up the buyer/seller agreement. I understand that the money usually changes hands in the Notarios office too, but more on that later.

We started the process of looking for a place in late February, having rented for about half a year, we knew we wanted to stay and were ready to begin the search. Our first step was to contact a great agency in Oaxaca, Tierra Oaxaca, run by a husband and wife team of Todd and Silvia. They showed us a number of outstanding properties both in Oaxaca and in the “campo”, the outlying villages. In fact, we offered on one place in Colonia (neighborhood) San Felipe del Agua, but got outbid, and consequently did not get the place.

Mexico has no equivalent of the Multiple Listing Service, so it soon became apparent to us that each Realtor has their contacts and listings that are finite. To get a true sense of the market, it is necessary to work with more than one Realtor. It's worth noting that Todd and Silvia have the commendable ambition to open up the Oaxaca market to the practice of sharing information among agents for the benefit of buyers, sellers and agents alike.

We went ahead and talked to several agents and saw many properties. Although some had great features, it was clear to us that the house we ultimately bought fulfilled the most of our requirements for living and work space (as we both freelance from home) and the location had both urban amenities and proximity to the kids' school.

The agent we bought from, Luz, is a world class character, an appealing combination of utter charm and charisma along with an intent hard sell approach that would do any used car salesmen proud. The first place she showed us was up on a dramatic hill in the fast developing Colonia Loma Linda. We dubbed this joint the Rock Star house. We loved it. It was a sparkling new mansion on a hill, tricked out with beautiful finishes. We lusted after it. The siting of the house and the view were spectacular. Now, this would be a 1.25 million dollar house in Oakland CA, where we lived for a long time. Here, they wanted about 270K for it. It was 70,000 dollars above our stated budget, but we actually tried a lowball offer on it.

No go. Sellers here in Oaxaca would rather sit on a property and wait for their price than sell low, it appears. I would say it's a mild buyer's market here. There are more sellers for sure than buyers, but it's not like the current downturn in the U.S., prices are still climbing here. This urban area is growing fast and the demand for housing is driving prices up. It's expensive by Mexican standards in Oaxaca, which is ironic as this is one of the poorest states in Mexico. But a growing population and a strong & growing ex-patriot population keeps prices headed up with a tight supply of land and houses.

No rock star house for us, we are relieved. We did not come here to live beyond our means. We spend a few more weeks looking around and we go back to our modern boxy loft with Luz several times. She is pressuring us to sign all along, but we hold her off. Finally, deciding this is the best place for us, we lodge a lowball offer and are rebuffed. Ultimately we get the price down from 2.3 million pesos to 2.1 million, but we were trying to get it for 1.85. Switching strategies, we asked for a safety barrier and staircase to the rooftop at the 2.1 million price, and the developer agreed! This will make it possible for us to create a rooftop garden/oasis in our urban townhouse.

Faced with a provisional verbal agreement, it was incumbent on us to execute a series of moves to seal the deal in the unfamiliar Mexican market.

We needed to repair to the offices of the Notario of our choosing to write up the Compra/Venta agreement (choosing a Notario—ask around for recommendations from Mexican friends and acquaintances), and we needed to put down some earnest money on the house.

Turns out in Mexico, for new construction, one is expected to plunk down a large chunk of earnest money. We take the plunge and agree to pay half up front, with the balance to be paid when the house is finished.

Any further negotiation that needs to take place happens at this point. The Notario wrote up a boiler place compra/venta agreement. We looked it over, showed it to friends, and reconvened at the Notarios office with the seller and gave a list of things we wanted to add to the agreement. As our seller is a decent man doing quality work, he had no problem with our additions.

The truly hilarioius and indeed hair raising part, the guy wants the down payment “En effectiveo”, also know as cash. How else can he avoid reporting the income??? So, away we go the the bank with him. We withdraw one million pesos in cash and hand it to him, a literal bag of cash. He stuffs it in his backpack and heads down the street with it. He made it home alive, as we soon see him again.

It's worth mentioning that our sales agent, Luz, had helped us open an account at Scotiabank, making it possible to transfer funds from the U.S. for the deal. To open a Mexican bank account, you need two Mexicans to vouch for you, and our agent and seller did just that. Without them greasing the wheels, it could have taken months to open an account. Luz marched right in, jumped the line and got the manager to give us VIP service. It's rather embarrassing to do this, but on the other hand that's just how stuff gets done here.

I need to mention also—as foreign nationals, we were required to apply for a permit to buy property in Mexico. As part of the permit, you agree to adhere to Mexican law in any legal dispute surrounding your property, you waive the right to bring any legal action under U.S. Law. This permit ran us four hundred bucks each, plus another hundred each for the Notario to handle the paperwork and application process for us.

The Mexican love of bureaucracy reared it's silly assed head here. My name on my six month tourist visa was listed without my middle initial. I had to jump through a few hoops, file some forms, pay a forty dollar fee and visit the immigration office two or three times and act contrite to update my visa with an added “J” for my middle name! Then I was able to successfully apply for a permit to buy property in Mexico.

Once we'd gotten the agreement done and paid the earnest money, it was just a matter of waiting for the house to be finished. “It will be done next week” stretched out to about five weeks, but indeed we felt it was done in good time. For sure, we had a couple meetings at the house making lists of things that needed attention for the house to be truly done. Naturally we had more leverage to get details fixed before we pay the balance!

Then, a couple more trips to the Notario for a provisional title document (The real deal, the Escritura, follows after a few months of red tape). We pay the balance (another huge bag of cash!), we pay the Notario the wild fee of a few hundred bucks, and we own our new casa in Mexico.

Oh—one more thing, there is a transfer tax. It is tradition to flat out lie about the value of the house, usually listing the value of the land alone, having done this we figure we will be hit with about a $1500.00 tax bill.

Now the next part of the adventure—who know's what it's gonna take to set up a phone line in new construction here, let the Byzantine process begin!

Albert Hoffman, A Fine Human Being

Just heard over NPR that Albert Hoffman has died at age 102. Who can argue with living to such a ripe old age. By any measure, this man was a very successful human being.
Of course, Albert Hoffman is best known for the synthesis of LSD-25 in 1938, and for inadvertently dosing himself in 1943. He went on to lead a dignified life, intelligently discussing and analyzing his great discovery for the balance of his long life.
I won't bore anybody with my own views on LSD and psychedelics here (just read enough of my comics and you'll catch the drift of my opinions); I would simply direct attention to my link to Hoffman's Wikipedia entry. Draw your own conclusions.
Okay, allright, one final note. I would say that it's hard to take any critic of LSD and psychedelics seriously if they have not tried them, just my subjective opinion.

Here We Go Again: El Vocho

As mentioned here last month, I've written about 150 new pages of comics, pretty much a whole new graphic novel. The working name for the piece is "El Vocho", referring to the nickname earned by the venerable VW bug in Mexico, where it remains one of the most popular passenger cars.

In the past, when working on a longer piece, I've either kept a lid on the work until it was ready to be published as a graphic novel, or I've issued a series of shorter comic books (as with my BugHouse series). Now, in the new media future, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to post the material as I create it. It will save me a lot of expense and effort, it will save readers money and frankly I expect it will be seen and read by far more people online than it would be in comic book format.

That being the case, I've created a blog for the sole purpose of posting El Vocho comics as I create them. Go ahead and click the El Vocho link to see the first installment.

It is worth mentioning, since I moved to Mexico almost eight months ago, I've been casting about for a project (really for a mode of working) that truly captivates and engages my best energies. I've wandered down a couple different alleyways with regard to characters and storylines, posting some web comics I was pretty happy with.
But frankly, something was missing. While I'm excited about new media/electronic media, I still burn & yearn to work with the long narrative. I also want my stuff to appear in print in a graphic novel format.
With El Vocho, I've created a compelling story that serves all of the aforementioned interests and needs. I will post it as I create it, it is a long narrative with complex characters and an overlay of several story arcs, and I will collect it as a print graphic novel when it's done.

Looking over the web comics/online comics landscape, I see that there are several sites that do a fine job of hosting and promoting web comics. I considered posting with one of these sites, but ultimately decided it was not for me. I prefer to maintain my own proprietary blog for posting web comics.

Each of these hosting sites has a list of requirements to adhere to in order to play ball with them. The most odious of these was that one must create a web comic for web use only (it was forbidden to post a graphic novel in progress). Hell, I don't need some skinny pimply paste-faced teenage web dweeb entrepreneur telling me what color socks to wear; I prefer to captain my own ship, come hell or high water! Hopefully, I can attract more than four viewers to each of my El Vocho posts. We'll see what happens! Stay tuned.

Bubbling Up from the Literary Underground

Just over a year ago, Manx Media published a fine first novel by Ben Tanzer entitled Lucky Man.
Now, Ben has gone electric with a fantastic online magazine featuring fine writing, poetry and AHT! It's called

This Zine Will Change Your Life

and I highly endorse it, it's just the type of endeavor that keeps well crafted, grass roots literature alive in a near post literate environment.
Here is Ben's spin on the new issue:

"This edition we have a killer love story by J.A. Tyler.

This piece will be up for two weeks and as with every piece going forward it has been matched-up with a photo and music by my collaborators on this project, Adam Lawrence and Jason Behrends respectively.

We hope you enjoy this edition and come back in the future. We also hope you will let people know that we are out there and maybe even link with us."

Steve again. Not only is Ben building momentum with This Zine Will Change Your Life, but he has a second novel practically in the can--you just can't stop this dude's creative overdrive!

Stupid Tourist Tricks

Wow, what a crazy March it's been! I've seen three sets of visitors from the U.S., and I"ve happily turned into a tourist in my own back yard.
We're talking visits to the ruins at Mitla, Yagul, & Monte Alban (the latter at night by special arrangement!), country Mezcal factories, and of course the Silent Procession on good Friday in Oaxaca, mentioned in my last post. Wait, there's more, including visits to the "figuras de madura" (wooden animals) village of Arrazola, and the Rodolfo Morales museum in the town of Ocotlan.

We've also haunted plenty of great restaurants in Oaxaca, soaking up the local color & great food. My kids have been on a two week school break at the same time, so we've kicked back and soaked up the good vibes and good cheer. My birthday came in the middle of all this, and my friends Mats!? and Peri presented me with a GIANT CAKE from one of Oaxaca's finest bakeries, making it a memorable fifty one for this geezer boho.

It reminds me of something good that entrepreneurs often forget completely -- Vacations are good for you! I'm not quite the hard driving workaholic I was in my 20s, but I still forget to take time out. Thanks to all my great friends for the visits, (hugs & kisses to Carrie, Mats!?, Peri, Mikey and Marcia) forcing me to step out of my routine and have a ball.

During all of this, I've managed to pump out several jobs including a big order for a new client, so all remains covered in the world of this self employed Bohemian.

Who am I, and What am I Doing Here?

I'm sure almost nobody remembers the above line from the Vice Presidential debate before the '92 election, where Ross Perot's running mate, Admiral What's-his-face (with the ideal candidate helmet of white hair) uttered the once famous line. Fuck, that guy was a world class space cadet. What a fine moment of prime time it was. He sunk Perot's already slim chances with six seconds of perfect sound bite!

As for me, Who am I, and What am I doing here? Fuck if I know either! Right now, I'm listening to this.

And it is nicely ripping my face off, but actually I'm here to report on my self employed Bohemian activities for the recent stretch. This is what I've been doing: Nothing.

Okay, maybe not nothing. I've been paying enough attention to my screen printing business to keep the wheels churning. Me 'n my boys back in the states are making pretty prints for money, and all is well in the world of work.

The real news here in Oaxaca is that my Casa has been graced with a stream of lovable guests for the entire month of March. Fun has been had, ruins have been visited, mescal has been sampled. Well, more than sampled by certain guests!

Actually, for a few days the guests decamped to the Oaxacan coast long enough for me to sit down and write perhaps 150 pages worth of comics! It was my best sustained burst of comics writing in perhaps five years, the muse commandeered my psyche for the better part of a week and whispered a wonderful narrative in my ear--it was the best sort of writing for me, where I honestly just felt I was taking dictation from some disembodied source. Now I gotta sit down and draw the damn thing, but it will be a pleasure.
I'd certainly had the idea last fall & winter that I was gonna jump into the web comics biz--and I did, enough to get my feet wet. But I gotta say, I longed for the long narrative. It's my wife & it's my life (as Lou Reed once sang). Sometimes I try to forget, but I came to this mudball to draw comic books. Books! So here we go, fine with me.

Then what, the guests return, more visitors show up, and it is good! No lie, all the flow & traffic enhances the lives of my family and pumps up our energy. What the heck, the kids are on school vacation anyway.

So, it happens to be one of the biggest holidays of the year in Mexico, Semana Santa (Easter week). On Good Friday there is to be something called "the silent procession", a sort of parade acting out the stations of the cross.
Who knew these dudes would show up in this klansman/executioner regalia? Whoooo! Brings back the bad smells & bells of my childhood! Them crazy Catholics, they sure know how to hold a parade, let alone an inquisition, as per the above photos.

It's the War, Stupid

Oh Bush, thanks so much for signing your band aid bill to avoid recession. I'm sure it will work like a charm!
Uh, it's for sure gonna fix the sub prime mortgage crisis. We all know that you & congress can save us, and the economy.

Or maybe not. How did we get here, on the brink of recession? Sure, all those funky mortgages had something to do with it.

But, where has the real error been made? I believe it's the misbegotten war that Bush/Cheney started under false pretenses and pushed on the world over the past few years. What an incredible, very large, waste of money (not to mention lives).

We are in a situation similar to the aftermath of the Vietnam war. It took a good ten years to pay for that war and shore up the economy.

I think we should cut the "defense" budget in two, and spend a bit on health care, education, housing (especially for low income people), infrastructure and education. Now that is an economic program I'd support.

In conclusion, Bush and his ilk are not only bad actors, they are really shitty accountants.

Breakfast & Taxes with a Squeeze of Lime

This is ostensibly a blog about self employment for artists & creative types, but right now, I feel like writing about breakfast.

Goddammit, I just had the best breakfast—sitting here in the back courtyard behind our rental in San Felipe Del Agua (a neighborhood in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico), I took the world's most perfect ripe avocado and a few slices of juicy red tomato and layered them over some crunchy wheat toast. Something wasn't quite right after the first bite... I know what it needs, a squeeze of fresh lime!

Holy Shit, suddenly I feel like the luckiest man alive, enjoying the most delicious meal in all the ages of mankind! The day is ahead of me, the sun is just about to break over the backyard wall, the sky is blue, birds are chirping, etc.

Sorry if I have lapsed for a moment into the precious little world of the “foodie” blog, but maybe I can dig a point out of this, pertinent to “Self Employment for Bohemians”. Here it is: It dawns on me that I must be doing something right. See here how everything leads up to this day (apologies to Robert Hunter).

Even thought I'm going to spend the rest of the morning working on my taxes, my dedication to the life of the self employed art bum has brought me to this sublime moment—I have no complaints.

And never forget, folks—when it comes to taxes, it's nothing but a good time! Proper planning throughout the year and close attention to the wonderful possibilities of the Schedule C (write off every cent you can, within the confines of the tax code) can help you enjoy your breakfast too!

Self Employment: Telling the Folks

Most self employed people start out with a regular job of some sort. Even the hard core self employed are subject to real world pressures that demand most young folks entering their work lives sign on with some company or other to earn a living.

So it was with me, out of college I worked on a loading dock for minimum wage. To say it was boring and degrading, and that the pay sucked, is an understatement. I lasted all of six weeks before I started a T Shirt printing operation.

Anyone who quits a job to work for themselves is subject to the delicate task of informing those near and dear of their course of action. In my case, it was my very concerned parents. Others might have to tell a spouse or other family member that they have taken the plunge. If you find yourself in this position, don't be surprised if they react as if you have climbed onto the weakest branch of a very tall tree with a power saw.

For example, you might say this to your parents, spouse or whomever:

“I've decided to work for myself on an amazing new clean energy product which will replace the internal combustion engine within one year and save the planet. A venture capitalist has pledged $20,000,000 in seed capital for my new company.”

This is what they hear:

“Hi Mom & Dad, I quit my job today! I'm gonna sit around the house watching porno while I smoke crack and polish my Bishop. When I need money, it's OK if I call you up, right?”

Yes, it's true, those closet to you may be averse to risk. They may have a tough time understanding the vision that is crystal clear in your head. Don't let this stop you from your mission of making your dreams manifest in real time. If Henry Ford had listened to his mom, we might all be taking the horse & buggy to work (hey, that might not be a bad idea!).

Anyone who has parents knows that they live in their own strange pathological web of derangement. Parents do not hear the words you tell them, they put these words through a magic filter that alters the message that arrives in their cranium.

I offer more sample dialog to make my point. Let's say you just met the girl (or guy) of your dreams. This is what you tell your parents:

“I've met the most wonderful girl! She's beautiful, compassionate and funny. We've been dating for three weeks and I think I'm falling for her. Did I tell you her novel was just favorably reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review?”

This is what they hear:

“Hi Mom & Dad, sorry I haven't called you for a few months, but I've been boning this skanky hooker I picked up while scoring some brown tar heroin. I would've called sooner, but I didn't run out of money until now, and I wanted the open sores on her arms to heal before I introduced you to her anyway.”

The moral of the story, love and accept you parents on their own terms, and you will be all the happier for it!

Is Print Dead? Or Does it Just Smell Funny?

If you are like me, you have a lifelong love affair with print in all it's manifestations—books, magazines, newspapers, graphic novels, comics books, posters, drink coasters—in short, anything you can feed through a press and slap some ink on can be the object of this affection.

With the rise of the web and “new” media, newspapers and magazines are shrinking from reduced ad revenues and circulation. The venerable Punk Planet has folded, publishers of every stripe struggle to break even, and kids spend the majority of their reading time online, instant messaging and the like.

Sure, electronic media is stunning and fun, but a deep-seated part of me wants to bury my head in the sand and focus exclusively on print, for ever and ever.

I felt compelled to poll several of my colleagues in the ink stained world of comic books and graphic novels on the state of print today.

Jesse Reklaw, the cartoonist behind the weekly strip Slow Wave, is a keystone personality in the vibrant world of mini-comics. “I think about this all the time lately. My feeling is that things are shrinking in some ways (newspapers, magazines), but growing in others (graphic novels, printed archives). Maybe we're readjusting and getting better focus about WHAT should be in print...it is one of the most durable forms of information storage.”

Another lover of print, a true blue avatar of art comics, Dylan Williams, cartoonist and publisher of Sparkplug Books, suggests a more active approach.

“I don't believe print is dead. I've actually had a lot of time spent thinking about what I'm trying to do with my life and the whole idea of punk rock is something I keep on coming back to. I've been a punk since I was a kid and those values are really my core values. If you feel bad about stuff the only thing we can do is fight it. I love print, love drawing, and love art comics. I hate what comics became in the 90s, things like web comics, ‘the new independents’ and all the money-speak that took over comics bugs me. I'm an underground kid and that is my idea. I think, all we can do is light our little fires and stoke them. I don't ever feel like giving up.”

Sparkplug has issued outstanding titles by the likes of Mats!? (Asiaddict), Renee French (Edison Steelhead's Lost Portfolio), the gifted young artist Austin English (Windy Corner), and Williams’ own standout series Reporter, to name a few. Both Williams and Jesse Reklaw are in the vanguard of comics kids coming to full maturity—these are people who have vision, ambition and confidence. They believe in print and are willing to bet their careers on it.

Veteran underground cartoonist and painter supreme Mary Fleener offers a historical perspective on how we got to where we are. “I think the print world began to die with the television. When radio was king, books were still popular because radio didn't have the visual kick. Don't forget, we humans are a lot like magpies—we like shiny things and TV provides that fix. However, today, print and TV are dying because there's nothing of substance on either TV or within newspapers.”

Rob Clough, comics editor of Other magazine and a high profile comics critic, joins Fleener in naming TV as the real culprit in the waning primacy of print, but holds out hope for the graphic novel.

“Print as the dominant form of mass media is dying. That was precipitated by TV and is obviously being driven further home by the Internet and assorted gadgets.

“That said, reading print is such a particular and visceral experience, that print will never completely go away. Instead, it's going to become more of a boutique item, something done in smaller quantities. It's why Fantagraphics will continue to thrive, and why print-on-demand services like Lulu will become even more prominent.”

“The good news about recent technology is that it will democratize the dissemination of information
even further—everyone will have a chance to have their say. This will take the flow of information out of the hands of the corporate interests that have strangled it for nearly 150 years in this country.”

Looking to the future, I return to Jesse Reklaw, with his finger on the pulse of grassroots/DIY comics publishing. Jesse believes that the heart and soul, the true innovation in comics, rests in that grassroots/DIY world, and how can anyone deny that self-evident truth? He cites the emergence of several annual awards for mini-comics as symbolic of the durability of print based comics:

“The minicomics awards (this year we're offering a cash prize of $300 to the best mini!). I think the fact that people are rewarding mini-comics makers, and encouraging them, shows that there will always be an interest in print and the art of making books.”

For my own part, I'm inclined to agree with the sentiments expressed by Brett Warnock, co-publisher of Top Shelf Productions and one of the most charismatic figures in the art comics movement, “You know how I feel about print vs. digital media... I'll die with ink-stained fingers and a rolled-up comic book in my back pocket, baby!”

NOTE: Here is an interesting twist--I've been plunging into the world of Web Comics lately with my Tuff Toddler strip. The issue of print vs. "new media" remains foremost in my mind. Indeed, I have a couple comic book projects in the can, so I'm hardly ditching print media. Each project has a publisher interested, but I have no signed contracts for either as of this writing.

So it is that I wonder, are the existing revenue models for print media still viable? I've seen my income from print related projects shrink over the past couple years. How are these traditional models working for others?

The real question here, what are the revenue models (let alone the production models) for the "new media"? Sure, I'm pulling some modest income from AdSense ads from Google, but how is a cartoonist going to pull a living from the "new media"?

I'll be sure to post more about this. This article may or may not appear in an upcoming issue of Alarm magazine, I'll be sure to note if & when it appears.

Comic Book Entrepreneur at the Dawn of the Indie Age

As the Seventies stumbled to a close, I found myself at a Ramones concert just before Christmas with an ascendant case of the flu, which my girlfriend attempted to nurse with a few tiny tiny spoonfuls of cocaine. Never liked that awful stuff too much, the flu had it's way with me, yet somehow I survived the show and made it through the next week and a half to the Eighties with my newly minted Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (and perhaps enough money to last two weeks if I stuck to beans & rice).

This was something of a comedown from where I'd parked my psychological living space for my undergraduate years. Fact is, getting my art degree (with a focus on painting) was a bit of a dodge, a pleasant enough way to be “going to college” while I pursued my real education, which was comprised of writing & drawing a daily comic strip for the school newspaper. The Massachusetts Daily Collegian offered four or five much coveted slots to students to work out their chops on the comics page. By my second semester, I talked my way into grabbing a spot there, and held it for the next four years until graduating.

Luckily, my strip Aluminum Foil captured the zeitgeist of the moment, and the strip was widely appreciated at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, a diploma factory of gargantuan proportions, that once earned the dubious distinction of being Playboy magazine's party school of the year. Aluminum Foil chronicled the adventures of Gerald (a stoner foilhead/everyman) and his sidekick Benb (a dapper, overweight, mute smiling scarecrow).

The highlight of the UMass social calendar was of course Halloween. At UMass in the late Seventies, Halloween was nothing less than a weekend long, full on psychedelic pagan bacchanal. Hordes of tripping, costumed students would converge on the concourse of the campus center building for a convivial mass celebration of All Hallows Eve. It was something to behold, especially for me, as many of the party goers would be dressed as Benb & Gerald (Gerald in particular being the easy costume—just fashion a helmet of Aluminum Foil, poke some eye holes in it, roll a fat doobie for a prop, and there you are!).

Which brings us back to January 1980. There I am, ego inflated beyond all reasonable proportion after four years of basking in the glow of the successful run of comics, with barely enough money for a six pack of beer. What to do? I tried a standard forty hour job for all of six weeks, working on the loading dock of a down market department store for minimum wage. This was depressing (in the dead of a freezing ass cold western Massachusetts winter, no less), and the final straw came when the boss instructed me to drown a cute little mole that had invaded the warm store during one particularly nasty freeze. Not willing to whack a mole for minimum wage, I released the little guy into the frozen tundra and resigned.

Having some experience with screen printing T Shirts, I started freelancing wholesale shirt jobs (always a popular product when it's twenty degrees outside!). This took care of keeping food in my belly and a roof overhead, but how to sweep the world of cartooning with my (obviously) unparalleled genius?!

In retrospect, it's clear to me now that I came pre-installed with the “publishing gene”. This is a genetic quirk whereby an artist or writer can (by some mysterious alchemy) justify shoveling pots and pots of money into the never ending project of publishing their precious works. To say I was burning up to get started in the field is an understatement. It was pretty much all I could think about.

I'd managed to save $150.00 from my heroic efforts on the loading dock. Armed with the idea of collecting the best of my college strips into a one hundred page volume, I dropped by a local printer to get an estimate on having books produced. Turns out they wanted nine hundred bucks to do a run of five hundred, a bit beyond my means. Just about then, an important adjunct to the publisher gene kicked in, and I became a financier as well.

Turns out one of my housemates, Betsy Hilborn, an amiable, fun loving & somewhat cynical nursing student, has been listening to me chatter about my plans and offered to pony up most of the funds for my initial publishing effort. So with $600.00 from Betsy, my paltry $150.00 is savings and another $150.00 coaxed out of my dubious parents, I threw my hat into the ring as a comics publisher.

I had penned some four hundred plus daily strips during the run of Aluminum Foil. I figured I'd publish them over two volumes, with the first one hundred page volume featuring two strips per page. I hauled my strips down to the print shop, and within a couple weeks I had five hundred copies of Benb & Gerald in hand!

Although I was a completely naive amateur, I left no stone unturned over the next several weeks in an effort to sell the books. As I'd promised Betsy that I would pay her back within a couple months, I sprung into action like a man sitting on a hot stove—I was determined to be as good as my word.

The first step was to stage a publishing party. It was my good fortune to be friends with Carl Mayfield, lead guitarist and vocalist for Martian Highway, a local party band with a strong following. Carl was an accomplished illustrator as well, and we jammed on an 11” x 17” poster for a Martian Highway gig that would double as a costume ball / publishing party.

Given the tenor of the times, Carl hit on the clever idea that we would print the poster in silver ink on black paper. Why? To make it look like a giant hit of blotter acid, of course! Sitting down with our drawing gear and a stack of late Seventies punk rock and Grateful Dead records (go figure), we created a gorgeous drawing featuring Benb & Gerald driving a late model Ford with an electric, glowing Martian in the back seat. Carl added the requisite typography, and we scribbled a manic cast of characters over every square inch of the art, including the first image of my future lead character, Dog Boy (although I did not name him in this drawing, the fully formed image was there).

One wag suggested that we were quite bold to produce a silver on black poster that was “virtually unreadable”; I had no problem reading the poster myself! We papered the UMass campus and local towns with the poster. It stood out like a beacon to those in the know, and the party was well attended by costumed, tripping revelers.

Green kid that I was, I felt disappointment with selling 33 books at the party, and another 40 or so from my prepublication advertising and marketing. In retrospect, I recognize that it was a pretty good first day as a small time publisher, making a nice dent in the money I owed Betsy. The following month saw me hawking books in front of the UMass campus center building dressed as Gerald, replete with Aluminum Foil mask (but only once—too embarrassing!), making a critical connection with the book buyer at the campus bookstore, and placing books in every local book & record shop that would take a few.

With the unrelenting verve & energy of youth, I managed to make the whole thing work and somehow sold enough copies to pay back the loan to Betsy ahead of time. Other key breaks came along, for example I received a positive review from cartoonist Jay Kinney in a column he was then writing about underground comix for Heavy Metal magazine—this one review alone sold a good thirty books via mail order.

By the time mid summer rolled around, I'd sold all but a handful of my run of five hundred books, turning a modest profit. Considering I'd had a near captive audience of 20,000 daily for four years in the Amherst – Northampton area, it wasn't unreasonable for me to assume I could pull it off. In any case, it was a remarkable initiation into the rough & tumble world of comics publishing for me, making a profit my first time out despite being almost completely ignorant of the biz. It whetted my taste for further adventures into the world of indie comics publishing at the dawn of the Eighties.

Further Adventures in Web Comics

The New Media, whatever that means, is like the tide coming in--that is to say, you can't stop it. If you try, you're going down!

I love print. I'm a bonafide print junkie with ink for blood. I've owned a screen printing company for almost thirty years, and I've created and published some sixty comic magazines/books/graphic novels.
But, as 2008 approaches, I see that income from print based comics has dwindled steadily over the past few years. Traditional book & magazine publishing is on the ropes these days, no matter how you slice it. I've racked my brain over the past several years for a new model to bring my work to market.

Happily, I've caught the New Media bug. I'm definitely "on the bus", having done enough research & experimenting to be producing and publishing electronically.

This post will not be about the specifics of my model, the nuts and bolts details of how & why it's viable. Nope, it's simply time to direct readers to my new webcomic project, which I'm calling Tuff Toddler. I'm digging in to spend some serious ink-slingin' time here, and I invite one and all to join me on this journey into the heart of -- um -- my heart. Come around to Tuff Toddler/Cute as a Button But Tiger Tough site on a regular basis, I'll be waiting there to entertain, delight and surprise you.

Steve Lafler,
Christmas Eve 2007

Let's Publish Comic Books!

From the get go, I've aspired to be a cartoonist. Probably from about age 3 or 4. I saw those Max Fleisher cartoons from the Thirties in reruns on TV when I was a wee little shaver in the early Sixties, and I was sold. We are talking about very cool buggy characters, boppin' and dancing for all they're worth, essentially rapping over a funky swing soundtrack. Upon seeing the likes of that, my career choice was finalized. Why waste time on anything that does not completely captivate your imagination?

Now, I realize in the course of spilling my guts in this blog, I've gone on at length about my successful run as a self employed screen printer. True enough, starting in early '78, while still an undergrad at UMass Amherst, I got into freelancing custom printed T Shirts and have done quite well with it. But the fact is, the shirt biz has always been secondary to my focus on creating and publishing comics.

So it is that I begin a whole new phase of memoir in Self Employment For Bohemians. Having covered the salient points of running a small scale Custom T Shirt printing operation, it's time to ruminate on the other half of my life, that as a cartoonist & publisher.

Right up front, I'm going to admit that, in a strict business sense, I've needed the T Shirt business in order to pay the bills most of the time. However, the beauty of it is, the successful Shirt biz provided me with capital with which to publish, and gave me both the time and freedom to pursue my art career completely on my own terms—I've been able to create and publish cartoons straight from my heart and psyche with absolutely no concessions to the commercial sphere. Again, I may not have made millions off my comics (yet!), but in point of fact, I have sold over 100,000 comic books, magazines and graphic novels since releasing my first book, Benb & Gerald, in 1980.

So—the stage is set, in my next post I'll serve up the story of my swashbuckling leap into publishing in March, 1980 with Benb & Gerald.

Self Appointed Blowhard Gains Ascendancy!

It's my great joy in life to thumb my nose at authority and hierarchies of all stripes while happily working for myself. OK, so I have an attitude. What of it?!

Truth be told, the Vice Principal of Glenbrook Middle school, Mr. Texiera, told me that I was stupid and would end up in prison. (He'd just caught me pitching peanut M&Ms at the svelte young Mrs. Miller in the cafeteria. What can I say? She had great legs, and I had to get her attention somehow.) Although I did spend one night in jail in college, drunken lout that I was, I've happily avoided prison thus far.

So here I am, having appointed myself blowhard in charge of cheerleading impressionable folks into the self employed life, especially if they are artistically/creatively inclined. What qualifies me to do this? Ha! Nada! Chances are, what works for me would land you in the poor house (Lord knows I've done my time there). Yet I am compelled to blow my horn on this subject dear to my heart, and my overblown ego wants props for it.

What I'm leading up to here, I've actually gotten a wee bit of exposure in the overamped blogosphere lately for this here soapbox I'm crowing from, as follows:

Apparently, I received a mention for my piece on "The Win - Win Deal" in Social Entrepreneurship Today.
Two of my "Self Employment" pieces have also garnered a pair of mentions on Technorati pages, which I gotta say is an honor for a seat of the pants operator like myself. The first is in the Kaizen Business pages, and then there one on the James Alenteal site.

It's nice to get listed with thoughtful, useful sites like these. As always, I hope I can deliver just a bit of useful information about self employment to even one person out there. That is something that would make this self appointed, self employment guru/blowhard very happy indeed.

Steve Lafler

The Rich Artist

Last month, I reprinted a bunch of my early Self Employment for Bohemians stuff. Those pieces contain piles of valuable nuts & bolts information about getting started in self employment, a subject near and dear to my insubordinate, anti-hierarchy, anti-authority heart.

Right now, however, it's time to return to the lyrical, poetic side of Self Employment for Bohemians. Why did I want to work for myself in the first place? What is my motivation to be self employed? It's all about control of your time, baby. I'm an artist. What does an artist need? TIME! Time to make art. So, here I reprint a piece wherein I define success for the self employed artist:

What defines success as an artist? Money? Groupies? Perhaps fancy cars, vacations, houses, etc.? Nope, not even close, none of the above.

From the start, I’ve always paid myself generously in the commodity that an artist values above all others: Time. Plain and simple, success as an artist is defined as ample time to make art.

Yes, we are assuming that you have a roof over your head, and food to eat. Whatever scrambling you have to do to make that happen, do it as efficiently as possible with no waste—no wasted time that is!

What does an artist do? Make art. An artist, I believe, should be less concerned with their end product, and more concerned with process. Engage in the process, and you improve technically, you get real darn good at your craft. Engage in the process, and your muse finds a way to sneak boatloads of good ideas in the back door in the dead of the night. And what does a body need in plentiful supply to engage in the process of making art? Time!

The art life is not about ending up with pretty pictures. Or sculptures, films, songs, drawings, comics, whatever. It’s about the process of creating all that stuff; the journey itself, the illumination, the epiphanies encountered along the way are the true rewards.