Thursday, June 17, 2010

Finnish publishing companies

For some strange reason last week there were 4 mails in my inbox from people solliciting their work to be published by Huuda Huuda. Usually we only get maybe 1 of those mails per month.

I don't mind that people send us their stuff, on the contrary; even though I'm immersed in comics all day long, I always think what we receive might be something really special. Alas, we have yet to publish a single comic book / pamphlet that was sent to us through mail by an unknown artist.

It's not that we look down on everything we receive or that all stuff we get in is crap. On the contrary, mostly it's pretty ok, good for a few laughs now and then or some admirable art. But the truth of the matter is, Huuda Huuda is a really small publishing company with an empty bank account and we don't have the time or resources to publish everything that comes in our way. Tommi and me have to really carefully consider what we publish. Money is never the issue for us, far from it! What drives us is to see great comic books being published in finnish. Books that hopefully will serve as eyeopeners for some, that will be admired by others or that simply will be read in the library to fill up an idle 15 minutes. That we annoy the hell out of some people who hate art comics (cough kvaak cough), comes as an extra bonus for me.

Anyway, the fact that we got all of a sudden all these sollicitations reminded me of that time i was teaching the second year students in Muurla a couple of years ago. 4 or 5 students if i am not mistaking and all were hard working on a longer comic. That was their big poject for the year. I asked them, "ok, so you are devoting all your energy to your comic. But then what? What are you going to do with it? Do you think somebody will publish it, or are you putting it on your blog?"
They didn't have a clue. Also, they had no idea what kind of comic publishers were still existing in Finland and what kind of stuff they were publishing. So naturally that was the topic for the day, spilling out the harsh realities of the finnish comics industry. Great fun. "The chances of Egmont publishing your work are about 0%", that kind of stuff.

In this blog entry I'd like to for once and for all give an answer to all aspiring finnish comic artists on where to get your works published and what chances you have.


Let's make a list of all bigger finnish publishers and what they are about



WSOY

Part of one of the biggest media multinationals in Europe (Sanoma). Somehow seems to translate mostly french comics: Larcenet, Blain, Delisle, Dupuy&Berberian, Trondheim. Surprised me with publishing Kati Närhi's book. They publish sporadically finnish names but I guess if you are not already an inhouse illustrator like Kati or a wellknown finnish artist like Ville Ranta you won't end up on their roster.
Chances of an young artists being published by wsoy: 0%



Egmont

The biggest comic publisher in finland, gets their publications in the newstands throughtout finland. Apart from Asterix, Lucky Luke and other commercial crap they have a big line of manga and DC/Marvel stuff. But I'll be darned if they publish Finnish artist. They haven't in recent years. But Egmont does some surprisingly good books now and then: Death Note, Rocky, Pellonreuna.
Chances of a young artists being published by Egmont: 0%



Arktinen Banaani

A very successfull company that has found the golden formula for selling comics: newspaper strips! Fingerpori, Viivi ja Wagner, Jere all are published by Arktinen Banaani. They also publish a couple of comic graphic novels each year and are willing to throw a bunch of money once per year to a bit more experimental comics. (last years example: Kiki, montparnassin kuningatar) However, I don't really see them publish a full length comic book by a young artist. Doesn't mean you shouldn't send your stuff. Arktinen Banaani publishes comic magazines in which they feature new artists.
Chances of a young artists being published by Arktinen Banaani: 2%



Tammi

One of the big boys in the finnish bookworld. Published comics in the nineties and noughties because i suppose they felt they had to. Then they noticed how manga was selling like hotcakes and bought two small but flourishing mangapublishers (Sangatsu and Punainen Jättiläinen) and let them continue the work independently. Because of the crazy popularity of manga and the fact that about 70% of all young people "studying" comics are into manga, the market for homegrown, finnish manga is pretty big and if you are really talented you might get a shot at it.
Chances of a young artists being published by Tammi: 3%



Like

No longer an independent bookpubisher (bought by Otava in 2006) and really, i don't get what they are going for with their line of comics. Which is maybe a good thing, that not everything always has to be such easily branded. Big respect for publishing Tommi Musturi's Toivo series. They also are willing to publish totally unknown names from abroad(provided however the comic has some leftist agenda. Case in point: this ) or from finland: check this one out for september. So all in all, pitkämies digs it.
Chances of a young artists being published by Like: 5%


Sammakko

Turku based publishing house that has one huge hit in comics: Kiroileva Siili. So they nowadays publish anything by Milla Paloniemi and are looking for the next hit. Hence they published Baarien Nainen (which i liked, btw) So my advice would be to do the same as the above mentioned examples: start your own comic blog, become hugely popular (as in about 1000 readers a day) and then approach them. Other then that: don't bother
Chances of a young artist starting own comic blog and becoming hugely popular with it: 6%



Jalava

I guess we can be short about Jalava since they don't publish finnish comic artists. they are on automatic pilot kind of with their hugo pratt and sokal books. Which is a shame because they were such a great publisher in the 80s and 90s.


Suuri Kurpitsa

Moving on to the truely indepedent "support your scene" publishers, here's Suuri Kurpitsa, a one man army from Tampere that's been going on for like almost 30 years. As Pauli himself explains on his site: "I am willing to take in new artists if they please me and are commercially viable to sell a few hundred copies" Most known artists from Suuri Kurpitsa are Tiitu, Ville Pirinen and Jaokim Pirinen.
Chances of a young artists being published by Suuri Kurpitsa: 2%



Asema

Asema is run by Villa Ranta and Mika Lietzen mainly to publish their own books. But they are open to others as well. As a matter of fact, in 2009 the then unknown Aino Sutinen send in her work to Ville who immediately said:" I'll publish you. You are the first person to have ever send in good enough material to warrant a good book." It's also the first time I have ever heard of such a thing happening, to be honest. Still, good news. And as Asema is celebrating it's tenth anniversary in september this year, they are publishing a series of smallpress comics. So who knows, go for Asema!
Chances of a young artists being published by Asema: 2%



Zum Teufel

Petteri Ojas imprint, publishes finnish artists only. Now that he has struck a deal with Arktinen Banaani, the books published by Zum Teufel are really well distributed. And in the beginning of this year Petteri published three books by totally unknown finnish artists. Well, unknown to the big audience. Most of these artists had been doing small press for years. If you ask me, a young artist will have the best shot at being published at Zum Teufel. Now that Petteri is starting a nationwide distributed comic magazine especially devoted to Finnish comics (Zum Teufel Zeitung), chances of getting published are even bigger!
Chances of a young artists being published by Zum Teufel: 7%



Daada

I guess the cat will be out of the bag soon, so i might as well make it public that Marko Turunens small art house Daada is going to start publishing books again. Starting from september. It will be smallscale in the beginning but nonetheless. Great news for all of us. Marko is starting by publishing the works of 4 of his students. So my advice to a young artist would be to apply to Lahti art school and listen to Marko carefully
Chances of a young comic artist getting into Lahti artschool: about 70%


Kreegah Bundolo

I am only including Kreegah Bundolo in here because Hans will publish Matti Hagelberg's new book in september and that deserves mentioning. Also, with Hans you never know: maybe he will publish you, most likely not though.


Kuti

This quarterly tabloid already has 16 issues under it's belt. Bet you didn't see that coming, did you! The content of Kuti varies dramatically and they are on the lookout for finnish talent all the time. You don't have to have skills in technical drawing or anything: be yourself, be original and draw up a story as some sort of stream of consciousness.
Chances of a young artists being published by Kuti: 7%


Huuda Huuda
I explained our situation already. Truthfully, we only publish works of people we know and whom we have seen developing. We are willing to try out stuff with our pamphlet series though. But my advice would be to do first your own thing in smallpress / self publishing and we will have a chat in my store a few years later. Ok?



Phew. That's it, i suppose. Yes i know, there are other publishers still out there but i decided they were too small press to be included here or they have stopped publishing comics or maybe simply because i overlooked them. Feel free to comment on all things i left out! Finnish or english. And here is some similar reading