Small Press and Self-Published

It struck me this weekend that we deal mainly with mainstream comics but there's a whole wealth of material out there, more so than just the major publishing companies. A lot of a writer's and artist's early work will be small press or self-published and I was wondering if there's a place for it on the Vine. So here's my question:

How do we deal with these or are they outside the scope of the Comic Vine?

Maybe we should have an option for 'self published' or 'independantly published' in there. It's a bit vague, I know, but I'm not sure what other options there are.

That was what I was wondering, actually. But would people be interested in seeing what the newest comic 'creators' are up to or is it just me who's into that kinda thing?

I think there's some webcomics covered here, it's pretty much the same thing, right?

http://www.comicvine.com/characters/&l=D&pubId=1861

Sort of but not quite. Web-comics are purely based online, where small press or self-published will be like the smaller version of Marvel, DC or Image, with hard-copies of their work. But then, if we deal with web comics, we really ought to be dealing with the equivalent in the real world, right?

Just send a request to a mod with the publishers, and they will add it. I dont think there can be too many.

Yeah, i suppose so.

What about self-publish? Would the writer/artist themselves be the publisher?

Yeah, that works too. It's up to the mods to decide.

Or maybe have, like CS suggested, an overall umbrella publisher called Self-Published

I'll PM G-man then when I've got something to submit, see what he thinks

Walkingstone says:

"That was what I was wondering, actually. But would people be interested in seeing what the newest comic 'creators' are up to or is it just me who's into that kinda thing?"

If the goal (which I think it is) to get every comic ever on here, then yea they belong on here. Not a task I'd pursue given the obscurity and difficulty of tracking some of that stuff down but it definitely deserves a place on here.

Yeah, it's actually mentioned in the FAQ that you should contact whoever and they'll get your stuff published on here.

Walkingstone says:

"What about self-publish? Would the writer/artist themselves be the publisher?"

If you look at the comic and find some publishing statement, you'd use that. But if there were no publishing statement, then use the author as the publisher. Sometimes self publishers "makes up a company" that they publish things under. But some exceptions could be if they say "published by Xerox or Kinkos" - the location they made the copies, I'm sure Xerox or Kinkos had nothing to do with the thing except provide the way to make copies (But I'd make a note on that in the description) or if they put in something like a "DC" circle to make it look like a DC comic and you know DC didn't publish it.