Transcription of interview conducted by telephone on 21 November 2014. Parts of this interview were used in Farthing, A. & Priego, E., (2016). ÔGraphic MedicineÕ as a Mental Health Information Resource: Insights from Comics Producers. The Comics Grid. 6(0), p.3. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/cg.74

 
ALEX BOWLER, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR AT JONATHAN CAPE

COULD YOU GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESSES AROUND GRAPHIC WORKS, AND WHAT JONATHAN CAPE CONTRIBUTES IN TERMS OF EDITING, CHECKING AND SHAPING THE FINAL BOOK? 
So I think it should begin almost before itÕs a book, when it first comes into the publisher; I think thatÕs probably the best place to begin. So the longest life, when we have the most involvement with the book, is when itÕs delivered to us as a partial manuscript or an outline. It would be an outline of the whole story and maybe just two or three pages of artwork, so youÕd acquire that. For instance, Katie GreenÕs Lighter Than My Shadow was acquired in those circumstances. And then she roughed out the whole story, very rough sketching, and that process takes her about three to six months. Then she comes in and we make a structural edit together at that point and we re-sequence and cut material. She would then go away and make a second rough draft based on that. And it can be that there are two or three stages in that process, if the second draft isnÕt quite there, and new things occur. 

ThereÕs that process of structural editing and, once thatÕs in, then really we leave it to the author, artist or creator to go and turn it into their finished artwork. We feel we canÕt really assist with the aesthetics of it, all we feel we could add is story. ThatÕs what we know how to do, we donÕt know how to draw. So they then go and create the artwork and then we sit down with the production director, once the final files have come in. There would have been a meeting with the production department at the point of acquisition, so that they know roughly how long the book is going to be, what kind of stock it needs to be printed on, if itÕs full colour or black and white. What the dimensions of the book are going to be, what the binding is going to be. So every production consideration is outlined at the outset. 

We also have a separate meeting when the final artwork comes in, when we start talking about colour; where best to have the book printed in order to meet the new specifications of the artwork subtypes, because artwork changes. The palette or the intricacy of those first three or four pages you may have seen when you acquired the book, the artist two years later may be working in quite a different style and have different production specifications. So thereÕs that meeting and then itÕs basically a question of going through the rest of the production processes, checking colour proofs; making sure the colour is right and obviously sequencing as well, to make sure the sequences are in the right places, Copy-editing, as all books are Ð but thatÕs pretty much it.

We tend to print more and more in the Far East, so I mean we will try to get a book on print four or five months before publication. So that it can then literally come back to the UK on a slow boat from China, which can take two months Ð just the physical transit of the copies back to the UK can take that long. ÊAnd we always like to have the copies in our warehouse two months before publication. ÊSo you're always factoring in that, the fact that the process, the actual printing, means youÕre not going to get your books into the warehouse until maybe two months after the printing, and that's different to prose books. Novels, prose novels, can take 10 years to write, and they can take four years to edit Ð and that's true of a graphic novel Ð but I think that once you've got a finished text with the prose, you can pretty much press print. 

CAN YOU DESCRIBE ANY DISTINCT CHALLENGES FACED WHEN PROMOTING DISTRIBUTING AND SELLING GRAPHIC NARRATIVES AND MEMOIRS? 
I think challenges did exist in the past, because of what had been published previously in the medium. ÊCultural arbiters in the mainstream, for instance, the literary pages of newspapers, didn't really think the form could deliver interesting things. So there was that prejudice, but that was maybe 10 years ago. ÊI think that's been entirely overcome now and feels like a distant memory. ÊBut I think that was a problem with breaking new things out in the past. I don't think it is any more. And then really in terms of other challenges, I don't feel there are, in terms of getting the books the reception any more. Or rather, it's no more challenging than it is to try and get any piece of media attention, in the current landscape. It's such a competitive media landscape now, and the migration towards digital, the decline of the high street, and the rise of Amazon, means that people are consuming things digitally as well. ÊSo people consuming on their iPad might be reading comics on there, and they're reading prose novels, but they're also reading The Guardian on there, or watching Netflix or using Spotify. So you have this problem where you're not just competing against other books any more; you're competing against everything else in this digital landscape, so it's so hard to get attention. 

It used to be that when there were lots of bookshops, you could buy promotional space in those shops to have people discover your books. ÊThere are really only the independents and Waterstones now, and the footfall in those is not what it once was. ÊThe way people find books now is someone has told them about a book, they Google it and then go and buy it on Amazon. ÊThey don't really browse around Amazon looking for a good book. So that change of model isnÕt unique to graphic novels. Everything, every piece of media, has that challenge. ÊAnd in fact, I would say that nowadays, compared to launching a debut prose novelist, it's much easier to launch a graphic work. They seem slightly exceptional, they have a slight novelty towards them, because the mainstream is just getting used to them and so they're just learning about creators like Chris Ware, Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel. So graphic works can have that little extra bit of heat around them. 

Graphic works also have a dedicated community, there's already a kind of audience around the form. There are dedicated sites, there are dedicated review pages even in the media now. And of course, there are dedicated comic shops as well. And moreover, there are dedicated departments at Waterstones, which weren't there 10 years ago. Now you've got a graphic novel specialist, who buys those things for them. And there aren't actually that many graphic novels or graphic memoirs of the sort that we do being published. ÊSo actually, it's slightly less competitive. There are many tens of thousands of prose novels published a year, but many, many fewer graphic novels. ÊSo there's less competition within graphic novels to get that shelf space or to get into shops like DaveÕs Comics in Brighton, or Gosh Comics in London. ÊAnd then once you're there, the community really backs it up, and moreover, the community is quite digitally native or digitally savvy, so they also really amplify these publications online. ÊAnd as a publisher, we've been able to harness that, we're part of that community ourselves now, through our own Tumblr, through the prizes that we have, through our Twitter feed. ÊAnd that doesn't exist in quite the same way in literary prose fiction and non-fiction. ÊSo I'd say that the prejudices have been overcome, and then actually, very few challenges remain. 

Other than the fact that we're just trying to convert more and more people to reading in this way. We think that there are more readers to find, I don't think we've exhausted the possibilities. And moreover, we're moving towards a visual culture. ÊBecause the way people operate online and the diminution of language, images increasingly become the way people communicate and they have an immediate impact. ÊAs the new generation has come through, they're much more used to reading through images as well. ÊSo I think that graphic narratives are going to become more and more important. I mean, the truth is, a debut graphic novel now sells as well, if not better, than a debut prose novelist Ð indeed, as well as many prose novels, which is really interesting. The other thing to consider is price. These are expensive books to make, but they're actually relatively quick reading experiences. ÊSo, for example, with Chris Ware, who we publish, I've heard him say on stage it can take him a week to do a page. ÊSo you think about how many hours are going in, and what that work is worth, and how expensive the production costs are for something like Building Stories. 

TO ME, £30 DOESNÕT SEEM THAT EXPENSIVE FOR WHAT IT IS. 
Exactly. So that's been one where, because we knew there was a big audience there, we went with the Americans and did a big print run, so we were able to deliver that price point for the reader. ÊBut for the average book, the print run is between 3000 and 5000. So you're really looking at £14.99 as a minimum price point to be making the margin work. And I think that some readers, especially with digital culture and the drive towards zero, that people think they should be getting culture for free, because they can get it for free. ÊSome people may think, well £20 is a lot to spend for two hours of narrative time. I'm comparing it to prose novels Ð if you think that you can get Jonathan Franzen for £7.99 in paperback, and that's taking people between 10 and 15 hours to read Ð you can see how that's just a slight obstacle for the mainstream. It's a perception of value for money. But I feel that we're making the books so beautiful, and then I also feel there is a real appetite for things you can hold on to. ÊAnd I know that's quite often a publisher's argument, but I think with graphic novels, you add something even more beautiful than the jacket of a prose novel to have on your bookshelf. ÊThey are beautiful artifacts, and I feel that people are committing to the price points now. As a publisher, you're always thinking, ÔIs this too expensive?Õ But if you're making great work, people will want to have it and will pay for it ultimately.
DO YOU HAVE A PRESENCE AT COMIC CONVENTIONS? 
We're at all of them. Our artists are in that community anyway, but it's really good for them to have a rallying point. This is something we don't well enough at the moment, I think. ÊVery few publishers do, other than maybe Myriad Editions in Brighton. They get their artists and their graphic novelists together with a kind of community spirit. 

It works really well as a hub. There are direct sales at festivals, we run book signings, we'll do new merchandise, be it a limited-edition tote bag, or a few signed prints available on the stand. We also let the artist, or encourage the artist, to sell their own things as well, so not just our books, but you know, their own prints and things like that. ÊBut the other really good thing that happens is artists that want to be on the list, who are working on material, they meet us there. For Thought Bubble, I wasn't there and Dan Franklin, my boss and publisher wasn't there Ð and we're the two acquiring editors on graphic novels Ð but we made sure that we had another editor there. And people were bringing work to her throughout the day and some of it looks very promising. ÊSo it's a really good way to uncover Êtalent and stories. 

That's how we want it to be, by direct submission. ÊIt's interesting that there's much less mediation in graphic novels, and that's why I think the material is much more exciting. ÊIt's not coming through agents, it's coming direct from artists. ÊAnd quite often, they get paired up with agents later on, which is very useful, and important for them, I think. ÊBut the work isn't being filtered through a system of received opinion before it comes to us. So I think thatÕs why you're finding exciting things. There is this wonderful kind of direct contact, and the fact that you're not having to consider or worry about a third party, you can speak directly to the author, be clear about what you think and what you want from this book, and they can be just as clear with you. As long as there's trust Ð the point about an agent is that they represent the author's needs and concerns. I'm sure there are rapacious publishers out there that will take advantage of unrepresented authors. But of course, our approach is that the artists are the most important people, and you've got to be doing right by them, or how are you going to attract other artists and remain one of the premier lists? But that direct contact really frees the creator and the editor up in the whole process. ÊYou're not having to follow market expectations in any way, it's like ÔLet's take a risk, let's do thisÕ, and that's what the artist usually wants, that's their vision, to not conform. 

IS IT A FAIR STATEMENT THAT THE COMICS INDUSTRY, AT ALMOST EVERY LEVEL, IS MADE UP OF ENTHUSIASTS? 
Jonathan Cape is a wider list, is a kind of literary list. We're very lucky that we're in Penguin Random House, and we have all this kind of backing Ð there are deep pockets, as it were. We're part of a corporation, but we're allowed to express our taste, so we are definite enthusiasts. Of course, we could, because of the size of Penguin Random House, say, ÔOK, this is a form, why don't we turn all of our classics into graphic novels? Or turn all of prose classics into graphic novels?Õ You can see how it would be possible to roll things out, and monetise them and sell them into other territories. But that's not the identity of our list. Whereas a publisher such as Self Made Hero, which only publishes graphic novels rather than prose as well, they live it, and they breathe it. I think even when it's a really brilliant business model, they do literally breathe the world. 

HAVE YOU HAD ANY INTERACTION WITH UNIVERSITIES OR OTHER INSTITUTIONS THAT ARE USING JONATHAN CAPE BOOKS IN AN EDUCATIONAL SETTING? 
No. What has happened is, they get taken up on creative writing courses or literature courses. For instance, Queen Mary University of London are looking at graphic novels as part of their contemporary literature classes.ÊSo I know that Fun Home was on a contemporary literature course and things like that. ÊBut they're not being used as teaching guides, they're a text to study. I think it was at Columbia in New York Ð I'd need to check this for you Ð which Katie Green's Lighter Than My Shadow, which is a memoir of an eating disorder, featured in a symposium on eating disorders in text. ÊAnd there's a whole department, I think somewhere at Columbia, dedicated to this. ÊBut again, I don't think they used it to educate. ÊThey used it as something that they were studying, as a kind of example of what they were talking about. ÊSo I don't think they're used as teaching aids. I'm sure they've been used; they must Ð like Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs must have been used at schools, to talk about the fear of the bomb. I can't believe that there aren't courses that haven't used Joe SaccoÕs works to illustrate issues around Gaza and the former Yugoslavia, or Persepolis as part of studies of the Middle East at schools. But I donÕt think these things have been put on a curriculum or syllabus in that way, to my knowledge. If it went on the syllabus, they tend to need some copyright material as well Ð they might not be wanting to use the whole physical book, but maybe just part of it. As with GCSEs, a lot of the examination boards have booklets, they kind of make their own textbooks, made up of extracts. So they would need permission for those extracts, so we would have been alerted. I'll check, but there's certainly not, to my knowledge, and I've been with the graphic novel list pretty much since the get-go, so I would have known about those. 

DO JONATHAN CAPE BOOKS GET REVIEWED IN ACADEMIC JOURNALS? IS THIS SOMETHING YOU ACTIVELY SEEK? 
Yes, they do get reviewed. To go back to Katie Green, I mean, it was clear that there were communities and academic departments around mental illness and the representation of mental illness. So you knew that it would get picked up, but they're quite hard to target. They're very recognised, you can go and Google Êdepartments that specialise in these things. But as a trade publisher, we don't have many of those specialist networks. And, of course, what's most effective is, you get the biggest noise you can on a launch through mainstream broadcast and print media, and that percolates. ÊAcademics are people who read the papers; academics are people who do read the book sections. So as long as you're getting your stuff in there, then that's what tends to happen. What we'll do is, a big review will run and then the press department will be inundated over the course of the next two or three weeks, and usually there will be academics in there saying, ÔI'd like to consider this for my courseÕ or ÔI'd like to consider this for our journalÕ. ÊSo that's how it percolates down. And it's very effective. ÊIf you think about the amount of time we have to put in, it would take a lot of time to find each of those departments, and get them a copy of the book. Whereas you can hit the big ones, and hope it cascades. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE INFLUENCE IS ON YOU AS A PUBLISHER, AND THE WIDER COMICS COMMUNITY, OF INITIATIVES SUCH AS THE OBSERVER/JONATHAN CAPE/COMICA GRAPHIC SHORT STORY PRIZE? 
For us as a publisher, the reason is to try to find British graphic novelists. The history of it has been brilliant, the artists have been brilliant. And several of them have gone on to make full-length works that have been the most outrageous successes, such as Stephen CollinsÕs The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil. I had seen his stuff when he did some work for Solipsistic Pop and told him if you work on something longer we want to see it, and in the meantime, think about entering our prize. And he did, and when he did, that meant I couldn't judge it, because I'd solicited the entry! ÊSo I wasn't allowed to judge that year. But anyway, he did win it. ÊAnd you know, for him, it wasn't just that we eventually made a book Ð which would have happened anyway, irrespective of the prize Ð it was The Guardian picking him up as their weekly cartoonist and things like that. ÊSo obviously, it helps us surface talent, it creates a spotlight for authors that are there or in the shortlist. ÊAnd we don't just publish the winners, some of the winners we don't publish. But then some years, there were five things that we end up pursuing. Then for the wider comics community, I suppose knowing that a graphic novel or a graphic short story, once a year, is going to be given essentially four pages in The Observer Ð that's good exposure. ÊIt commits The Guardian/Observer to coverage as well. 

It's very interesting how the level of submissions can fluctuate from year to year, both in terms of quality and quantity Ð you can have years that are, frankly, fairly bare in both terms. So there might be some perception in the community that this is only for people who have been published before, or are seriously committed. Whereas we want everyone that wants to do it, to enter. ÊAnd I think a lot of people that haven't made the shortlist before might stop entering, but persistence actually pays off. ÊYou could have been in a very strong year, and then of course you don't enter the next year, but you may have developed into twice the artist you were a year ago, and Êactually just have a stronger short story anyway. ÊBut I can't really speak otherwise, for how it affects, or how it is important to the community. ÊYou'd have to ask every artist, and every publisher. 

Comica been involved with the prize from the start. Paul Gravett is a lightning rod really. Just to backtrack: our list pretty much started when Raymond Briggs had done a kids' book that was kind of more for adults, with Ethel & Ernest, and then with, I think it was Ghost World next. So there was a real a space between those books. ÊAnd there weren't that many books on the list. ÊBut as our interest and passion for it developed, Paul was essentially galvanising us by introducing us to the world. His expertise was very important. So we always liked to have him and Comica nearby, Êthey're experts. ÊThat's the thing, we're not experts, we're enthusiasts, if that makes sense. The fact that prize is in The Guardian makes it very mainstream. What you need is the community, the people who are writing graphic novels, and are interested in graphic novels, actually submitting and entering. ÊAnd of course, that's where Comica comes in, and Paul's connections to the community, and to that world. To get the word out that this thing is happening. So The Guardian helps amplify the fact that, when something is won, or when the shortlist occurs, they help millions of people see it. ÊBut in order to actually get the material coming in, Comica and their contacts are essential. 

DOES THE FACT THAT MANY GRAPHIC WORKS ARE SUCH DESIRABLE OBJECTS PRESENT AN OBSTACLE FOR THEM BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY OR MAKE PEOPLE DOUBT THEIR FUNCTIONALITY AS AN ACADEMIC WORK? 
Yes, it may be, but it depends. We have a few things that are beautiful objects. ÊI mean, obviously they're all beautiful objects, but they're much more, as it were, art comics. ÊThe fact that they are a thing of beauty and have stories, that is what's most desirable about them. It's fine for readers to want that kind of thing, but it's a slightly different product. It's a different part of the graphic novel market. You're crossing over slightly into the art world, the creative world, where people want that beautiful thing. ÊI know thinking in terms of functionality, it's kind of more about narrative. And of course, it's down to the publisher to talk to the artist, to say, ÔWhat I react to and what I think our readers will react to in your book is the storyÕ. So what we need to do in the packaging of it, is we want a beautiful object, but we want a beautiful object that says, ÔLook, this has a story!Õ. ÊI think Nobrow, are absolutely fantastic, and with some of their publications you know there's not much story there, but it's all about the beauty of the artwork. ÊAnd they do say that with their front covers. ÊWhereas, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil, it is a beautiful thing, but its title and look tell you that itÕs the kind of book that's going to tell a story. ÊYou can make an obstacle by getting the publishing wrong, by not representing your book, and not communicating the essence of your book to the reader in the packaging. 

IS ACADEMIC USE PURSUED, AND IS IT LUCRATIVE FOR PUBLISHERS? Yes, Êit can be extremely lucrative, especially on backlists. For instance, say you've got the rights to OrwellÕs 1984, then that's brilliant. Not just because it's one of the best books ever, but it'll be on every English course. Or when Scott Fitzgerald was still in copyright, you know that's going to be on every American literature course, but it'll also be on so many other courses, everywhere. You just know every September, every academic year, these types of book are just going to kick on. The author Tom McCarthy, who is amazing, he's now only four novels in, but his work is exquisite. ÊBut it has a real intellectual and philosophical interest, so there are symposia on his work; universities have started to put him on the syllabus, mainly in the USA. But the point is, he's going to start listing in a different way, because of it. ÊNow what will happen to graphic novels, when they start to get taken up more widely on academic courses, is really interesting. ÊLike, say it's £20 for a graphic novel Ð are people going to be buying that, or is there going to be some deal to allow a digital download for students at a certain price? But I honestly don't know, I'm not aware of the academic world any more. I know when I was at uni, about 10 years ago, I did an English degree, and you had to spend a lot of money on books. But the books that you went out and bought weren't necessarily the novels that you were reading; it was more things like ÊThe Oxford Companion To English Literature, or the books that contained all the extracts that would be on the course. ÊSo that could be what happens to graphic novels, if their price point is deemed too high for students to be investing in. 

HOW WILL ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING FEATURE FOR YOUR TITLES IN THE FUTURE? 
Well, it does already. ÊI mean, obviously on the prose side, that's well covered, and spoken about everywhere else. ÊWe convert everything we can on the graphic side Ð well, I don't know about Building Stories. ÊSo every book of ours is available digitally, using a fixed format Ð which means on an iPad, you'd have to pinch zoom. They tend to not work on the Kindle, Êbut they work on the Kindle Fire. ÊBut we supply all of those files, and convert all of the files in house. ÊAnd I that, you know, the sales split on a prose novel is about 25 per cent digital, on average Ð thatÕs for a literary prose novel. Whereas, it's between one and three per cent on graphic stuff Ð but there is a sale. ÊAnd what's interesting is how the creators behave, and how their markets behave. ÊSo many of the graphic novelists want to remain physical, they don't like the idea of digital. Maybe because they were raised in comic shops, and it's about the physical beauty of the thing, and it's about working with paper, and the actual feeling of ink on a page Ð that's essential to them. So I think they quite often seem to be working in forms that are very hard to digitise. ÊAnd I think their readership respond to that; I think that's what their readership want. ÊBut there will be artists who are digitally native, and want to create digitally, and the physical book is an afterthought. And it maybe that they correspond to an audience who want to consume these things digitally, and that's fine, as long as it's great work, it affects people, and will find a readership.
ENDS