Every day your local paper delivers to you the work many cartoonists. If you’re thinking of trying to become the next Scott Adams or Jim Davis, what exactly can you expect? There are two books that do a great job of explaining how syndication works: Your Career in The Comics, and Successful Syndication: A Guide for Writers and Cartoonists.

The first, and my favorite is Your Career in The Comics. The author, Lee Nordling, interviewed many people from the industry. Not only cartoonists, but also people that work in the syndicates that distribute comics, newspaper editors and even agents. The book has is broken down in to three main areas: “The Players”, “The Process” and “The Product”. Just about everything is covered, from the submission process, to how comics are actually sold, what contracts are like, and a lot more.

How each person in the process views themselves, and each other are pretty interesting. For example, agents consider themselves pretty important, while the cartoonists see them as cutting into the bottom line (and most recommend NOT to use an agent, since you don’t really need them).

I was pretty surprised about a couple of things. First, to see how little newspapers pay for comics each week ($7-$15), and that the weekly rate is generally the rate for the Sunday comic alone. (Which may explain why Opus only runs on Sundays). I was also surprised to find out that when a syndicate says that a comic is carried in “500 papers”, they count the dailies and the Sunday comic seperately. So, if you read Peanuts in your paper Monday-Saturday, and on Sunday, that counts as two newspapers.

Your Career in The Comics is well worth getting if you’re interested in becoming syndicated, or if you have an interest in the comics business itself.

Successful Syndication: A Guide for Writers and Cartoonists deals much more with the syndication process itself. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it has a very detailed explanation of a sample syndication contract in one of the appendices. It covers the things in the contract that the syndicate would be likely to be flexible about, and what they probably wouldn’t budge on. It also gave tips on how to make some very vague clauses in the contract become more percise and helpful to the cartoonist.

Both books are well worth reading.