A Slightly Different Approach

If you've been... well, anywhere outside your home lately, you may have noticed the Christmas decorations are going up and carols being piped through the loudspeakers. And it gets you thinking that maybe you should start shopping for Christmas presents.

The past few years, I've tried being a little less conspicuous with what I give people. My favorite attempt recently was two years ago when I bought a pair of cheap, used laptops and converted them into digital picture frames. A little more personal (since I had to do the conversion myself) and not all that expensive (since they were ten years old). This year, though, I'm aiming for something a little different.

I've been becoming more interested lately in supporting more independent creators. Within comics, at least, I think there are some folks telling some really great stories that maybe aren't everyone's cup of tea, but ones that I can appreciate. What's more, they're by-passing traditional publishing methods in favor of doing their own thing. Which means that when a person buys their wares, a larger chunk of the money goes directly to them. So I've helped with a few Kickstarter projects, and have been buying more self-published works. I think my appreciation of this has increased since I self-published my own book.

In any event, with the recent Occupy movement bringing more attention to just how wide the income gap in the U.S. has become, it seems to me that I should be all the more interested in sending my money to individuals and smaller companies instead of the giant corporations who already make millions of dollars. Those companies aren't going to miss my business, I'm sure, but I suspect that the folks who are selling one book here and there will be very appreciative of what I can send them. So this year, I'm going to try to get the majority of my Christmas presents from smaller, indie folks who are just out doing good stuff.

It's early in my shopping for this year, so I don't know how well I'll do overall, but I've gotten two gifts so far that required personal emails from the creators to make sure they were putting together exactly what I wanted. And I have to say that, in both cases, it was pretty cool to get that kind of personal attention on some unique gifts. (I'd tell you what they are, but the recipients might be reading this.) The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. I'll try to do a follow-up post at the end of December to let you all know how well it goes over.

And *ahem* besides my book, I have some cool comic-related shirts for sale too. In case, you know, you might be interested in attempting something similar this holiday season.

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