It’s bumpf your fellow blogger day here at Bookninja. Apparently. And Jessa Crispin has a kick-ass article on self-published comic books at The Book Standard.

Self-publishing. The term has always had a ring of desperation. With the number of books published annually now reaching the hundreds of thousands, and after seeing the quality of a great percentage of those multitudes, it becomes easy to dismiss anything rejected by all publishers as unworthy. An author going the self-publishing route, then, is just someone not coming to terms with reality.

Except for when it comes to comic books. Some of the strongest writers and illustrators of comics have decided to dip into self-publishing from time to time. What makes that medium so different that going the self-publishing route isn’t so cringe-inducing—but rather a means of heightening credibility?

I hate it when people (mostly nerds like me, in my experience) introduce questions with the word “Question!”, but we’re talking about comics, so allow me to push my glasses up and say, Question: when does success (ie, a build-up of readership) tip you from self-publishing into a businessperson who owns a publishing company that happens to publish a title you create?