comic book authors will no longer sketch for free

The dedications they sketch at festivals take them hours. Happy news: event organizers are perpetuating their remuneration, which has been on trial for three years. Enough to also perpetuate their life as an artist?

C‘is approved, comic book authors will continue to be paid for the dedications they produce during festivals. The measure had been under experimentation since 2022. Based on the principle that their (long) hours spent behind a table, drawing on their readers' albums, should not be voluntary, the Sofia (French Society of the Interests of Authors of written), the National Book Center, the BD group of the National Publishing Union and the Ministry of Culture have agreed on a package set at 255 euros gross per day (for 2025), indicates Weekly Booksthe magazine for publishing professionals.

The device, valid “one year with tacit renewal”, specifies to the periodical Geoffroy Pelletier, director of Sofia, concerns around twenty voluntary festivals, including those of Angoulême, Bastia or Aix-en-Provence. “The number of authors concerned has only increased over the years. More than two thousand have been invited to at least one of the comic festivals in 2022 or 2023. The dedication has become, according to him, a “creation of work paid for in copyright”.

This sustainability is good news but does not mask the precariousness of authors, in a sector in overproduction. In 2020, the Racine report recommended a list of measures to remedy their worrying economic situation, but which were not implemented. Just a year ago, artist-authors (a category bringing together writers, comic book authors, screenwriters, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators) mobilized to push the European Union to regulate their working conditions more precisely. Their request was unsuccessful, and the status of the artists remains as nebulous as it is fragile.