BUHAYIN ANG KOMIKS BUSINESS SEMINAR

In cooperation with the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Council (BSMED), the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Intellectual Property Office, the KOMIKS CONGRESS OF THE PHILIPPINES present in partnership with the "Ang Galing Mo, Pinoy! Go NEGOSYO" program…

BUHAYIN ANG KOMIKS BUSINESS SEMINAR!

Schedule of Publishing Entrepreneurship Briefing Sessions

PRELIMINARIES
The Comics Medium as an untapped Creative Industry (DTI and NCCA)
Overview of the History of Filipino Komiks as an Industry (NCCA)
Overview of the comics publishing industries of other countries (NCCA)
Present state of the Filipino Komiks publishing business (NCCA)
Why everybody wins through mutual Intellectual Property protection (IPO)
Beginning a free, diverse, and competitive local comics industry (NCCA)

FINANCING
How to secure Loans from Banks (BAP)
--Drafting the Business Plan
Managing your Finances (UP-ISSI)
No-nonsense Credit and Collection for SMEs (PCCI)
Cash Management for Small Business (SB Corp.)
Loans available to SMEs:
--SB Corporation
--Asiatrust Bank
--People’s Credit and Finance Corp. (PCFC)

Grants and Creative Cooperatives

MARKETING
Product Costing and Pricing (PTTC)
Introduction to affordable printing technologies for SMEs (PAP)
Briefing on the state of the Philippine Paper Industry (DTI, PICOP)
Terms of dealers and distributors of print publications (NAMACDAP)
Basic orientation on advertisers’ needs (Adboard)
Introduction to Basic Negotiation skills (RVNarvaez and Associates)

REGULATIONS/INCENTIVES
Terms of a Licensing Contract (LES)
Salient features of the Philippine copyright law (NL)
Trademark E-filing Demo (IPO)
Business Advisory Program (PBSP)
Briefing on Business Support Organization Programs and Services
How to Register a Trade Name and Trademark (IPO)
DTI Business Name Registration (DTI-NCR)
Dealing with BIR (E.G. Registration, Audit, etc.)
(Auditor ng Bayan accredited with DTI)

OTHERS
The Idiot’s Guide to Writing in TAGALOG for a Filipino mass audience
Globalized Filipino comics for DUMMIES
(Briefing Sessions are FREE)

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Now THAT’S how many people would like to start the ball rolling after all this komiks caravan, art exhibit, roving creativity seminar, message board "What I think of the Komiks Congress", brouhaha is over. It’s a draft seminar program prepared by yours truly on spec. In short, it isn’t real. Not yet, anyway.

The reason why no new innovative and prospective publishers are entering the business is because they don’t know how and where to start. The kind of information they need ISN’T THERE. All they’re getting are useless information from creative, bohemian-minded, "artists" and former komiks employees turned political wannabes, who don’t really know anything about the publishing business and the real world outside of their four paneled "creative" universe. All energies in this great enterprise that was started by Joe Lad Santos are now under threat of being expelled in the rear like some great, big awesome fart.

There is no honest and PROPER information campaign for investors that’s going on. If knowledge is power, then there is a terrible lack of it right now with a lot of potential publisher players left powerless; hands STILL groping in the dark. Its all tilted unfairly towards the production side: creative people concerned about how much their page rates are going to be, creative metaphysical airheads with time to spare engaged in empty, directionless, boneheaded discussions on the internet about how comics "as an artform" can be elevated to a business enterprise (wha?!), uninformed talks centered on the bare conjecture that ONLY one or two "rich" publishers will jumpstart the revival of the industry (sound of toilet flushing), how a moribund and lifeless comics industry can get a TAX EXEMPTION (?!), how the so-called globalized "indies" are trying to promote themselves as saviors of local comics by re-writing Filipino comics history in their favor (sound of TWO toilets flushing), and a bunch of other useless (sometimes COMICAL) parochial verbiage that exasperate you no end. Its like watching the needle on top of the elevator, forever stuck on the 2nd floor while you’re on the ground floor developing a stiff neck. Utang na loob. Please naman.

The awareness and opportunity are still limited to the same tired old faces. After all that great media hype last February down to the May elections, all you have to show for it is MANGO COMICS in cooperation with STERLING PAPER (of all people) doing thousands upon thousands of "Joe D’ Mango’s LOVE NOTES comics"? What’s next? "Mango HOROSCOPE"? More re-hashes of the antiseptically wholesome, dumbed-down, self-censored and safe komiks of the Roces Monopoly that had gone before? Carlo "The Massacre King" Caparas re-doing the monster croc of ‘Talim’? Say it isn’t so.

Where are the other publishers out there who are open-minded, innovative, not into this kind of fluff, and willing to sell their newsprint comics also at Php 10? Why isn’t something being done to empower these faceless potentials with the kind of business knowledge to enter the field? Afraid of the competition?

Love notes, indeed.