Dartnell Corp. publishes newsletters for business and industry on subjects like Salesmanship, Teamwork, Office Management, Supervision and Customer Service. For many years, a cartoon was regularly included in about a dozen of the titles. In 1999, Dartnell was bought up by another company and the parent company discontinued the cartoon use. I recently checked on the internet and found that Dartnell is still active in newsletter publishing, and still cartoonless.
From 1986 to 1999 I sold about 125 cartoons to Dartnell — the subjects were right up my alley and I had many rejected cartoons from other publications to offer them. Unfortunately, the Dartnell editors were loathe to send tearsheets or clips of my published cartoons to me, no matter how often I asked for them. So I only have a small percentage of my Dartnell cartoons — the few that I managed to scrounge from them or from various other sources.
As I've said before, I love to see my cartoons in print, and the sad fact is that, overall, I've never seen about 20% of my published cartoons. These are the ones that appeared in publications not readily available to the general public, or that could not be found on magazine racks. Most editors routinely send complimentary copies, or tearsheets, to their contributors, but there are always the few others who can't or won't be bothered. Very inconsiderate, in my opinion.
3 Comments
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There are a lot of mags that don’t send tearsheets: WSJ, Brandweek, First for Women, Women’s World, Chronicle of Higher Education (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t), National Review. In past years, I’ve had to ask for tearsheets from Harvard Business Review — but they are usually very good about it, sending several copies.
I always thought that it was wrong to NOT send a tearsheet to a contributor, but seeing as most of the time I do not like to see my work in print (it’s the part of cartooning I like the least), I kinda don’t mind sometimes.
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I don’t have a gripe about any of the publications you mentioned, Mike, because all of them are so easily available either at a newsstand or at a library. But just try to get hold of a particular Dartnell or Bureau of Business Practice newsletter . . .
And I can’t believe that you don’t like to see your work in print — it’s so opposite of how I feel!
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I like the beginning bits of cartooning: the writing, the layout, the initial sketch — and after that it’s just so much tat. Hate redraws, hate seeing it in print, etc. Except the check part. Love getting a check. Check is good.