We are a group of approximately 50 artists and writers currently or formerly published by Silver Sprocket. We are stepping forward to address our concerns with the business practices of the company.
What is Silver Sprocket?
Silver Sprocket is a San Francisco based independent comics publisher owned by Avi Ehrlich. The publisher has been a home to independent and alternative comics that might not have found a place elsewhere, and given a platform to the work of many alternative voices in the comics industry.
Due to the work it publishes and its publicly stated values, Silver Sprocket is widely seen as a progressive and radical company that has carved out a unique space in comics publishing. As such, we feel it is our responsibility to hold them accountable when they fall short of these values and continue to push for meaningful change.
Our Statement
To preface, we want to acknowledge that Silver Sprocket has played an important role in many of our careers. It has uplifted countless talented creators who have trusted the publisher to champion its unique and diverse catalogue. We want to see Silver Sprocket continue and thrive as a publisher, and we want Silver Sprocket books to be successful. But we also want its artists and workers to be treated fairly and with respect.
Over the past year, we artists have come together to share information and collectively reach out to the publisher about several disconcerting patterns that arose in our conversations. Together, we have asked them to address issues we have experienced, like systemic accounting problems, important financial miscommunications, concerns about treatment of staff, and a general lack of professionalism. However, the collective and our concerns have been consistently dismissed, either as the voices of outliers or as a qualm over simple royalty percentages. As we have reached an impasse in negotiation with Silver Sprocket, we are now releasing this statement for the public.
Our goal in discussions was to be heard, and for relationships with Silver Sprocket to improve for everyone involved–current and future creators, as well as staff. However, if Silver Sprocket will not come forward to address systemic issues affecting its sustainability, and re-establish trust with its creators, we believe the public has a right to know what has been happening behind the scenes. We feel it is especially crucial that other artists should be aware of these issues before choosing to work with the publisher.
In early 2025, several artists noticed inconsistencies in the accounting and payment of royalties. Individual attempts to raise these issues with Avi were met with avoidance and defensiveness. We also witnessed a shocking string of layoffs and departures among staff that painted a very worrying picture. As we began to communicate with one another, it became increasingly clear to us that these issues were not isolated incidents, but rather systemic issues within the company. This led to the formation of an artist group chat and a series of “town hall” style meetings where artists raised concerns and discussed potential solutions. Concurrently, in July 2025, The Comics Journal published an article outlining the issues facing Silver Sprocket. The article details many of the specific issues concerning artists, as well as a timeline of events.
Our Communication With Silver Sprocket
In July of 2025, we wrote a letter to Silver Sprocket’s management detailing our concerns about the current state of the company, as well as a list of demands that we believed Silver Sprocket would have to meet to restore trust and operate in good faith. These included hiring a certified bookkeeper, increasing transparency in royalty reports, providing clear offboarding plans for artists, paying out royalties in a timely manner, and other items that we considered to be in line with the core responsibilities of any publisher. 44 artists signed this original letter.
In response to this letter, Avi asked us to form a small working group of artists to meet with them regularly to discuss future changes and “co-create solutions.” While we appreciated this offer, we also believed most of the changes we had asked for were baseline responsibilities of the publisher, and shouldn’t require additional labour from its artists to implement. At that time, many of us were owed overdue royalty statements and wanted to see some basic steps taken by the publisher before our group of artists put in any further effort organizing regular meetings with Avi. We laid out which of our demands we considered most straightforward and easily achievable by the publisher, and asked to see updates of meaningful progress being made on these points before we agreed to these meetings.
After we sent this response in August, we did not receive any further communication from Avi about our letter or its demands until February of 2026. Though we did eventually receive updated royalty statements, many of the changes only further obfuscated much of the accounting being done–with a change from more transparent and easily digestible spreadsheets, to exported PDFs with less overall information, and which are difficult to manually review and double check. We received no updates on any other listed demands, and communication became more and more sparse between Avi and individual artists. In the reply we eventually received, Avi ignored our previous request for updates on any meaningful change taking place at the publisher, and once again asked us to organize a meeting with them.
On April 16th, 2026, the Sprocket Artist Collective met with Avi and their new hires over Zoom to discuss the year-long silence and reiterate our demands. Over the several hour-long meeting, our grievances were met with more excuses and apologies, and another promise to meet our demands. However, as of the end of June, we have seen no progress besides a draft of a written public statement we found insufficient as an apology and does not address our major issues with Avi and Silver Sprocket. We believe Avi does not take enough accountability for the major role they play in our grievances as the Owner/Founder of the company. Because of this lack of progress, continued errors in accounting, and poor communication, we have decided to release this statement to hold Avi accountable.
Our Concerns
The Sprocket artists participating in the collective have reported many frustrations with Silver Sprocket’s calculation of royalties, the definition of expenses, the mishandling of payments, accounting, communication, and treatment of its staff.
1. Royalty Payments
In a 2025 explainer web-comic, Sprocket has defined itself as comic book publisher “giving artists an equitable cut of […] net revenue from sales of their work…” making the claim that net revenues are to be split with creators 50/50 after Sprocket makes back the costs of printing, fulfilling, shipping, and the processing of returns and relevant fees. These terms are generally stated in the contracts of several of our artists.
What was not stated in some of the contracts—according to the language stated in several of the contracts signed or deals agreed to prior to 2024—was the 50/50 net revenue split (then in the pre-2024 contracts defined as ‘profit split’) was beholden to an additional 50% wholesale percentage against the retail price of the artist’s books, resulting in a more accurate 75/25 split benefitting the Publisher.
While wholesaling books to resellers and distributors at reduced percentages of retail price is the business model of the publishing industry, it was not disclosed that Silver Sprocket the Publisher was wholesaling our books at 50% to the Silver Sprocket the Storefront, meaning the storefront takes an additional percentage of profit from all direct sales before the 50/50 split is applied. And while the 2025 web-comic explainer outlines this model as how Sprocket affords to pay the overhead of maintaining a storefront, artists were misinformed by the “50/50 profit share” language of early contracts.
The 75/25 split also extends to the following Sprocket sales avenues:
- Sales through the online store, despite not requiring the same overhead of a rented building.
- Sales of digital copies of e-books.
- Sales at conventions, which produces its own overhead costs not disclosed to the artists.
We acknowledge that running a publishing business and storefront comes with steep operating costs, but when the business model of the Publisher touts a 50/50 profit split, the artist is woefully denied a fair cut of the value they bring to the publisher. The feelings of unfairness are further incensed by the recent discovery of public business records that indicate SILVER SPROCKET STORE LLC was only formed in February 2025, where previous contracts signed or deals agreed to, and payments received, were with the publisher SILVER SPROCKET LLC. The lack of separation between storefront and publisher leads us to believe that our contracts entitled us to a more accurately equitable share of the profits from our books.
- 18 Sprocket Artists surveyed reported that they were unaware Silver Sprocket LLC and Silver Sprocket Store LLC were not distinct legal entities before signing/agreeing to publish with them.
2. Royalty Statements
In the same 2025 web-comic explainer, Sprocket outlined its process for how Sprocket reports its royalties at the close of every accounting period (closing quarterly), processing the data and delivering payments within 60 days.
Statements are commonly received late—and as a result, our payments are as well. The publisher will frequently specify promised dates for statements and payments, only to miss those dates by days, at its best, and weeks, at its worst. The inconsistency and the lack of satisfactory communication and forewarning leaves artists in the dark about their own finances, creating instability and precarity in the artists financial planning and their lives. In reported cases for some of our artists, payment amounts have been promised and then corrected due to miscalculation, further adding financial stress to our artists.
- 11 artists surveyed reported they have received more than one late payment during their working relationship with Sprocket.
3. Expenses
The initial expenses regarding the printing and freight of artists’ books are understood by the Sprocket artists as typically the first and main expense outlined in the royalty statements. Artists do not get paid royalties by Sprocket until revenue from book sales make back the expensed amount. According to Avi, it takes at least 18 months for a book to break even. Despite Sprocket claiming it does not charge “marketing fees” or deduct “Internal overhead for…editorial, marketing, or publicity”, various artists’ contracts still define that royalties are not paid until “reasonable expenses related to the production, marketing, distribution, and/or sub-licensing are covered.”
Our artists have shared individual accounts where unexpected expenses added to their statements have delayed or reduced potential royalty payments.
- In one instance, an artist was offered a $500 marketing bonus, only for the bonus to be charged as an expense against their royalties. Only until artist brought up their concern was the bonus no longer counted against royalties. There was no written acknowledgment from Sprocket regarding this correction.
- Another artist, whose initial book run sold out rapidly, was not expecting their potential royalties to be delayed further, because a second printing of their book by Sprocket added continued expenses onto the artists ledger.
- Another artist recounted how Sprocket had organized to fly the artist to an out-of-state event, initially offering to cover the airfare for free, then asking the artist if the airfare could instead be added as an expense. The artist fell ill and could not make the event, then was still billed the expense after Sprocket failed to refund the flight. The expense was later removed with some hesitance from the publisher.
Recent unexpected and expensive operating costs emerged from the shipping of all stock from a shuttered distributor warehouse in California to a new warehouse in Chicago. The expense was passed down to the artists, some shipments costing from $200 to even $1200 against their royalties. Sprocket has noted on these expenses that they are “tentatively planning” to cover half the expense as internal overhead, while we would argue these expenses should have been covered by the money already taken from the publisher’s cut of the books.
4. Bookkeeping and Accounting
Artists have expressed concerns that Sprocket is inconsistent with their methods of calculating and presenting sales data, resulting in incorrect documentation and sudden changes and corrections in the reported revenues of books—affecting the royalty payments made to artists.
According to an update email from Silver Sprocket back in April 2025, Avi shared that they have received a few requests for better accounting and reporting and that the new system would be integrated by May 1st. The updated reports were originally intended to be “easier to calculate with less opportunity for human error”, and despite Avi indicating that the reports were still a work in progress, we were still provided a statement with the generated report. This resulted in inaccurate information, further sowing confusion about the status of our books.
In our collective letter to Avi in July of 2025, we demanded that Avi begin integrating more transparency with the accounting of book sales, current and remaining inventory, and detailed accounting of expenses as they pertain to the “reasonable expenses” laid out in most of our contracts. We also demanded the hiring of a certified bookkeeper to the Sprocket staff so that the publisher could have a dedicated employee to handle the documentation of revenues, expenses, and reporting of our books. It is our belief that during the period of time Sprocket has delayed hiring a certified bookkeeper, the tasks of bookkeeping, accounting, and reporting has been handled by Avi, and Sprocket employees who are not certified bookkeepers.
- On July 23rd, 2025 Avi shared in a Sprocket Artist Newsletter that stated Sprocket was “looking for a part-time bookkeeper to help on the administrative side.”
- On October 2nd, 2025 during another Sprocket Artist Newsletter, Avi stated they have “interviewed and tried out half a dozen candidates for [a] part-time role here in the Bay Area without finding the ideal bookkeeper who is cut out for the very complex nuances of the job.”
- Avi stated they were confident that they would “have this nailed down by the end of [2025],” but made no updates. The Sprocket Artist Collective held a meeting with the Sprocket team on April 14, 2026, where the artists representatives presented the excessive delay in Sprocket’s claims to hire a certified bookkeeper. Avi requested even more time to interview a suitable candidate—on top of the year and few months already spent searching.
- On April 26, 2026, Sprocket sent the collective an email claiming they are “onboarding a new bookkeeper” and that “She is starting immediately”. Yet as recent as June, one of our artists was informed by the Sprocket Team that the new bookkeeper was only on a “trial period”, leading us to have little faith in the progress on hiring a dedicated bookkeeper.
Due to the far-long delayed hiring of a certified bookkeeper, many mistakes in the bookkeeping and accounting have led to reported issues of misreported income due to artists, and unknown available inventory.
- Avi acknowledged one of these errors in an email to artists from May 1, 2025, stating:
“While putting these reports together I found one issue that needed to be fixed the most often was that books given to artists as a royalty advance were not always also being reported as “net income” (royalty-bearing sales) [..] I’m owning this having been a mistake in data entry that I am responsible for and I’m sorry it took this long to find.”
- One artist reported that Sprocket’s accounting spreadsheets, even after being updated, were difficult to read, had missing information such as inventory numbers, and contained dataset-related mistakes regarding their book’s revenue numbers.
- Another artist reports the lack of detail in the reporting of their statement, unable to discern whether sales were made from their book or from ancillary products.
- Another artist reported issues with the reporting of inventory, stating that they were not informed when the printer delivered fewer books to Sprocket than were initially ordered—when asked about this, Avi could not provide a clear answer. The artist was unaware of the numbers of their print run until years later.
- Another artist requested and was denied separate accounting for new books in their comic series, only for payments to be delayed because of reprints and new issues.
- Multiple artists have reported multiple occasions where Sprocket has made major retractions in the reported accounting of book sales and reported revenue, due to mistakes in accounting, errors in their datasets, and in doing so, misleading artists of their payout—some artists reporting up to thousands of dollars in retracted accounting.
5. Communication
The members of the Sprocket Artist Collective have consistently expressed the difficulty we have communicating with the Publisher, specifically with direct communications to and from Avi. This has included neglect of concerns presented to Avi, consistent retractions from Avi on previously communicated information, and documented encounters and emails where Avi has spoken poorly of artists and adjacent members of the comics community.
- In a March 15, 2025 email sent to artists, Avi states that they have “learned that Silver Sprocket’s communications about artist finances have not been as clear as [Sprocket] intended”.
- In the same March email, Avi attempted an effort of good-faith toward the concerns brought up by artists, by making convention sales count as direct sales from the publisher rather than the reduced wholesale from the Sprocket shop, writing:
“We are changing our policy so that books sold at conventions by Silver Sprocket are treated as direct sales by the publisher (not the store), with 100% of the income being counted as income on the royalty ledgers, or 50% of the sale price towards royalties[…] This updated policy will be reflected in the updated May 1st statement, and if your book has been sold at conventions, will result in additional income on your ledger.”
In a following May 1st email, Avi retracted the new policy, writing:
“I need to apologize for what I wrote on March 15th about calculating convention sales as being 100% net revenue. After doing the math, it is clear that it will not be possible to do conventions without taking a cut from sales to cover the costs of doing conventions (or finding another way of covering the costs). The result of this change in policy would be that Sprocket could no longer attend conventions at all, which is not in the interest of the publisher or our artists. I apologize for making this statement without doing a deep enough dive into the math first.
It is not an excuse, but the reason this offer was made was because I panicked when I heard that people were upset, and reacted in fear and haste without completely understanding the situation.”
- In the same May 1st email, Avi unveiled the Silver Sprocket Royalty Explainer Comic, as a form of explaining wholesale business practices in the publishing industry, how Sprocket calculates its own operating costs and expenses from its sales channels, and how Sprocket determines their share of the revenue produced by our books. While a number of the reported pre-2025 contracts state that revenue is shared between Sprocket and its artists at a 50/50 split after expenses, none of the artists surveyed reported their contracts containing any information explaining that Sprocket’s business model takes an additional percentage of cuts from direct-sales, convention-sales, mail-order/online sales to cover its operating costs, making the deal more of a 25/75 split favoring the Publisher (as mentioned earlier in the statement).
The release of the Explainer Comic was not only received as condescending toward the Sprocket Artists, but the lack of communication around this business model comes much too late after these Artists have already signed contracts with the publisher.
A number of Sprocket artists have reported instances where Avi has lied about or spoken poorly and condescendingly of other artists.
- One documented email where Avi made the assumption one of our artists had “difficulty with written communication”.
- Another instance, a Sprocket artist received a phone call from Avi, where Avi attempted to disparage the legal council of another Sprocket artist.
- Another artist received an email from a comics event organizer, informing the artist that Avi implied that the artist was no longer appearing at the event, creating worry for the organizer who had commissioned the artist for work related to the event. The artist never indicated they were cancelling their participation.
- On March 19th, 2026, the Sprocket Artist Collective received the following email from an anonymized sender:
“Avi has been speaking badly of artists in your group to other small publisher owners that they know under the guise of ‘just venting’. It seems to boil down to them saying that you’re ‘mean’, whatever that means. I know this as I work with one of the publishers they’ve been chatting with and talk about it has made it into our regular meetings. Said publisher owner is generally looking for confirmation on Avi’s claims. I hope you can push them to a resolution soon, as you don’t deserve to be treated this way behind your backs.”
In the April 23rd and May 1st email from 2025, Avi made another good-faith effort by allowing artists to terminate their contracts, stating:
“I don’t want anyone to be trapped in a deal they don’t like. If this does not feel fair and we can’t work something out, I will be happy to sort out releasing you from your contract. No hard feelings. I wouldn’t feel good about working with someone who didn’t want to be here. I’ll keep celebrating your work, remain a fan, and will share our production files with whoever needs them..”
Despite positioning themselves as an artists-first publisher, many artists requesting to exit their contracts have waited months for a response from the publisher, or have been ignored altogether. In the case of one artist, it took an entire year with— many periods of radio-silence—before a termination was met.
The same delays, roughly six months, have been present between the periods where the Sprocket Artist Collective presented a set of clear demands to Avi and the period in which Avi expressed in a February 2026 email that they felt to be in a “stalemate” with the Artist Collective despite making no impactful progress to address our demands. Avi claimed that written communication is difficult for them despite operating through written communication for the majority of their career. It concerns us that Avi wishes to keep sensitive business communication to phone and video calls, as it makes it more difficult for the artists to keep track of what is said and promised—further resulting in inconsistent communication from Avi.
6. Treatment of Sprocket Staff
The Sprocket Artist Collective stands in solidarity with the past Sprocket Staff that we believe were unfairly let go and the staff that may have easily left due to the same frustration we shared in this statement.
Conclusion
We want to thank all of our readers and comics community members for their support. At this time, we are not asking for anyone to boycott Silver Sprocket, or commit any other action that could do further harm to the finances and careers of their artists. Instead, if you have a relationship with the publisher, consider letting them know that you support and are in solidarity with this collective of artists. We also ask that you support the affected artists by buying their work from them directly.
While we encourage voicing your concern with the publisher’s practices, we also ask that everyone is conscious of the fact that as far as we know, Silver Sprocket’s social media presence is handled by a newer employee who is not involved, or potentially even aware of anything voiced in this statement. We do not want this to in any way lead to any kind of direct online harassment.
Again, it is our hope that Silver Sprocket listens, learns from this, takes accountability for their actions, and makes concrete changes to re-establish trust with its artists and staff. To conclude, we ask that Silver Sprocket respond to this with a public statement of accountability and commitment to change, and then to follow that up with action that is communicated clearly to its artists.
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