Contact publications. Select daily or weekly depending what your output is and be sure that you can produce consistently without any gaps in your service. If you're good you might get yourself some contracts for a regular service. Don't ask for too much, reckon on getting your income from syndicating to a spread of publications rather than getting a decent income from one.

That's the advice I gave Stepff (http://2bangkok.com/06-stephff-earlier.html) who went on from never having sold a cartoon to becoming someone with a worldwide reputation. It just depends on how good you are.

I don't think so. A cartoon is a feature, not something you would search for as a news image. Political cartoons have a very, very short life.

IT's the "political" aspect that limits it, I think. I can't imagine a political cartoon that becomes anything other than an amusing record of what people were thinking after a couple of days or weeks. There aren't many political situations that are static over time. A publication needs political material to feel current.

Contact publications. Select daily or weekly depending what your output is and be sure that you can produce consistently without any gaps in your service. If you're good you might get yourself some contracts for a regular service. Don't ask for too much, reckon on getting your income from syndicating to a spread of publications rather than getting a decent income from one.

That's the advice I gave Stepff (http://2bangkok.com/06-stephff-earlier.html) who went on from never having sold a cartoon to becoming someone with a worldwide reputation. It just depends on how good you are.

Stepff is excellent, i remember his cartoons when i was in Thailand

IT's the "political" aspect that limits it, I think. I can't imagine a political cartoon that becomes anything other than an amusing record of what people were thinking after a couple of days or weeks. There aren't many political situations that are static over time. A publication needs political material to feel current.

for instance Latuff cartoons about Palestine are somewhat "evergreen" .. as long as there's turmoil in middle east they'll not become obsolete.

on the other side, if you've drawn something about Gaddafi, Blair, Bush, Reagan, Aznar, Mitterrand, Berlusconi, now it's not worth much unless they pick it up for a book or something.

yes, in these cases you could try with Alamy or Getty (archive) but i've serious doubts you're make any sale.

drawing a cartoon every day taylored on the latest scandal or political turmoil and condensate in a single image is not easy, not at all, i think you need to be "cut" for this.

what i like to do is more complex stuff, full page cartoons filled with people and objects and a clear message.
it takes a lot more time to plan and to produce but i think they can be somewhat evergreen if generic enough.

on the other side i'm afraid it will be hard to sell, being it as stock or not.

I think you need to find a publication that suits your style and talk to them. Maybe a satirical magazine would be interested, though publications rarely devote that much space to a single cartoon. Study your market.

Stepff used to produce not just one but often two or three political cartoons a day that we could choose from. His style for the international media was different from the cartoons in that Thai link, it was much less complex. Sometimes you have to adapt to serve your market.

there are 2-3 stock agencies specialized in cartoons but they really look like fly by night operations.

at this point i give up, the only serious option seems to be a contract or a sporadic (and paid) collaborations with newspapers and magazines.

we'll see how it goes, first of all i need to make a new web site for cartoon portfolio.
will keep you updated in case somebody hires me !

http://www.cartoonstock.com/default.asp

i happen to see this site during google something else..

and the cartoon there is quite humourous.

Good link. Interesting the way that they calculate the price for a publication license.