We recently connected with Sabrina Kaufmann and have shared our conversation below.

Sabrina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always loved to draw and write stories – my dream was to become a famous writer like JK Rowling who inspires and makes people travel to amazing worlds where anything is possible! While the format changed to manga after I discovered manga, my passion for sharing illustrated stories pursued me during my whole childhood, where I kept filling blank pages.

When I turned 14, my first two manuscripts were completely written and illustrated! I googled “How to publish a book” and was so eager that I used the first print-on-demand company I saw there. Fast-forward a week later and I had my very first books in my hands! I rushed to school and proudly showed them to my classmates and teachers, asking them if they would be interested in purchasing them. I was really astonished when my Latin teacher started advertising it to her peers in the teacher’s room, which resulted in sales I totally didn’t expect.

I was so happy to be supported by strangers, and proud of all these years of work which had led me to these two very first books. It doesn’t need to be perfect, because looking back, I honestly believe that people feel your passion, and you’ll learn along the way. These first imperfect books showed me what was possible, and fastforward 15 years later: creating to make people dream has become my full time job ♥

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hey there! I’m Sabrina Kaufmann, a mangaka and creative entrepreneur from Luxembourg.

Ever since I was a child, I loved drawing and writing stories and spent my whole childhood pursuing my dream of becoming an author. After selfpublishing my first books at 14, I kept creating during my whole time at high school. At 16, I started animating manga drawing lessons for children at a local art store. While I loved drawing and teaching, I wasn’t sure about whether it could be a “real” job because I knew noone else doing it, and I wasn’t sure about following people’s advice of: “become an art teacher, you’ll have a stable income and lots of vacations to draw your own stuff”.

After finishing high school, I was invited by chance to participate in our national book fair. I didn’t even know what a fair was and just took a few of my books and visit cards as I had been told – but it was a life changing opportunity! For the first time, I saw and talked to so many creatives and realized there were countless opportunities to make a living with art outside of traditional ways.

This first event allowed me to meet contacts who invited me to other conventions, where I met some private clients who needed illustration work, my first publisher, schools who inquired about manga lessons, … I finished a 2-years business degree, during which I also worked on evenings and week-ends on art-related work. As soon as I had finished school, I signed the papers to setup my freelance business, and haven’t looked back ever since!

While I was grateful to do what I want, a big shift happened when I had a massive burnout in 2020 which made me hate art – because I was scared that no matter how hard I worked, success wouldn’t last and I always needed to do more to survive. Talk about the “starving artist” mindset! It made me take on too much work, gigs that weren’t suited to my style, and I had no boundaries in place as I just wanted to please the clients and wrongly tied my value to my income. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve learnt more and more to trust myself and truly go for what feels important to ME – not because I “need to”, but because I love it and it feels right.

At the moment, I am working on my series “Illustrated Fairytales”, which retells classical fairy tales in manga version. I also keep traveling to conventions in Luxembourg, France and Belgium selling my girly stationery and fashion brand Himesama, and create “From Art to Business” videos on YouTube to support aspiring artists so they can see the possibilities and start monetizing their art.

If I needed to sum up what makes me get up every day, I’d say it’s creating so it can inspire and make people dream. By constantly showing up, pushing my own limits, and sharing everything I’m learning along the way, I sincerely hope to contribute to this world by inspiring other creatives so they can have the courage to believe in their own dreams and go for it.

To end on a beautiful quote by Marie Forleo:
“The world needs that special gift that only you have” – so, let’s go for it :-)

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think the most damaging belief I have grown up with was: “You can’t trust other artists because they’re all out to stab you in the back”. Unfortunately, this stemmed from various experiences ever since I started monetizing my work as a teenager, which involved artists who tried to win my students over, copycats, and the race of needing to be the first, the best, to do anything.

Over the years, I was lucky to meet other, more mature and fantastic creatives who slowly shifted my view. I remember the first time one of my mentors sent me one of his clients, as he couldn’t take on at the time and thought I was a good fit. I was extremely suspicious and thought: “What ulterior motives does he have, because he’s got nothing to win by sending his clients to the competition?”

I honestly owe lots to him and the association “D’Frënn vun der 9. Konscht”, an alliance of passionate comic artists in Luxembourg where we started out small and created several collective projects. As a team, we managed to do amazing projects such as our first collaborative project “Fortific(a)tions” for UNESCO in 2021, which recently led us to being invited to represent Luxembourg at the event SOBD Paris with the support of the Ministry of Culture and various other partner institutions.

Whereas I was scared to open up to other creatives, I realized this was wrong. Of course, you’ll always encounter “bad people” no matter the industry – but if you’re open, you’ll be able to meet so many people sharing similar journeys than you, with whom you can laugh, cry, vent, and share everything in all trust and respect. It took years for me to learn this lesson, but I’m so glad I finally did – and I hope you’ll find your tribe too, because it’s priceless!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Over all the years as a hobby and freelance artist, there’s one thing I can assure you: you’ll ALWAYS need to adjust things… and it’s gonna be okay :-)

In 2014, I seriously started out with conventions, manga drawing workshops and client commissions.
During covid lockdown, I pivoted to online courses and focused more on commercial commissions.
After my burnout, I abandoned client commissions and started getting tired of always teaching beginner classes, so I switched to YouTube to create art business related content.
In my second year on YouTube, I realized I was talking to the wrong audience and rebranded everything in French.
In 2023, I decided to abandon everything else to fully focus on my online shop, Patreon merch and conventions.
Right now, I’m creating my last manga and decreasing conventions, as the audience has changed and it’s become more risky financially to keep up with the travels, booth fees and stocks.

Honestly, you never know what will happen. One day, something works out, and the next day it won’t anymore. In my eyes, being a creative entrepreneur means being flexible. Sometimes you’ll be required to pivot because the market asks for it, and sometimes it’ll also be because you’ve outgrown yourself and realize you don’t want to keep doing what you’ve always done. In either cases – trust yourself to move forward.

I realize how scary the unknown is, because, for the fun fact, my 2023 year which was supposed to be my best year ever where I fully focused on cons and projects I loved, was my worst – conventions quality changed, revenues dropped, life costs increased, I messed up my accountancy, a 4K€ book order got soaked in the rain, you name it!

Although it was an extremely tough year, it taught me that no matter what happens, no matter how scary things are or how uncertain the future looks like – I had all the ressources inside to take on anything. The most important thing is as simple yet difficult, to just trust yourself. Learn to listen to your intuition because it is always right! It’ll help you make the right choices and no matter what happens and how often you’ll need to change things, you’ll manage. Yes, it’ll be a leap of faith, you can never know what the outcome is, but if you feel it’s right for your – then it is.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://himesama.fr
• Instagram: sabrinak.art
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/sabrinakaufmann

Image Credits

Sabrina Kaufmann