I’ve been a regular Internet user for over a decade now, though I had the fortune of using other online services like AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy and local BBS networks before that. In my senior year of high school, I took over a video game review website called eXscape and helped it to become a good niche PC gaming site when it was still possible to make money doing that. (Don’t look for the site now; it’s long gone, as are many of the other sites I worked with at the time!) During that two-year endeavor, I learned all sorts of things about content design: how readers process information, how other sites pick up news, how search engines pick up websites, and so forth. I also learned that knowing some basic HTML (and eventually, CSS) is vital, no matter how good your automated tools are…
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My previous post on the perils of advertising was lacking, it seems. After all, I only talked about expensive television and print advertising; I didn’t cover the area of advertising that is, presumably, working — web-based ads…
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I’m a marketing guy, but I’m also a creative guy, as anyone who’s had to sit and listen to one of my “no, really, this is my greatest idea ever!” outpourings can attest. I’m great at coming up with new ideas, but I also have a sensibility about whether those ideas are actually worth developing. It gives me a little bit of internal friction as the right side and the left side of my brain work things out, but I’m generally satisfied with the end result.
Unfortunately, a lot of creative people don’t have a good business sense, and a lot of business types don’t have a clue about creativity…
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In recent years, there have been several major shifts in the comic book as a product. Traditionally, comic books were produced inexpensively on newsprint with a limited color range. They were also supported by advertising. Since the 1990s, however, comic books have become increasingly more sophisticated, with high quality glossy pages, a broad range of colors, and eye-popping artwork that isn’t restricted to its panels. Many comics also run few, if any, ads, and instead rely on circulation sales to make them money…
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Read for some in-depth reading? I’ve spent all afternoon prepping this beauty, which will take you on a roundabout tour of how to market a comic book… and how not to. I’ve even got examples of companies who’ve failed, and an explanation as to why they failed.
Hey, don’t let this description hold you up…
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20 years ago, the recording industry operated under a fairly simple model: recording artists would sign up for an album and enjoy all of the benefits of working with a major label, and they would forfeit almost all of their profits to increase their exposure. The artists would then ride the wave of their newfound popularity by touring and make back the money they’d lost by selling out to the label. The label got rich. The artist got rich (if they didn’t suck, of course). Everybody won.
But as technology shifted, things got a little more complicated…
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If you’re like many comic book creators out there, you’ve got a great idea for a book, but no idea how to turn it into a comic book! Today, I’m going to tell you how to do it. But be prepared for hard work and financial setback — it’s not cheap or easy to put together a professional-quality comic book!
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When meeting new people, I don’t generally advertise the fact that I’ve worked in comics, because when I do, I’m often approach with the following request:
“I have an idea — could you help me turn it into a comic?”
I hate this question, and it’s not because I don’t like helping people…
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How does comic book publishing work? How are comics created? Does a publisher simply buy up ideas and produce them, or do publishers only work in-house? How do comic books reach the 2,000+ independent stores scattered around the world? And who prints these books?
If you’re never been through the process, some of these questions can be a bit daunting. After all, most people who get into comic book publishing have never published anything. I’m not going to get into a lot of technical details this time around; we’ll save those for another article. Instead, I’m going to focus on an overview of the process…
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Articles, Online Marketing | SeanJJordan | 
August 10, 2007 3:30 am | 
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