Creating Comics, Part 5: Creativity vs. Marketability

You see this all the time in the film industry, when screenplay writers set up a really cool idea, only to have it mangled, rewritten and destroyed by studio hacks who are only interested in appealing to their target demographic. Conversely, there are many films that are creatively filmed, acted, and scripted that are incomprehensible to the audience because the director was trying to achieve some “œvision” that makes more sense in his or her head than it does in the final product.

This clash definitely exists in the comic book industry, and it’s actually part of the reason that comics are often bad. You see, the comic book industry is loaded with people who, to put it bluntly, have no idea what the heck they’re doing. I’m not just talking about writers, either; I’m talking about publishers, artists, marketing people, and pretty much everyone else involved in creating books. As I mentioned in my previous article, there are a startling number of publishers who have come and gone in just the five years that I’ve been involved in comics, and we’ll see plenty more in the next five years. The cost of entry is fairly low, and the status of being a “œcomic book creator” seems desirable to those who love the medium. Because of that, most of the people who are not working for the largest and most established publishers are inexperienced and idealistic.

One of the great things about comic books is the degree of creative control a creator can have. If something can be drawn, it can happen; a story about two teenagers going to school costs the same to produce as a story about two teenagers going to school on the moon while a giant space battle is going on overhead. Imagination knows few limits on the comic book page, which makes the medium appealing to people who like to tell fantastic stories. Creative people are attracted to comics because it’s a wonderful place to share their ideas in a show-and-tell style.

But creative people are not especially well-regarded for being fastidious researchers; rather, they’re known for getting so interested in what they’re doing that they shut out the rest of the world. It’s the analytical folks, who often fill the business roles, who have to bring those creative people down to Earth a bit and explain to them that no matter how much they enjoy their idea, at least 5,000 other people need to enjoy it too for the book to make any money. The creative people accuse the business people of not understanding the power of fresh ideas, and the business people say they don’t care what the story’s about as long as it makes money.

This is a dangerous dichotomy, since it can create two different cultures in the publishing process that simply do not get along. Suddenly, writers hate editors; artists hate production managers; the production team hates the marketing department. Everyone’s bickering over how a product should be developed, and everyone has contrary goals. Eventually, someone has to back down or nothing will get done. The proof is in the final product; copycat books come from the business-minded folks who want to ride on the success of others, while artistic books come from the creative folks who believe they’re not accountable if the book fails since that simply means that people “never understood their vision.”

This is a lousy way to produce anything, and it really robs everyone involved of any joy that might be derived from putting out a good book. Fortunately, there is a way around it, but it involves everyone — whether they’re business-minded, creative-minded, or a touch of both ““ understanding the problem and working together to solve it. They need to become a team, each playing an important role in the process of helping their product to succeed.

Here are a few points that can help to start the process along:

1) Marketing isn’t just for people with business degrees. As I’ve said before, marketing begins when a product begins. So once a product is decided upon, it’s not a bad idea to get everyone — business people, production people, and anyone in between — together to work up a plan for the project. This plan should cover the broadest aspects of production and help everyone to form a common vision for the product’s creation and launch.

For example, if Doggone Publishing decides it’s time to launch The Adventures of Oscar the Scottish Terrier, the creative team and the business team should schedule a meeting to discuss the product and to lay out the production plan. Some of these details will be decided before the meeting — especially those pertaining to the creative elements of the story — but it gives the entire team a chance to question any weak elements and to make suggestions about how the product can be improved. Oscar might be too fearsome in a book that’s clearly for children, or the artist might have drawn Oscar as a mid-sized Schnauzer instead of a small Scottish Terrier. The story might be patronizing in tone, or it might be too complex for children to understand. The creative team is not likely to arrive at these conclusions, since they are deeply involved in the project. But the business team, being outside the process of production, can provide valuable “first reaction” feedback.

On the other hand, the business team might have few creative ideas on how they can promote this book while it’s in production, and the creative team can explain the ideas behind the project and give the business team a deep understanding of the direction they’re hoping to take with Oscar’s adventures. Together, both groups can develop the initial announcement for the story, and discuss a rollout plan for the book’s launch. They can even work up some rough promotional artwork and listing copy.

With just one meeting, the entire team can outline the marketing mix (4 P’s) and have a clear idea of what they want to do with the finished product!

2) Everyone involved should test the product: This is a no-brainer, and yet it’s surprising how infrequently this happens. If Doggone Publishing puts together a book, everyone whose name appears in the book (production and corporate) should be required to read it and submit a summary of their thoughts. Not only will this help correct any glaring errors, such as typos, repeated speech bubbles, and so forth, but it will also ensure that a variety of perspectives are considered before publishing, which should help cut down on negative customer reactions.

What happens too frequently is that companies like Doggone are behind schedule and rush their product to the printer without having anyone aside from an editor look over the proofs. But editors are not an effective last line of defense, because generally, they’ve seen the product at every stage and they’re familiar enough with it that they miss little things, like artwork that might be more suggestive than it should be, or dialogue bubbles that are coming out of the mouths of the wrong characters. With ten pairs of eyes on a book, these sorts of problems would likely be caught before the book went to print.

3) A rough draft of anything is usually awful. Time is a publisher’s enemy, especially when that publisher is expected to have a product out on a monthly basis. But what that means is that the publisher needs to build a long lead time into its books instead of doing everything at the last minute. Nowhere is a publisher’s last-minute tendency more obvious than in a book that is obviously rushed.

If Doggone Publishing is preparing the proofs for The Adventures of Oscar and finds a continuity error in the story, it might be tempting to print the book anyhow and hope that readers won’t notice. But it’s better to make the proper changes and get it right the first time; readers can be unforgiving about errors, and they often have little love for publishers who don’t take the time to stamp them out. Yes, corrections are annoying (and potentially expensive), but if they’re needed, the publisher should make them, because it will improve the product.

Back when Dabel Brothers Productions was adapting Dragonlance: The Legend of Huma, the art team got in a time bind and the fourth issue had three different artists working on different sections of pages. The problem was that the artists didn’t work as a cohesive unit; it was obvious when they switched because the colors and character designs would shift. The book looked terrible, and no one had time to go back and reconcile the art, so it went to print looking like three different comics rolled into one. It was embarrassing for everyone else who’d worked hard to make the book a success!

4) Projections, budgets and sales numbers should be open to everyone working on a project. Often, creative teams are left out of the loop when it comes to knowing what their book is expected to do in terms of sales. They’re also often not told the budget because the publisher doesn’t want them to deduce what people are being paid for work. This is stupid. If everyone on the team is made aware of the projected goals and the actual sales, they’ll work that much harder to bridge the gap between the two. If everyone knows what the budget for the project is and where the break-even point is, they’ll be able to help cut costs and make sure the book doesn’t lose money because of excess.

And when I say budget, I don’t just mean the production budget — I mean the entire profit and loss (P&L) projection for each project, which includes production costs, promotional costs, overhead, and printing, among other things. And incidentally, one of the best ways to make sure that a project stays under budget and sells a bunch of copies is to offer some sort of reward, like a cut of the profits, to everyone involved. It doesn’t have to be a large cut, but a little bit of extra money always helps emphasize success.

5) Drastic creative decisions and drastic business decisions should be left to the group and not individuals. If Doggone Publishing decides it’s going to kill off Ramses, Oscar’s big brother, and the death will have serious repercussions where readers are concerned, the decision should not be made and executed by the creative team with no input from anyone else; everyone involved in the project should have some input. After all, Ramses might be more important to readers than the creators realize; he could, in fact, be the reason readers are picking up Oscar’s adventures. Killing him off could generate a negative backlash and seriously hurt the business.

On the other hand, if a comic book publisher decides it’s going to abruptly shift its format from monthly comics to straight graphic novels every three months, the creative team should have the chance to weigh in since they will probably feel that such a goal is unrealistic.
Too often, mandates come from one side or the other, and everyone is expected to fall in line. And it’s dumb, because all it does is create friction.

It can be tough to reconcile the differences between creative-minded and business-minded folks, and these ideas are just a starting point. But if they can learn to rely on each others’ strengths and perspectives, they can create a book that’s both unique and marketable.
-SJJ

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan