Article: Presidental Candidates get the Comic Book Treatment
by: David Twiddy, Associated Press
Source: The Morning Call

IDW is one sharp publisher. They’ve carved a nice niche out in the comic book industry by producing primarily licensed books based on television shows, video games, and films. They picked up the Transformers license when Dreamwave dropped it a few years back. They even publshed an original title, 30 Days of Night, that was made into a major motion picture. IDW is also press savvy, and they know how to get their news out into the mainstream media.

So I wasn’t really surprised when I read an article today saying that IDW is producing two biopic comics about the candidates in the upcoming US presidential elections — John McCain and Barack Obama.

What did surprise me is that the article didn’t resort to using words like “bang!” or “pow!” (which always seems to happen in any article about comics), and it didn’t make any tired analogies to Batman or Superman (though they did get a mention in the lead, to the article’s detriment). It also didn’t really talk too much about the comic book; instead, it focused on the fact that these biopics will also be made available through cell phones.

“Cell phones?” you might be saying with a shrug. And the answer is yes — apparently, cell phone comics are a growing market for comics syndication services, and while I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read a comic book on such a tiny screen, I thought it might be an interesting idea for would-be-publishers to consider… Continue Reading »

Article: As Environmentalism Grows, Online Publishers Go Green
By: Bob Tedeschi
Source: The New York Times

“Going green” is one of the latest trends in the business world — in the face of a recession, focusing on reusing and recycling just sounds like the right thing to do to most people, and many businesses are taking advantage of the trend to push new products and services. This isn’t the first time this has happened, or the last — environmentalism seems to be a cyclical trend that shows up every 10 years or so, generally around the time that the economy is struggling.

Full disclosure time: I am for conservation and for cutting down on trash and waste. I am for protecting natural preserves, and I love the idea of clean and efficient energy, like hydrogen fuel cell batteries. I believe climate change is a reality, but I’m not convinced that it’s the fault of industry, and I think that nuclear power is a safe and smart alternative to coal power. I think about the environment in my daily routine, and I drive a small, used, fuel-efficient car and try to re-use plastic food containers when possible.

With that said, I’m not an environmentalist, because I think for myself, and I understand that most of what environmentalists preach is feel-good nonsense. (Here’s a great article from Wired that explains what I mean here, point by point.) That’s why I’m going to present today’s article not as something I feel is smart and insightful, but rather something I feel is manipulative marketing. Continue Reading »

Today’s Article: Selling Books to the Christian Market
By: Bette Filley
Via: Independent Book Publishers Association

Believe it or not, my entire journey into the world of comic books and publishing began with a Christian comics-themed message board on Yahoo! Groups. There was a time when I was very serious about Christianity, and I wanted to produce books for that market. But as I grew a bit older and wiser, I realized three things:

First, the more I studied the history of Christianity and the religions that influenced it, the less I identified myself with the modern form of the religion. Having this sort of “doctrinal disagreement” would make it difficult for me to get books published in this market if I chose to stick to my principles.

Second, I realized that the Christian bookstore market wasn’t really about books anymore; it was about selling a wide array of Christian-themed gift items and inspirational CDs, with a few books on the side. The competition in the market was getting fierce, too, since chains like Family Christian Stores were using their distribution power to put mom and pop stores out of business.

Third, I realized that producing books for this market was the equivalalent of “preaching to the choir” — and the preaching that people wanted to hear wasn’t even all that good. For example, a popular book in Christian bookstores is Lee Stroebel’s The Case For Christ. The book is marketed as a sincere, skeptical analysis of Christianity that offers proof that the religion is true. But the problem with the book is that Stroebel only interviews people who are sympathetic to his viewpoints, and when he asks the “tough questions,” he doesn’t press his points or question the answers. Any answer he receives is good enough. Sadly, a lot of Christian books I’ve read fall in that category, and I couldn’t see myself, particularly with my unique perspective on some Christian doctrines, writing for that audience. I’ve always believed that it’s better to be a light in the dark than to see who can shine the brightest.

So that’s why I found this article very interesting — a piece about how publishers can sell books to the Christian market. Not surprisingly, the author recommends avoiding the Christian book market and looking for opportunities elsewhere. But I was surprised to see some of the places she recommended taking these books…

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Copyright law is complicated, and it’s really showing its signs of age now that the Internet is in common use. I have a copyright notice at the bottom of every page of this site that states that this material is covered by US copyright law, and that it may not be reproduced for any reason without my consent. I do that to protect the integrity of my work — I’ve spent hours preparing some of these articles, and I don’t want an unscrupulous person to be able to reprint my work, not attribute it to me, and then get away with it when I find out about it. Copyright law says that as the author of the work, I automatically have the right to control how it’s used. And that’s great.

I really don’t mind if my work is reprinted or used for noncommercial purposes. Every now and then, I hear from someone who’s in a writing group or who is teaching a workshop who wants to hand out my Comic Book Writer’s Guide. I need to revise it, but hey, they’re welcome to it, as long as they’re not charging anyone for it. My only stipulation is that they credit me and reference the URL of my website.

But there are loopholes in this system that allow people to use my work for commercial gain, whether I like it or not. For example, if someone wants to parody a piece of writing I’ve published, they are legally entitled to do so… so long as it’s not longer than the original piece and contains enough original writing that it’s clearly a different piece of work. If someone wants to write a biography about me and use large chunks of text from individual articles on this website, they’re permitted to do so, without my consent, under the “fair use” guidelines. (Here’s a detailed explanation of what those provide.) And if someone wants to take my work, change just enough of it that it’s original, and republish it without attributing me, they’ll probably be able to get away with it under the law, because I have to prove that they actually plagiarized my work in order to stop them from using it. That’s a problem.

And there are flaws, too. Most people who want to read my work will read my website. But what if someone wants to make a copy of an article I wrote and file it away for reference? If my copyright language does not state that they’re allowed to do so, and carries that ominous line, “All Rights Reserved,” they’re violating my copyright. The same is true if someone emails an article to a friend, or copies the article onto their own website in “mirror” fashion, with full attribution, just because they’re concerned that my site might go down and the article might be lost. Even something as benign and useful as the Wayback Machine, which archives the entire Internet, regularly violates the copyright of millions of authors without their knowledge.

To face some of the challenges presented by the information age, some folks got together about six years ago to create a “Creative Commons License” (or CCL) system that would allow writers, musicians, graphic artists, photographers, software developers, and other creative people to distribute rights from their copyrights to individual users through a free licensing system. On the surface, it seems like a really good thing for anyone to use, but it does have its own set of problems. The question I’m going to address today is whether or not a publisher should consider using a CCL for his or her printed work. The answer might surprise you.

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Article: Friction Over Fan Fiction: Is This Burgeoning Art Form Legal?
by Grace Westcott
Source: Literary Review of Canada Online

Unlike a lot of folks in the comic book industry, I’ve never been a big fan of fan fiction — writings by fans that take place in an established universe with established characters. But I’m not necessarily sympathetic to the views of fantasy and sci-fi authors who have railed against fanfiction (such as this passionate essay from Raymond E. Feist). No, my beef with fanfiction is that it’s creatively lazy; it involves taking someone else’s characters and ideas and using them to create a derivative work. It’s hard to grow as a writer when you’re simply imitating the work of others, and it’s even harder to grow when you refuse to create ideas of your own. It’s one thing for children to include Spongebob Squarepants and Pikachu in stories they write, because they’re still learning the basic skills needed to create a story. It’s quite another thing for an adult to write a slash fic featuring Sirius Black and Severus Snape engaging in a bondage-themed tryst.

I suppose that one might argue that the folks currently writing Batman, Superman and Spider-Man are writing professional fanfiction, and that by my reckoning, they’re being creatively lazy too. I suppose that case could be made, but the difference is that those folks are getting paid for their work, by the people who currently own the copyright. The work has to be of a certain quality, and one it’s published, it becomes a part of the “canon” of the story. As such, I don’t have a problem with professionals picking up gigs to write established characters. I would, however, have a problem with those same professionals spending their free time writing fanfics on the side.

But lest you think I’m anti-fanfic, let me assure you that I do think that there’s a time and a place for them… and that publishers are unwise to ban them entirely. With that said, I think it’d be wise to first look at the legality of fanfics, and then to talk about how a publisher can use them as a marketing opportunity…

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Today’s Article: Neil Gaiman: Giving Away Ebooks Sold My Print Books
By: Cory Doctorow
Source: BoingBoing

I saw this piece on BoingBoing, but go ahead and check out Neil Gaiman’s blog as well to read more about this story. Basically, Neil Gaiman’s publisher, Harper Collins, decided to give away free ebook editions of American Gods via software called “Browse Inside”. The result: sales of the novel surged in independent booksellers, and probably in big chain stores as well (though it was apparently difficult to deduce this since a product promotion was running at the same time). And as soon as the free ebook promotion ended, sales dropped.

So the publisher was giving away free ebooks, and customers were going out and buying the print edition. On the surface, that doesn’t make any sense at all. What the heck was going on?

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Book: Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping
by: Paco Underhill
Website: http://www.envirosell.com/

My recent article on consumer behavior has led me to start reading through some books on the subject. And while this might not seem to be an extremely important topic for a small publisher to consider, I’d suggest that understanding the way consumers examine products is an important consideration when a publisher is trying to determine how best to package a product or how much support to give to retailers.

Paco Underhill is a peculiar sort of marketing researcher — instead of gathering data from polls, he goes out into retail stores, installs hidden cameras, and has members of his field team tail customers and take detailed notes about the manner in which those customers shop. Over the last few decades, he’s developed a system that he calls the “science of shopping.” Personally, I’m not certain that his methods are actually scientific; observation techniques can contribute to science, but many of the recommendations Underhill makes to his clients in the book are based on his desire to improve outcomes rather than his desire to discover if those outcomes are truly effective.

But the book raises some interesting points, and I won’t discount what Underhill suggests merely because his techniques aren’t scientifically sound. Much of what he relays is anecdotal, explaining the layout of a store and the challenges it faced. A mall-based drugstore, for example, had its sodas located in coolers in the back of the store, causing teenaged mall employees to rush through the store during their breaks and tear down a central aisle where older shoppers would often stand and examine pain relievers. Though the product was convenient and visible, the constant flow of fast-moving teens made the older shoppers uncomfortable, and resulted in low sales for these pain relievers. Once the pain relievers were moved elsewhere, they attracted fewer customers, but saw greater sales since the customers were more free to take their time selecting and comparing products.

Underhill’s book is full of this sort of story, and it’s easy to see that he has developed an intuition for understanding consumer buying patterns. One of the things I’ve taken away from reading the book is that the approach many consumers take towards buying goes against the practices some publishers like to follow. And that’s what I’d like to discuss.

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It might surprise you to know that from the ages of 8-12, most kids prefer photographs to comics, live-action television to cartoons, and non-fiction books to fiction books.

It surprised me when I first learned about it during my research for Army Ant Publishing. And I found out about it in the worst possible way, too — I had already come up with the idea of starting a comic book company for kids, and I wanted to make my first story a cartoonish adventure series featuring my dog, Ramses, a spunky little pup who would be smarter than his owners, but always thwarted by his love for peanut butter.

But unlike a lot of people who want to start companies, I wasn’t content to develop a product and then test it with children. So, I started researching what children were into, and when I visited my mother’s second grade class for a monthly young author’s writing workshop I was teaching, I would ask kids what they were into.

I got the responses I expected, of course — the kids loved Spider-Man, and Pokemon, and Spongebob, and all of the things that marketers work so hard to get in front of them. A lot of them were obsessed with video games, and many of the girls were into Hannah Montana and shopping at Club Libby Lu. But what surprised me was that many of the children were also interested in animals and nature. They enjoyed nonfiction books, and when I looked at the books they enjoyed reading, I noticed that they enjoyed the books with realistic artwork over those with cartoonish artwork.

This was very interesting to me, especially once I started seeing articles such as this piece from Newsweek, which talks about a publisher that gave the “Little House on the Prairie” books a makeover to suit the tastes of modern children. The publisher decided to replace the classic Garth Williams illustrations on the cover with more photorealistic covers that conveyed a sense of adventure. Other publishers of literary children’s books followed suit. The article even quotes two children who approve of the change:

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Today’s article: The Changing Face of the U.S. Consumer
by Peter Francese
Source: Advertising Age.com

The other day, I posted up an article about rethinking WHY consumers buy. Today, I want to offer an article that talks about who these consumers are.

One of my frustrations in dealing with many small publishers is that they create products without deciding whom they’re trying to develop them for. Often when I’ve talked to people trying to pitch comics and I ask them, “who’s your target audience for this?”, they have a vague idea at best about who they expect to pick up their book every month.

As I’ve said many times on this site, one of the most important aspects of developing a product is developing your marketing. And in order to do that, you’ll need to develop an STP plan (segmenting, targeting and positioning). And in order to do THAT, you’ll need to understand the base of consumers available.

But before you get started, you need to realize something rather important: that demographic of 16-24 that most US comic book creators want to attract? They’re actually a pretty small market right now compared to the rest of the US population. The two biggest consumer markets right now are ages 35-44 and 45-54; they account for 49% of consumer spending in the US. And over the next ten years, these groups are going to shrink as these consumers enter the 55+ demographic… and shift from a consumer mentality to a service mentality.

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This summer, I’m finishing my undergraduate degree in Business Administration (with an emphasis on Marketing) and preparing myself for graduate school, where I’ll be working towards my Master in Marketing Research (MMR) degree. I actually only needed to take three classes this summer to get enough credits to move on, but I decided to add a fourth, “Consumer Behavior,” because I thought it would be an important class to take.Sadly, the class text doesn’t have a lot of “meat” to it, and though it includes some models for consumer decision-making, they’re extremely abstract and don’t seem to reflect reality very well. At first, I thought that the problem was that I didn’t understand the subject. But coincidentally, while I’ve been taking this class, I’ve been reading a book called Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein. While my consumer behavior text focuses on how consumers select goods and make purchases, this book focuses on the decision-making process in general, attempting to build a model for how decisions are made (primarily under pressure) and the steps that people take to evaluate alternatives.

What’s interesting is that the two books are entirely at odds with one another. And what’s even worse is that Sources of Power seems to be much closer to the truth. I guess I could have saved myself some time and money by reading it before I enrolled in my Consumer Behavior class. But actually, it’s valuable to know the “textbook” theories of consumer behavior… because I’ll know what to expect my competitors to do down the road.
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