Today’s article: Publish And / Or Perish
by: Brian Hibbs
via: CBR’s Tilting At Windmills column
I read Brian Hibbs’s column fairly regularly; it’s a good resource if you’d like to know more about the innerworkings of the comic book direct market. This recent column talks about TOKYOPOP’s decline as of late. TOKYOPOP has been the darling of the manga category for a decade now, but suddenly, the company is slashing production and letting work-for-hire folks go. What gave TOKYOPOP its competitive advantage was its ability to produce books that required very little work; since the company simply localized Japanese comics for the American market, all it had to do was hire some translators and re-letter its books. TOKYOPOP did release some original material as well (including the poorly done World of WarCraft books), but the company has had most of its success rooted in localizing manga.
Hibbs discusses the fact that the bookstore market itself is nearing saturation for manga and comics (which I would say is probably true) and that the days of growth are over. TOKYOPOP is feeling the sting the most because it’s spent so much time courting the bookstore industry and trying to get preferential treatment. But since TOKYOPOP has focused on the major stores (Borders, B&N, BAM!, Amazon), if those stores face problems, it does too.
Hibbs then goes on to outline a formula for success in the comic book “direct market”:
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Today’s article: Comicscape: 5 Successes In Mainstream Comics
by: Kurt Amacker
via: Mania.com
A little while back, I posted a commentary on an article about the 5 things wrong with today’s comic book industry. That article promised a followup about 5 things the industry was doing right, so I thought it’d be only fair to go through them.
This article is not nearly as insightful as the previous one, so let me sum up the points with some quick paraphrasing.
1. Marvel and DC are expanding genres while they continue to produce superhero books.
2. Marvel and DC have much better writers than they used to.
3. Comics and graphic novels are generally more available than they used to be.
4. Comic book companies are creating more mature comics now that they’re basically ignoring the comics code.
5. Comics are more legitimate than they used to be, and are showing up in mainstream media a lot more than they used to.
My response to these points? Wrong, somewhat, wrong, you missed something, and definitely wrong. But let me explain why…
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Today’s article: Comicscape: 5 Problems With American Comics
by: Kurt Amacker
via: Mania.com
I just noticed this well-written little article today, and I think it does a great job of summarizing the problems that today’s comic book industry is facing. And though I’m going to touch on the author’s views here, I’ll be adding a full original article of my own to approach the problem from a business perspective.
The article lists five reasons why the American comic book industry is in trouble. To be fair, the article should be titled “5 Things Wrong With Marvel and DC,” but since they control 75-80% of the market in any given month, they are representative of the entire industry. The author’s five points are thus:
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Today’s Article: “The Rep Route to Nontraditional Sales”
by Linda Carlson
via Publisher’s Marketing Association
As I said in Sunday’s article, one of the smartest things you can do as a small publisher is to look for a variety of channels in which to sell your product. In the article, I recommended finding four phases for your initial rollout, and then searching for a fifth, sixth, seventh, and so forth. But chances are good you felt daunted by the task, especially since the least obvious channels, such as independent bookstores, gift shops, organizations and book clubs, require the most work. But what I didn’t focus upon was the availability of specialized sales reps who will sell your books to these channels for nothing more than a commission. And today’s article is full of tips on how to work with a rep to reach those extra channels.
The article begins with a often-asked question, along with a practical answer:
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Today’s Article: “The New-and Disimproved-Meaning of ‘Self-Publishing’”
by Norma Lehmeier Hartie
via Publisher’s Marketing Association
I’ve railed before about how the word “marketing” has been misappropriated by pyramid schemes and sales scams to give my profession a bad name. It drives me crazy, especially when I’m searching the want ads. But something similar has been going on in the publishing world over the last few years — subsidy publishers, also known as vanity publishers, have appropriated the term “self-publisher” and used it to confuse the masses. See, there’s a difference between being a publisher (which I defined here as being the owner of a book’s ISBN and assuming all the risk of producing a book) and someone who’s paid someone else to publish a book. But subsidy publishers realize that there’s money to be made out there, and they want to take advantage of those who have dreamed about seeing their work in print, but who don’t have the patience, skill, or contacts to persuade a publishing company to publish their manuscript.
What’s happening now is that subsidy publishers are playing a PR game, convincing sources such as Publisher’s Weekly that they’re the future of small publishing. After all, the internet has made books of every sized print run available to the masses, and print on demand (POD) technology makes it easy to print books to order for customers. Where self-publishers used to be authors who published their own material, now the subsidy presses are claiming that it’s not necessary for an author to go through all that hassle. They, after all, are in the business of self-publishing, right?
Wrong. And today’s article discusses the fact that what seems like a subtle distinction is, in fact, incredibly bad news for traditional self-publishers.
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Today’s Article: “Five Pieces of the Press Release Puzzle”
by Marsha Friedman
via Publisher’s Marketing Association
I wrote an article the other day about how to write a press release, but I thought it’d be good to offer an outside article about the topic as well to give a slightly different perspective on writing this crucial piece of communication. Today’s resource presents a format that’s a little more author-centric than the format I detailed, and it’s good for a publisher who’s trying to publicize a name, not necessarily a product.
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Today’s Article: “Get Booksellers on Board with Publicity and Marketing Plans”
by Elisabeth Malzahn and Jen Wisnowski
via Publisher’s Marketing Association
From the day a book is signed by a major trade publisher, there is usually a 12-18 month gap between the sale of a manuscript and the release of the book. To anyone outside the industry, this probably seems like an incredibly long lead time. After all, editing should only take a week or two, and typesetting and cover design shouldn’t take much longer. Why would a publisher want to sit on something for a year longer than it needs to?
The answer is marketing. Publishers use that time to make sales and build awareness. Most trade publishers adopt a “push” strategy of marketing, focusing on building sales through their supply chain and then telling consumers that the product is something they need to buy. But trade publishers can also simultaneously use a “pull” strategy to get consumers interested in the product so they’ll place pre-orders, thus forcing retailers to order more. The timeline in today’s article is centered around the “pull” technique, but its aim is to also increase the effectiveness of the “push.”
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I just posted some listings for some work for my flagship book at Army Ant Publishing, and I was thrilled to receive dozens of replies within a short period of time. I was less thrilled when I read them. Despite the fact that I’d taken plenty of time to carefully craft a want ad and include details about what sorts of artists I needed and how they should apply, the majority of applicants didn’t even bother to read the ad — they just scrolled down to my email address and applied for the job. Did they really think I’d hire them?
So, to help those who are clueless, here are some guidelines for applying for a freelance art job. If you’re an artist looking for work, let me assure you — if you follow my guidelines and submit professional-level art, you’ll be much more effective at getting gigs than you would be otherwise. The only exception would be if you already know the publisher or you have a sure-thing referral. But then again, you probably knew that.
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Todd Allen is a pretty smart guy – he’s a media consultant and an adjunct professor who studies media at Columbia College Chicago. He’s also written a book on the business of webcomics called The Economics of Webcomics, 2nd Edition. I’ve read some of his work, and I respect what he has to say.
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Today’s resource is a bit of a departure, because instead of focusing on a single article, I’m going to offer you a link to a section on a blog run by Publisher’s Weekly called “The Beat.” It’s written by Heidi MacDonald, and it’s one of the sites that many independent creators frequent; sort of the Boing Boing for the comic book set.
The section is called “Retailing & Marketing,” and it’s loaded with useful articles about the comic book marketplace. If you’re even thinking about getting into the comic book industry, you need to read this section regularly.
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Resource of the Day | SeanJJordan | 
June 30, 2008 11:14 am | 
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