“Why should I buy the PS2?” he asked. “Isn’t the PS3 going to be out in a year or two?”

The statement was absolutely ludicrous — at the time, the Playstation 3 was a distant rumor, something we all assumed Sony would be releasing one day, but which no one knew anything about. I convinced the man that it would be years before he’d be worrying about a PS3 — and I was right! — but his attitude was a precursor of the way the videogame industry was shifting. The Nintendo DS, the Sony PSP, the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii and the Sony Playstation 3 all arrived on shelves between 2005 and 2006, and the video game industry shifted into its biggest “next-gen” generation yet. As I write this article, the Nintendo DS has become the bestselling handheld system of all time, and the Xbox 360 has dropped its price to $200. The Nintendo Wii is still difficult to obtain, and the Sony PS3 is trailing the industry with 17 million systems sold. All of this can only mean one thing — in another year or two, we’ll be hearing about the next round of next-gen video game hardware.

As it stands, home video game consoles are in their sixth or seventh generation (depending upon whom you ask). And while each console generation has offered bigger and better things than the last, every generation has followed a fairly predictable life cycle:

1) Enter the market at a high price and (generally) take advantage of holiday sales.
2) Drop prices to the range of the early majority within a year or two.
3) Within three or four years, drop prices to attract the latter majority.
4) As the next system is released, slash pricing once again to attract the laggards.

As it happens, the systems that have deviated from this cycle in some way — the Sega Dreamcast, the Sony PSP, the Nokia N-Gage, the Sony PS3 — have trailed the competition, while many of those that have followed it — the Sony Playstation and PS2, the Nintendo Wii, and the Nintendo DS — have been wildly successful. Of course, there is more to releasing a successful gaming console than simply adopting the right pricing scheme, but it’s interesting to note that there is a pattern behind the pricing for the industry’s biggest success stories.

The console generations have helped to give birth to another custom in the video game industry — the extreme focus on products that are on the horizon. I first observed this happening during the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, when magazines like Nintendo Power started reporting on the new Super Famicom game console and its flagship title, Super Mario World. Gamers developed a thirst for information about upcoming games, and the gaming mags of the day starting hyping things up more and more as the years went by. By the time the Super Nintendo console was losing its luster in the US, speculation about the next generation of games was already in full effect. Sony was able to ride the hype engine well and position its new Playstation console to become a major player. Nintendo’s super-hyped Ultra64 (later renamed the Nintendo 64), in the meantime, arrived two years after the Playstation, had barely any software available during its first year, and was unable to offer software as deep or engaging as the Playstation’s Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid or Tekken 3, all of which were smash-hit titles responsible for selling a lot of hardware.

As the gap between console generations widened from 4-5 years to 6-8 years, gaming media began to place a bigger emphasis on hyping software. At the same time, software grew exponentially more sophisticated, time consuming and expensive to develop. There was much more for game journalists to talk about, and magazines went from being largely devoted to strategy guides and reviews to being hype machines for upcoming software. Many magazines continue this pratice today, often devoting half of their pages to previews of software can be years away from release. And retailers like GameStop follow the magazines’ lead and focus a large portion of their business on selling new releases through pre-orders. Gamers are only too happy to commit to buying games they’ve never played based solely on hype, and postpurchase dissonance is easily mitigated by the ability to trade games back in once they’re beaten.

“But Sean,” you may be thinking. “That’s all good and well, but how does this relate to publishing comic books?”

Well, oddly enough, as the video game industry has evolved and become more sophisticated, the comic book industry has gone through a few “generations” of its own. Most people know that comics went through what we call the “golden age” and “silver age.” In the 1980s, comics were largely based on a newstand periodical model. You could subscribe to comic books like any magazine, and you could buy comic books any place there was a magazine rack. Comic books were pretty low-tech at the time, with newsprint pages and limited color palettes. They were also often poorly written, and most didn’t have a lot of style when it came to art.

But that started to change in the 1990s, when Marvel and DC both began ramping things up. DC decided to go for media exposure with its “Death of Superman” series, a fairly high profile crossover event. Marvel, in the meantime, had a stable of top-notch artists who were developing the style of popular books like Spider-Man (Todd McFarlane), Wolverine (Marc Silvestri), X-Force (Rob Liefeld) and X-Men (Jim Lee). In 1992, seven artists left Marvel to form Image Comics, which helped to usher in the era of “creator-owned books” — comics developed, controlled, and owned by individual creators instead of publishers.

Much like the video game industry’s hardware generations, this shift brought about many enhancements to comics. A lot of them were simply flashy, like holo-foil gatefold variant covers and pack-in trading cards and posters. But at the same time, the artwork in comic books became much more sophisticated, particularly when it came to lettering and colors. Artwork played a much bigger role in storytelling, and artists were given the ability to draw their own custom-shaped panels and layouts — a big change from the rectangular panels of the old days. The paper used in the books themselves got glossier and heavier. Wizard magazine also jumped on the hype bandwagon, and was all too happy to talk up books coming out from superstar creators.

Unfortunately, the comic book industry imploded on itself in the latter half of the 1990s, spurring a need for reinvention. Independent publishers became much more viable, and licensed books centered around 1980s nostalgia became quite popular once the milenium shifted. At the same time, the graphic novel format began to gain traction in bookstores, and Japanese manga books, after flopping in comic book form, started to pick up steam in pocket-sized novel-length reprints.

At the same time, a different innovation was occurring at Marvel and DC as both scrambled to scoop up celebrity writers like Kevin Smith, J. Michael Stracynski and Joss Whedon to work on their superhero books. Marvel saw its properties gaining traction in pop culture as films like X-Men and Spider-Man debuted to critical and commercial success. This opportunity for tie-ins and merchandising gave Marvel yet another chance to reinvent itself — this time, as a company wielding the licenses to a catalog of hundreds of characters. The comic book division became secondary to Marvel’s new profit center: licensing.

The comic book direct market also shifted during this time as Diamond Comic Distributors beat out the competition and established itself as a monopoly. Product was no longer returnable, and retailers were forced to only order what they thought they could sell. Back issues also became much harder to acquire due to Diamond’s policies and pricing. The way business had been done in the industry changed dramatically, affecting publishers and retailers alike.

Finally, the process of producing books shifted dramatically as the new milenium dawned. Books that were once produced mostly by hand migrated to digital production. Inkers began to see themselves replaced by digital inks, and colorists found themselves pushed to learn new effects and techniques to keep up with the pace of the industry. Letterers went almost entirely digital, thanks to a movement led by ComiCraft. Artists who once had to ship their pages to publishers in tubes via FedEx could now upload digital copies, and books could be produced much faster — and cheaper! — than ever before.

What’s interesting about comic books is that the products themselves have not changed very much. But much like video game hardware, the backbone system behind the product has evolved greatly. Unfortunately, while the gaming industry learned to get good at forcing consumers to look forward in anticipation, the comic book industry has always moved forward kicking and screaming, often substantially behind the available technology.

One of the reasons for this is that the comic book industry is primarily controlled by two giants who continue to preach “business as usual” at every turn. American comic books can’t seem to get themselves disentangled from superheroes, much the way the video game industry can’t seem to put a stop to the never-ending supply of games that involve shooting and killing things. There are alternatives, but it’s far easier to pander than to create something new.

Another reason that the industry can’t advance is that there simply aren’t enough people buying. The comic book industry does a terrible job of marketing itself to people outside the fold. It’s hard to bring in new readers when you’re busy fighting over who gets to serve the existing ones.

While the gaming industry has mastered the art of hype, the comic book industry is often still stuck in the Stan Lee mindset. Stan Lee was a marketing maestro, and he knew how to hawk his books. But today’s readers aren’t reading comic books for escapist fantasies, because they can get a superior product from films, video games, and other entertainment media. Most of the existing buyers are collectors first and readers second. But the industry doesn’t seem to know that much about the people who actually read comics. Research and planning is definitely in order, but no one wants to spend the money or the time on it.

The console generations create a sort of staggered form of experience. Gamers know that with each generation of games, they’re going to get something really big and mind-blowing. With the previous generation, games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto III, Resident Evil 4 and Guitar Hero really shook things up. In this generation, games like Little Big Planet and Bioshock are already shifting things forward on one front while the Nintendo Wii opens up new teritory on another. It’s an exciting time to be a gamer.

The comic book industry could really learn from this. One of the things I’ve always been very critical about is the industry’s insistence on serialized stories that go on for as long as possible. The problem is that these stories begin to lose their relevance after a few hundred issues, and they have to constantly be rebooted to stay interesting. But when you consider the really amazing works that have come out of the comic book industry that are still celebrated today — stories like Watchmen, Bone, Sandman and The Dark Knight Returns — you’ll realize that they’re all series that told complete stories and that gave readers something to look forward to in a satisfying conclusion. That’s the sort of thing the industry needs to turn to.

One last point I’ll make is that the video game industry doesn’t have a narrow focus. The PS3 and the Nintendo Wii are designed to be home entertainment devices as well as consoles. The PSP can be used to browse the internet and to watch movies. The Nintendo DS can be used to chat with other people wirelessly. All of these systems offer software libraries that have something for everyone. While game hardware might be sophisticated and powerful, heavy emphasis is put on making it easy to use.

But how accessible are most comic books? True, anyone can pick one up and read it. But a lot of comics require outside knowledge — either of the series, the publisher’s universe, or the license the book is based upon. Most aren’t designed to be picked up and read by people who aren’t already fans. Try handing someone not familiar with comics an issue of Marvel’s Civil War or DC’s 52 and see if they can make sense out of it. Chances are good they’ll be lost within a few pages.

The comic book industry can learn a lot from the cyclical nature of the video game industry. But it’s a lesson that probably won’t be learned by the current crop of publishers. I fully expect it will be the next generation of publishers who take the industry somewhere else, and it will be those publishers who decide if things will stay the same… or if the comic book industry can wise up and be something better than it is.

Licensing is big business in the world of video gaming, especially around the holidays. And there’s a pretty good reason for it: the majority of gamers (or people purchasing for gamers) are what the industry refers to as “casual gamers,” and they’re more likely to buy something that sounds familiar than they are to try something new. It’s very difficult to build up a AAA intellectual property in the gaming industry, and though series like Halo, The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy have managed to pull it off consistently, the majority of games struggle to keep themselves on the retail radar at all. Licenses help drive retailer orders, and having a movie tie-in title available a month before the film debuts can really help improve sales.

What’s peculiar about the success of licensed video games is that they’re almost always bad. Every now and then, a good licensed game, like The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic hits shelves and demonstrates the power of licensing. But more often than not, licensed games are awful. For example, this summer’s Iron Man games were consistently a poor crop of games, regardless of platform. The same could be said for the Wall-E tie-in games and the Hellboy game. And yet most of these games likely moved more copies than many good games that didn’t have a license behind them.

The comic book industry, on the other hand, has a fairly dismal record when it comes to taking licenses and turning them into profit. Certainly, there have been a few success stories; Dreamwave did well in the early part of the decade with Transformers, and Marvel certainly earned some attention for Stephen King’s The Dark Tower and a project I’m all-too familiar with, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. But for the most part, the industry has done a terrible job with licensing, both from a production and a marketing point of view. And thus it’s worth a few moments to consider why licensed products are so lucrative for the video game industry despite their low quality, while licensed products are only somewhat lucrative in the comic book industry despite the seeming demand for them.

Let’s start by talking about one of the biggest differences between video game buyers and comic book buyers: gift giving. In the comic book industry, consumers tend to purchase for one of two reasons: reading or collecting. Few comic book fans buy books for friends or family, mainly because comics don’t make very good gifts. Even graphic novels, which are still the fastest growing sector of the comic book industry, aren’t particularly sought after as gift items.

But video games, on the other hand, are often developed with the fourth quarter (October - December) in mind.The reasoning behind this is that parents are out looking for gifts, and they are more likely to purchase something that is familiar for their children than something that is unknown. That latest Bratz game may be awful, but a mother might buy it for her 10-year-old daughter on the basis of the license because she knows that her daughter loves the dolls. Quality is not an issue with licensed games; as long as the license is popular enough to warrant recognition, a licensed game has a much better chance of being purchased by a casual gamer or gift buyer than an original title does.

Many of the big releases throughout the rest of the year are tie-ins with other entertainment media. Games are often released with blockbuster films and animated features, but it’s not uncommon to see a game based on a nostalgia license like The Godfather, The Warriors or Scarface hit around the same time that the associated property is being re-released on DVD.

And licenses don’t just extend to films, either. Activision and MTV Games are both making big money right now by licensing music for games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. EA Sports makes a killing off its sports licenses, and EA, Sony and Microsoft Games have all done quite well with racing games that license makes and models of popular cars. Buena Vista Games regularly releases handheld games based off Disney Channel shows, and companies like D3 Publishing, THQ and Southpeak interactive often scoop up the rights to childrens’ television shows. Atari even recently released a Nintendo DS title called What’s Cooking With Jamie Oliver.

Comic books, of course, have been a popular source of licenses, and Marvel and DC have both seen many video games come out associated with their superheroes. But there have also been games based off UK comics like Judge Dredd, Doom Patrol and Rogue Trooper, a game based off the European espionage thriller XIII, a game based off the Hellboy comics, a game based off the Spawn comics, and a game based off The Red Star, just to name a few. Even newspaper strips and webcomics have been licensed to create games like Snoopy vs. the Red Baron and the Penny Arcade adventures.

As a store manager for a prominent game store, I often found myself annoyed that customers would give bad licensed games serious thought while ignoring good original games in the meantime. Once I began to study marketing, however, I realized that this is exactly how most purchases are made. Our minds are lazy, and stores are often overwhelming with the number of choices available. It’s only natural that our brains will seize on the things that are familiar rather than allow us to consider all of the alternatives equally.

The video game industry realizes this psychology, and that’s exactly why so many licensed games crop up year in, year out despite the fact that they’re almost always panned by critics and made fun of by hardcore gamers. Licensed games sell in spite of themselves. One of the first big releases that came out when I was working as a game store manager was Atari’s Enter the Matrix, a tie-in to the film The Matrix Reloaded. The game was horribly rushed, and parts of it were almost unplayable due to bugs and glitches. The word was out before the game even arrived on shelves that it was a mess. And yet it sold like crazy.

Oddly, this sort of thinking does not seem to translate quite so well to the comic book industry. Don’t get me wrong here; if you browse the top 300, you’ll see that most of the books that aren’t related to Marvel and DC superheroes are licensed, and publishers like Dark Horse, IDW, Dynamite, Devil’s Due and Udon have all established niches for themselves by focusing on licensed properties. But with the exception of the occasional Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or G.I. Joe license that manages to attract a regular audience, most licensed books don’t fare too well in the marketplace. Comic book readers don’t seem overly enthusiastic about buying them, and comic book retailers don’t seem to be overly enthusiastic about carrying them, despite the fact that they often carry associated merchandise!

I would suggest that there are three reasons licensed products don’t perform as well in the comic book industry as they do in the video game industry:

1) The comic book industry is built on superheroes. Marvel and DC command around 80% of the market share, and while both do put out licensed books from time to time, their original properties are what you’ll find dominating month after month on the sales charts. Retailers are more likely to order superhero titles than any other kind of book, because that’s what they know will sell. Collectors are more likely to buy superhero titles than any other kind of book, because that’s what they know will be worth collecting. Licensed properties typically don’t have a high collectible value unless they’re associated with a major license like Star Wars, and even then, it’s the toys that people are usually after, not the comics.

2) Licensed books are not usually promoted well. Aside from the occasional odd newspaper article about a book like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Family Guy, most comic book promotion remains within the comic book industry. Publishers typically do a terrible job of promoting their books outside the comic book press, and they suffer the consequences with mediocre sales (often below 10,000 copies).

I know this all too well since I was in charge of marketing for the Dabel Brothers for six years — we had a horrible time promoting some of our licensed books because we had no idea how to talk to people outside of comics. By the time I figured things out, I was working on the promotion plan for the Anita Blake books. They did really well when I was managing them, because I built up a story about how retailers were contacting us and saying that the book was bringing girls who’d never set foot in a comic book stoe before into their shops to pre-order. The story was true, of course, but a little bit of added hype allowed me to talk about how the book was “breathing new life into the world of comics.” Everyone wanted a piece of that.

At the same time, however, we had people talking directly to fans on message boards and forums to gain their support for the book. We gave them sneak peaks of artwork and asked for critiques. My wife, who adapted the first five issues, even made friends with many of the more prominent fans and promised to sign their books in exchange for their support. Before we transferred the book over to Marvel, I was told that the sales were just under 40,000 copies for the first printing. Excluding the graphic novel sales, the first issue sold over 60,000 copies across three printings, and the second, third and fourth issues weren’t far behind. (The series is not doing nearly that volume now since it’s not being promoted actively.)

I don’t think there was anything special about Anita Blake. I think any licensed book with a dedicated existing fanbase could achieve those numbers quite easily. I just don’t think publishers do a very good job of convincing fans to buy.

3) Comic books make lousy gifts. Parents don’t go to comic book stores looking for presents unless they know specifically what to buy. And why should they? Comic book stores are often unfriendly places that are full of longboxes and overpriced action figures. A lot of comics aren’t “kid-friendly,” and even those that are aren’t a good substitute for a toy or a video game. Comic book retailers are unlike just about every other retailer in the retail sector; they don’t worry much about the day after Thanksgiving, and they don’t rely on the fourth quarter for 50-60% of their annual sales. Some get a slight boost from the holidays, but for most, it’s business as usual.

When you add in the fact that most of the sought-after comics are available in graphic novel format and easily purchased online or in a bookstore, it’s clear that the comic book industry is not built to take advantage of the holidays. And since that’s when licensed products are a great option for gift-givers, it’s no wonder that licensed comics don’t achieve a high level of sales — they miss the chance to climb onboard the annual gravy train!

What can we learn from all of this? Since the days of the Atari, the video game industry has always had its eye on the fourth quarter because that’s when hardware (and subsequently, software) is sold in volume. The comic book industry, on the other hand, has its roots in subscription models, and it’s been reluctant to shed its old ways so that it can catch up with the rest of the retail sector. One of the most unfortunate things that happened to the comic book industry was the 1990s; the speculation boom made a lot of retailers short-term profits, and many of them seem to be waiting for another speculator era to resurface so they can make bank and retire.

Unfortunately, many retailers are in a position where they’re going to have to change or die in the long run. Licensed books could be a wonderful way to add a rich dessert to the bread-and-butter sales of superhero books. But the industry doesn’t know how to make them work, and thus 100,000 copy sellers like Dreamwave’s Transformers and Marvel’s The Dark Tower are seen as flukes rather than targets. It’s too bad; if the industry could get behind licensed books more effectively, comics might be able to break away from their current “superheroes only” image and find bigger and better audiences.

My next article on this topic will focus on hardware cycles. This might not seem to have a lot to do with comics, but bear with me — there are some interesting parallels!

It was video games, as well as my part-time gig in comics, that got me interested in business in the first place, and I still daily follow the industry to see what’s going on. There are many interesting parallels between the video game industry and the comic book industry, and there are many things that one can learn from the other.

So, I’ve decided to write a series of articles this week discussing some of the lessons I’ve learned from watching the video game industry… and how these lessons might apply to small publishers and, in particular, comic book publishers. And today’s article is going to focus on one of my favorite genres of video games, one that has actually seen some spinoff licensing in the comic book industry: fighting games.

In 1987, Japanese game developer Capcom released an arcade game called “Street Fighter.” The game was fairly unremarkable, aside from the fact that it had six buttons per player instead of two; it was difficult to play, with imprecise controls and secret moves that were very hard to pull off correctly. Also, players could only play as two identical characters named Ryu and Ken; they were not able to play as the other characters in the game who were controlled by the computer.

Fortunately, Capcom understood that they had diamond that simply needed some polishing, and in 1991, Street Fighter II began appearing in arcades. Unlike the original, Street Fighter II was a tightly crafted game that required skill, timing and practice to master. It allowed players to go head-to-head with a varied cast of eight different characters, and the competitive nature of the game drew a lot of attention from arcade gamers. What’s more, the game was loaded with secret moves, making it a rewarding investment for those who had taken the time (and the quarters!) to master the game.

Street Fighter II popularized the fighting game genre, and because arcade games were extremely popular at the time, tons of imitators quickly sprung up. And this is one of the areas where we can learn some important lessons. Street Fighter II was the “gold standard” of fighting games for several years… but the series lost its position as the dominant fighting game due to many bad decisions on the part of Capcom in response to the incredible amount of competition that arose:

SNK’s Neo Geo Fighting Games

Just before Street Fighter II hit the arcades, another Japanese company called SNK came up with a novel idea. Arcade game developers at the time were responsible for not only creating interesting software, but for creating the hardware on which they’d be running their games. SNK realized that they could create a consumer version of their arcade hardware, sell their arcade games on cartridges, and essentially “double-dip” between the then-lucrative arcade market and the growing home-based console market. To make things even more interesting, SNK created memory cards that could be plugged into the arcade machines and then used to resume games on the home systems.

Once their new console hit shelves, SNK’s developers realized that they needed to quickly develop a wide array of software for their system. While companies like Nintendo and Sega (and later Sony) relied on third-party ports of popular arcade games to help sell their hardware, SNK developed most of its software in-house. And so the company began cranking out a variety of titles, many of which were shameless ripoffs of more popular titles. And, since two of Street Fighter’s original developers left Capcom to work for SNK, it was only fitting that SNK should start cranking out Street Fighter clones like Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, both of which spawned several sequels.

The SNK strategy was simple: copy ideas and add features. Both Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury were inferior to Street Fighter II, but both contained features it didn’t have, like scaling graphics and multi-tiered backgrounds. As SNK continued to develop fighting games, it differentiated itself from Capcom’s games by featuring more colorful characters, higher quality animations, and more frequent installments.

Mortal Kombat

Japan wasn’t the only country that wanted a piece of the fighting game pie. Midway had been a player in the arcade industry for years, and two of its developers, John Tobias and Ed Boon, came up with an idea for a fighting game using digitized actors instead of hand-drawn characters. Instead of trying to compete with the bloodless violence of Street Fighter II, the two made Mortal Kombat ridiculously gory, adding in blood that flew off enemies with every hit and the chance to finish a battle with a “fatality” where one player could kill another one off with a gory signature move. Mortal Kombat wasn’t nearly as technical as Street Fighter II, and it lacked the depth that series fans had come to love. But it had a massive appeal to casual gamers due to its ease of play and over-the-top violence, and it even had a secret character that could be unlocked and used in play.

Mortal Kombat was so successful as an arcade game that it went on to spawn one of the biggest launch events in the history of gaming when it was released for home systems. Midway wasted no time in getting Mortal Kombat II into arcades in 1993, as evidenced by the multiple versions of the game that were released to correct bugs and balance issues. The third game, Mortal Kombat 3, came out in 1995 and was such a disappointment that a subsequent update, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was released later that year.

While Mortal Kombat began to lose its popularity as a series as home console systems became more sophisticated and arcades began to die a slow death, it was the first fighting game to unseat Street Fighter II as the most popular fighter. And though it was technically inferior and looked back on today as more of a gimmick than a game, it differentiated itself from the “market leader” by being ridiculously gory, easy to play, and packed with an increasing number of secrets in every sequel.

Virtua Fighter and Tekken

While Street Fighter II was facing direct opposition from SNK and Midway (as well as several other developers), both Sega and Namco realized that the future of fighting games lay in three dimensions… and both set to work developing their own 3D fighting games.

Sega released its effort, Virtua Fighter, in 1993. The game was defintely little like Street Fighter II — it featured blocky, polygonal characters fighting on abstract planes with very little detail. The characters fought in a realistic fashion (no magic fireballs, super dragon punches, or whirling hurricane hover kicks) and could be knocked out of the ring for a victory. Virtua Fighter caught on in Japan, but it was considered more of a novelty in the US.

Namco released a similar title in 1994 called Tekken, but unlike Virtua Fighter, it went in the direction of the odd cast of characters that could be found in other fighting games. Tekken didn’t try to be hyper realistic; it opted instead for being cool to watch. Tekken also mapped its buttons to the four limbs a fighter had (two arms, two legs) to enable its characters to develop a certain flow that mimicked actual martial arts.

While both series got off to a slow start in arcades, their sequels became quite popular, and many players left Street Fighter II to play either the technical Virtua Fighter or the accessible Tekken games.

Killer Instinct

While Street Fighter II was waning in popularity, Nintendo and developer Rare were perfecting a new technique for developing game graphics that could make games look three-dimensional without actually being 3D. This technique was used to develop a game called Killer Instinct, a fighting game using computer-rendered characters that still fought on a two-dimensional battlefield. Killer Instinct’s main feature, aside from its graphics, was its combo system, which allowed players to smack an opponent with moves that could land ten, twenty, thirty or more hits at once.

Other competitors

Numerous companies attempted to jump on the Street Fighter II bandwagon in the mid-1990s. Most attempted to do so by enacting one of three strategies:

1) To develop a game very similar to Street Fighter II with a different set of characters or a different setting (Fighter’s History, Rise of the Robots, Kabuki Clash, Samurai Showdown, TMNT: Tournament Fighters, Clayfighter, Eternal Champions)

2) To develop a game that could out-gore Mortal Kombat (Time Killers, Primal Rage or the never-released Tattoo Assassins)

3) To develop a game that could try to beat Capcom in the 3D arena (Battle Arena Toshinden, Fighter’s Destiny, Tobal)

Some of these competitors created games that were just laughably bad. Time Killers, for example, was a game that looked like it was drawn by a high school kid on a notebook. It featured characters who could cut each others’ limbs off with the press of a couple of buttons.

Others were just dull. One uninspired clone went by the name of Blandia, and its main feature was the inclusion of weapons and armor that could be knocked off as the fighter sustained hits. I chalk the title up to bad translation (what right-thinking developer would include the word “Bland” in the name of a game that’s already an obvious copy of a more successful one?), but it’s not surprising that no one remembers the game today.

To see just how out of hand the whole fighting game craze got, check out the list of versus fighters on Wikipedia. It’s insane how many entries there are.

Now… with all this competition, one would expect that Capcom stepped up its game and continued to release sequels to Street Fighter II that could enable to company to hold on to its “market share” — in this case, the quarters of arcade gamers.

But Capcom didn’t really seem to figure things out very quickly. While it was making a fortune off its port of Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo, Capcom released two lackluster upgrades to Street Fighter II in 1992 that added four new characters and a handful of moves and tweaks. In 1993, it released yet another update called Super Street Fighter II, and in 1995, it released yet another update called Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Fans who were simply waiting for the inevitable Street Fighter III began to lose interest in the series, and many wandered over to competiting series, which were cranking out sequels fairly regularly.

In the meantime, Capcom developed two series of games that greatly evolved its fighting game systems: Darkstalkers and X-Men: Children of the Atom, both of which featured greatly improved graphics and animations and advanced fighting systems. Both debuted in 1994, and both spawned successful sequels.

Capcom’s next move was even more bizarre. As Street Fighter II continued to wane in popularity, the company decided to hold off on the highly-anticipated sequel and instead launch a series of crossover games and prequels. First up was Street Fighter Alpha, which featured improved graphics and new features that seemed out of place in a game that was supposed to take place before Street Fighter II. Capcom also recycled the graphics and moves from Street Fighter Alpha and X-Men: Children of the Atom to create X-Men vs. Street Fighter, an odd matchup game that became the foundation for a series of crossover titles.

Street Fighter III finally hit arcades in 1997 under the simple title “III.” It was a beautiful game, with incredible animation that was sometimes as high as 30 fps. But it was also somewhat of a betrayal to the Street Fighter faithful, since it discarded all but two of the original characters and added in brand new mechanics that were difficult to master. Many of the new characters were not likable, and the new boss lacked the charisma of Street Fighter II’s villain. Capcom tried to update the game with two new versions, but it was too little, too late. In the meantime, Street Fighter Alpha 3, launched in 1999, managed to be the Street Fighter game that players had been hoping for, including most of the traditional characters in the series and continuing to refine the classic gameplay of the original. But since it was a prequel and not a true sequel, it failed to garner the acclaim it deserved.

The series has been on hiatus since, and it’s only now, in 2008, that Capcom dares to release Street Fighter IV, a game that looks suspiciously like an update of Street Fighter II with a few new characters. It’s as if Capcom hasn’t learned a thing…

But what can we learn from this story?

First of all, Capcom’s reaction to the popularity of its game was exactly the wrong reaction. When Street Fighter II caught on, the competition realized the game wasn’t hard to imitate. The floodgates opened, and several clones immediately hit the arcades and home consoles, giving Capcom less ability to control the market. Capcom should have responded with an immediate sequel, and then continued to grow the line with spin-offs and sister series. Instead, Capcom tried to refine what it had already released, afraid to get aggressive in the face of competition. As such, Street Fighter suffered as gamers moved on to something else.

Second, Capcom’s refusal to release anything but updates reveals the company’s lack of foresight. At the time, arcade games were big business, while home consoles were still catching on. Capcom was used to an arcade climate where developers launched new cabinets each year, often with slightly updated versions of popular games. What Capcom didn’t realize was that many of its competitors were more interested in making a quick buck than in creating quality titles. While these companies did not create games that were as impressive or long-lasting as Street Fighter II, they did create games that took away slot space. The fewer Street Fighter II machines there were in use, the less of a chance that subsequent Street Fighter games would do well.

Capcom also failed to realize that it was not just the fighting that gamers enjoyed in Street Fighter II, but the interactions between the characters. Many gamers had grown quite attached to the eight original characters in the game, and most had no desire to see them phased out. And yet Street Fighter III essentially was designed to tell gamers that no, they couldn’t continue to play the game the way they wanted because Capcom knew better than they did. The failure of the game to catch on shows just how arrogant and misguided this point of view is.

Finally, while it’s too early to say whether or not Street Fighter IV is a misstep as well (since it isn’t out yet), it’s clear that Capcom has not learned from history well. True, the company is not repeating the mistakes made with Street Fighter III, but instead, it’s repeating the mistakes made with Street Fighter II by releasing an update rather than a brand new game and trying to act as if it’s the same thing. Due to the nostalgia associated with the series, the game will probaby do well, but it is unlikely that Street Fighter IV will have nearly the impact on gaming that Street Fighter II did in 1991.

Now, take a moment and think about how this same scenario has been occurring in the comic book industry since the 1990s. The first half of the ’90s was the heydey for comic book publishers; everyone was imitating the style of the popular new look that Image was pioneering, and each company had its own twist on the idea. A lot of comics came and went quickly, deserving to die a quick death as “me-too” properties. Some were even ridiculously laughable.

And yet, fifteen years later, the comic book industry is still trying to shovel a lot of the same stuff at readers, hoping that things will magically return to the way they were in the 1990s. When new concepts are tried and don’t work, publishers revert back to old ideas as if they’ve never learned from history. And all the while, interest in comics loses momentum as those who used to have to turn to comics for a certain brand of storytelling have found themselves being courted by Hollywood and its increasing stable of comic book-like films.

Street Fighter II is a great game, but it’s lost a lot of its appeal since it debuted almost 20 years ago. And comic books can be a great source of entertainment, but they’ve become so stilted and stale that they’re never going to achieve the prominence they once had. In fact, once the current generation of baby boomers who look back on comics with a nostalgic eye move out of positions of prominence in media and in popular culture, comics as we know them will likely fade away as a pop culture phenomenon.

Is there a way around that? Absolutely. But it involves creating something new, rather than trying to ride the waves of derivative works. It involves looking at the comic book medium differently, and trying to find a new way to use it to tell stories. Just as the gaming industry eventually moved away from creating derviatives of Street Fighter II and found other genres to develop, so the comic book industry must move away from stories aimed at hardcore fans and adolescent boys and find new audiences to reach.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss another great lesson I’ve learned from the video game industry: licensing. Don’t miss it!

In the United States, fanfiction is technically illegal, but generally allowed as long as there’s no money changing hands and no claims to copyright.

Elsewhere in the world, however, fanfiction is so common that it’s often actually published and sold. In Japan, for example, amateur fans often get together to produce “dojinshi” books that are essentially fanfiction comics featuring popular characters in continuing adventures or alternate realities. One would expect this sort of thing in neighboring Asian nations that have less restrictive copyright laws (piracy and knockoffs often go hand in hand!), and not in a large consumer nation where intellectual property is big business.

But the Japanese have a very different attitude towards derivative works than people in the United States. The Japanese copyright laws are extremely rigid, but there is something of a gray area where fanfiction is concerned, since fanfiction is seen as something that helps to increase sales of official merchandise rather than take money away from the copyright holder. As long as the copyright holder doesn’t enforce the copyright, the creation and sale of fanfiction is assumed to be permitted. “Dojinshi” communities are even celebrated in certain circles, since they’ve essentially given birth to popular studios such as CLAMP and Gainax. (You can read an interesting interview with a Gainax member here that discusses this further.)

What’s impressive about a lot of the Japanese fanfiction is that it’s created by amateurs, but printed in small professional quality runs and sold in markets. Much of it is of a fairly low quality, but some of it is indistinguishable from the official products. Some of it is even arguably better. And that poses a new problem in the digital era, because while in the old days, one had to buy a physical copy of a fanfic in order to enjoy it (thus keeping the number of eyeballs seeing it rather low), the Internet allows even the crummiest fanfiction story to be viewed by millions of people from around the world.

And that leads me to wonder… now that the Internet has given fanfiction an ability to grow around all of the thorny legal issues surrounding it, is it possible we’ll see a brand new style of “do-it-yourself publishing” in the near future? It could happen sooner than you might think… and it could have major implications for the rest of the world of publishing.

I remember being at a comic book convention a few years ago where a couple of guys were selling a rather slickly produced video involving two popular comic book characters getting into a huge battle with each other. For something produced by a group of fans, it was pretty impressive — the actors fit the roles well and the special effects were quite good. The only problem was that the work was produced without the license or approval of Marvel Comics, the company that held the copyrights and trademarks associated with both characters… and the booth was promptly shut down as a result.

But as the owner of the booth argued with some convention organizers who were telling them to pack their things, he made an interesting point. “Look around, and you see artists all over the place doing sketches of these characters,” he said. “And they’re selling them. Some of them are even selling sculptures. Why aren’t they getting thrown out of here too?”

The answer, of course, is that comic book publishers allow artists to draw and sell sketches of popular characters despite the fact that the practice infringes on copyright because the works are original single-item productions that aren’t affecting sales. As far as the publishers are concerned, it’s “small potatoes” — nobody’s getting rich doing character sketches, and the publishers can’t be bothered to put a stop to it anyhow. It’s only when artists mass-produce work that appears to be infringing on copyright or trademark that the publishers get upset and take action.

That’s good and well in a small place like a comic book convention, but what about the Internet? Isn’t it possible for an creator to mass-produce a derivative work and put it up for sale without the publisher knowing about it? Of course it is. As long as the creator can stay off the radar of the publisher, he or she can easily continue the operation. Books can be easily printed and sold through a print-on-demand service and directly marketed to potential readers… which means that fanfiction can actually become profitable to its creators if care is taken not to tip off the original copyright holder.

Consider this. Right now, Harry Potter fanfiction is extremely popular. It’s entirely possible that some of the more popular Harry Potter fanfic authors could be producing their work in book form and selling it to fans directly, appeasing those who would like to build their Harry Potter collection with professionally-printed books. These authors could even argue that since the fanfiction can already be personally printed by fans that there’s no harm in producing books to save them the trouble. The issue of profit could be negated by talking about the costs associated with printing and production. The entire concept of intellectual property and copyright infringement could be legally sidestepped with a clever enough argument… and it probably will be one of these days.

What publishers need to realize is that there are certain groups of fans out there who want fanfiction, and who will always embrace it, no matter how awful it is. Rather than crank out crummy “official” pseudo-sequels and other publisher-sponsored derivative works, publishers might be smart to jump on the fanfic bandwagon and give fanfic authors the chance to legally sell their work in printed form… a win-win for everyone involved.

The trick, of course, is that the volume has to be there to accomodate print runs. Publishers aren’t going to want to sell books if they can’t print at a profitable rate. Print-on-Demand might be the ace in the hole, though, since it doesn’t require expensive runs or storing unsold copies. Publishers could simply authorize a fanfic compilation two or three times a year, pay the authors nothing (giving them exposure in exchange for the right to have their work published), and sit back and watch the money roll in.

Could this be a viable future business practice for publishers? The only issue in the way is copyright. Publishers generally don’t own the intellectual properties they produce. Authors do. And since many authors are fiercely protective of their own work, it might be hard to talk them into opening up the fanfic floodgates.

I, for one, would be very interested to see a publisher give this idea a whirl. It could be a disaster. But I have a feeling that if it were successful, it could become a normal practice in the world of entertainment media… and a profitable one at that!

Personally, I never liked that aspect of religion — as far as I was concerned, if God gave me a mouth to speak and ears to hear, why couldn’t He just talk to me directly? It’s a mystery I still don’t have an answer to. But as it happens, “Yes,” “No” and “Wait” are the three types of answers you’ll hear any time you are asking another human being or organization for support of some kind,  especially when it comes to creative works. Sadly, while I’ve seen many articles that tell aspiring writers how to elicit a “yes,” I haven’t seen many talking about what it means to “wait” or receive the all-too-common “no.”

And while this article might not be too helpful to those seeking spiritual answers from the Big Guy in Charge, it should be quite helpful to those seeking practical knowledge about gaining traction in the world of publishing.

I have a lot of friends who are aspiring writers, and I’ve watched many of them devote an incredible number of hours into developing a manuscript that they intend to sell to a publisher one day. Often, they like to talk about the various “tricks” they’ve heard about for getting the attention of a publisher or a literary agent, as if all one really has to do is write a manuscript, manipulate things the right way, and get a story published. Anyone who’s been around the publishing scene knows better — the truth of the matter is that the publishing industry is fairly closed to those who don’t have an “in,” primarily because there is far more supply than there is demand. That’s one of the reasons some writers chase after agents — good literary agents can take a manuscript from an unconnected writer and get it on the desks of otherwise inaccessible editors with very little fuss.

I hate to be hard on the publishing industry, but hang around it long enough and you’ll realize that it’s a cesspool. The big trade publishers like to muscle out the indy companies by cozying up to retailers and buying up successful authors and lines. These same publishers overprint in such large numbers that they wind up destroying 25% or more of each print run just to keep their books from being devalued in the market. Agents often make promises they have no intention of keeping, and they’re well-known for stringing would-be authors along. The few published authors who achieve “bestseller” status tend to choke the market with their pulpy, bland writing, and a lot of really good writing goes unread as a result. And there are tons of “bottom-feeder” authors as well who are out there looking to grave-rob from deceased authors and copy ideas from up-and-coming writers.

In this industry, most would-be authors don’t ever actually finish their manuscripts. And even when they do, they send them off only to get that infamous rejection letter a few weeks later. More often than not, “no” is the only answer they receive, often with very little clarification. It’s an extremely discouraging time for a writer, and it’s caused quite a few writers out there to put down the pen and give up their dreams.

But what they don’t realize is that “No” can mean many things in the world of publishing, such as:

• I didn’t actually take the time to read your manuscript because I’m too busy.
• We don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, so I didn’t read yours.
• I flipped through it, and it looked boring.
• The title doesn’t grab me.
• The story sounds dumb.
• I read the first few chapters and it didn’t grab me.
• This manuscript’s not right for our market.
• The story’s not genre-specific enough

And what they miss most often is the fact that at least “No” is an answer, even if it’s not the answer desired. But that’s far better than getting no answer at all!

Occasionally, a writer will receive specific feedback from an editor that touches on some of these points, but more often than not, the rejection letter dispatched is a simple form letter that offers very little explanation. And yet the writer is personally crushed. Feeling the sting or rejection, he or she falls into a dark mood, wondering what’s so terrible about the manuscript, and why editors constantly seem to be rejecting it.

But the truth is, no matter how bad a manuscript may be, the writer should never be daunted by a simple “no.” In fact, I advise writers who receive “no” answers to keep submitting, because being told “no” doesn’t mean the manuscript wasn’t good; it just means that particular editor didn’t want it.

Now, of course, there are “no” answers that are qualified with additional information. For example, a statement like, “We cannot publish your manuscript because it contains numerous plot holes, derivative characters, and a plot that a child of eleven would find unrealistic and bland,” offers a pretty good indicator that the manuscript might need some retooling… or outright torching. But it’s rare for a writer to receive such a critical response. Editors just don’t have that sort of time or interest, and it can leave them vulnerable to a lawsuit if they don’t choose their words with care.

More often than not, editors or agents who take an interest in a work will send a “wait” letter — something along the lines of, “this isn’t right for us at this time, but feel free to resubmit this work once you’ve made some revisions.” This letter indicates that they’re not willing to pick up a work, but that they are willing to consider it down the road.

Unfortunately, most writers I’ve known who have received this response take the wrong approach to it. They get giddy and start dreaming of success, acting as if in being told to “wait” they’ve been guaranteed a “yes.” Sadly, this is not how things tend to work out; the world of publishing is very volatile, and the potential an editor or agent might see in a work generally relates to the subject matter of a book, not the writing itself. For example, if an editor senses that Steampunk novels are on their way in, he or she might want to keep in touch with authors who are submitting those kinds of stories just in case the trend emerges. That doesn’t meant that the publisher intends to pick the book up; it just means that they want to keep that author from going elsewhere until the trend either materializes or fades away.

My suggestion to anyone who gets a “wait” letter is to weigh the situation carefully, and to suspend excitement (and bragging) until things work out. And as for that elusive “yes” letter, I’d warn writers to still be cautious about getting their hopes up when their work is picked up. I’ve had a good number of projects that I’ve gotten very excited about, only to have them fall through when it came time to sign the contracts. My wife had a similar experience earlier this year. Had we simply crossed our fingers and waited to get excited, neither of us would have had to deal with the disappointment of seeing the project canceled or assigned to someone else.

Getting a “yes” answer is a great thing for an author, but remember: even a “yes” can become a “no” until the contract is signed, and if the contract isn’t fair to the author, the book can still be dropped. Having an agent negotiate contracts is never a bad idea, but that agent has to be dedicated to the cause of seeing the manuscipt published. With that in mind, I’d like to comment on the different between being picked up by an agent, a vanity publisher, an independent publisher, a mid-range publisher, and a trade publisher.

Being picked up by a literary agent means very little. Some agents have a good reputation, but most acquire far more manuscripts that they can ever actually sell. Agents perform a function that’s not so different from a retail store — they stock themselves up with a variety of products knowing they won’t sell everything, but hoping they’ll sell enough to stay in business. I’ve talked to several writers who have signed with agents who have done nothing for them. That doesn’t mean that agents are bad; they’re quite useful for negotiating terms and contracts, and they often know what’s going on with other writers in the industry. But they are by no means a “sure thing.”

Running your book through a vanity publisher, “print-on-demand” publisher, or anything else of the sort is a shortcut that guarantees that your work won’t go far. Simply put, if your publisher demands money up front or insists that you have to sell a certain number of books for them to take a chance on you, they’re not really a publisher — they’re just providing “printing with added services.” If you have to take all the risk, you might as well get all of the rewards, too. It may be faster and easier to run your books through a vanity publisher than a traditional publisher, but don’t be fooled — your work will never be taken seriously by the publishing industry at large, particularly on the retail end.

Independent publishers are generally small companies that can only afford to sell niche titles. They don’t do a lot of fiction, and they don’t get a lot of exposure. Many, including my own company, don’t accept submissions. Those that do generally don’t pay advances, and your work may never make it beyond their niche audience.

Mid-range publishers are generally established publishers that focus on specific popular genres. They are often lumped in with independent publishers, but they’re really at the top of the category. These publishers generally have good relationships with distributors, wholesalers and retailers and know how to use these channels to sell lots of books. New writers are probably best off starting with these companies since they will be treated better and taken advantage of less… as a general rule, of course.

Trade publishers are the big, established companies that operate out of New York and London. They often have a variety of imprints specializing in genres, and they put out the majority of books that you’ll find in a retail store. These are the companies that pay big money for manuscripts, and these are the companies that tend to drive lesser-known writers crazy, because they stall on contracts, play games with publishing schedules, and cancel titles they’ve already picked up. They’ve very biased towards authors who can sell well or who have built-in marketing ability, and they tend to give little support to writers who can’t. Getting an answer of any sort from a trade publisher seems like a big deal, but remember - they deal in volume, not in quality, and they’re most concerned about what they think will sell.

Personally, I think there are better ways to publish your book than to submit your manuscript to every possible source; I’m a big fan of self-publishing myself, and while it wasn’t feasible even a decade ago, it’s more than possible now to publish your own work and distribute it via the internet directly to customers. It might lack the glitz and glamour of having a major publisher, but it’s a much better deal for the author… and a great way to bypass ever having to hear “yes,” “no” or “wait” from anyone.

So, it’s time for me to start updating again with more of my latest research.

But in the meantime, here’s a quick update on what I’m doing these days.

First of all, I’ve been quietly building up marketing momentum for my next book, Code of the Wild: North American Wolverine Vs. Timber Wolf, which is hand-painted by the incredible Jason Maranto. You can read all about the book at http://www.codeofthewild.com, but you can also check out this cool video I made to get a glimpse of the first book:

I’m also credited in the upcoming seriesDog Eaters, which I adpted from the screenplay by Malcolm Wong. It’s coming out as a 6-part comic book series in November, and a graphic novel next spring. You can read more about it at http://www.dogeaters-manga.com.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve had a big change in my life lately as I’ve transitioned from earning my undergraduate degree in business administration to working towards my Master’s in Marketing Research. It’s time-intensive, but one of the perks of the program is that I was placed in an internship with a small marketing research firm in St. Louis called The Research & Planning Group. It’s taken me a few weeks to get adjusted to the new schedule (particularly since I’ve been taking some time to make adjustments to my personal life as well by exercising more and devoting more time to reading), and I’ve had a hard time staying focused on the publishing side of things.

But the good news is that I’ve been writing fragments of articles in OneNote over the last month, and I’m ready to start finishing them up and posting them. I think a lot of them will be very valuable to aspiring publishers, especially my pieces about STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) and the Blue Ocean Strategy (which comes from a book I just read). I’ve also been clipping articles about the Amazon Kindle, comics as an educational tool, and the future of the publishing industry, all of which I intend to discuss in upcoming pieces.

I do want to thank those who have taken the time to approach me for work as of late. I apologize that I’ve had to turn some of you away, but as my next article will discuss, sometimes, being told “no” is the best thing that can happen to a creative person… and sometimes, being told to “wait” is one of the worst!

With that said, enough about me. Onto the articles!

-SJJ

As if that weren’t big enough news, I’ve been spending my free time preparing for the announcement that my new book, Code of the Wild: North American Wolverine Vs. Timber Wolf is heading to shelves next spring. So, I decided to go ahead and set up http://www.codeofthewild.com to give the book a home on the web… and to showcase some of the amazing artwork that Jason Maranto’s been turning in.

Here’s a peak, this time with fully lettered captions!

Page 2	Page 3
Page 4	Page 5

You can head over to the Code of the Wild website for all the glorious details. It’s exciting stuff!

-SJJ

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…But enough about what I think. Here’s a snippet from the article:

IDW Publishing in San Diego, better known for stories of robots (”The Transformers”) and vampires (”30 Days of Night”), commissioned the books with no input from either campaign.

”We’re not doing anything that is sensational here,” said IDW special projects editor Scott Dunbier. ”We’re sticking to the facts.”

Comic book biographies have been written before — Marvel Comics had a best-seller in 1982 with a biography of Pope John Paul II. And books intended to be read on cell phones have been gaining popularity worldwide this year and last.

Dunbier said the company is breaking new ground getting out fully researched comics on two candidates before Election Day. And the nontraditional storytelling and visuals of comics may reach some voters more effectively than other types of media can.

”We’re not in the business of doing textbooks, but I think comic books really do have the great potential to inform and teach,” he said.

Amen, brother. I’m thrilled to see the medium being used for stories that are more appealing to mainstream readers, and I think IDW is making a smart move here that is going to help them expose their entire line of books to a fresh new crop of readers. My only reservation is that the Obama book is probably going to outsell the McCain book by a healthy percent since Obama is so much more popular with the young people who might consider reading these comics. But hey, good for IDW for not being partisan here. I really respect the fact that they’re trying to be fair to both of these guys.

I’m going to do some research on comic books on cell phones and hopefully post an article tomorrow about it. But in the meantime, check out today’s article, and see if it gets your creative juices flowing as you try to think up your own set of comics that can reach out to the mass audience!

“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.

The article talks about how many publishing companies, particularly magazines, are attempting to get onboard with the green revolution by offering more of their articles online. For example, the Washington Post Company started up a website called Sprig.com that offers environmentally friendly articles and videos for women:

Sprig.com features articles in five categories: food, fashion, beauty, home and lifestyle, with videos liberally mixed into each section. In the beauty section, a video features an eco-friendly manicure and pedicure, while in the food section, visitors can watch organic cooking demonstrations. The site will post about six new articles a day, written in a way one might characterize as Green Lite.

“We’re targeting this to the 95 percent of people who want to be 5 percent green,” said Jeanie Pyun, Sprig’s editor in chief. “Not the 5 percent of people who want to be 95 percent green.”

Did you catch that? The website is not interested in changing peoples’ habits and helping them “go green.” Instead, it’s just interested in offering content to people who are riding the trend — the same people who are going to abandon “going green” when the economy is back on the upswing and conservation doesn’t seem necessary any longer. This is not a publishing company trying to be socially conscious; this is a publishing company trying to market its products and make a few bucks off web-based advertising:

One advertiser already lined up is the Clorox Company, which produces a range of consumer products including Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressings. Sumona Pramanik, associate marketing manager for Hidden Valley, said she chose Sprig to carry ads about her brand’s new organic ranch dressing partly because Sprig is aimed at a mainstream audience.

“Their positioning as a stylish green site made them a perfect fit,” Ms. Pramanik said. “And having that female target consumer, that’s definitely a place where we play.”

The article also mentions why the magazine publishing industry is “going green”:

“If you looked at 10 new markets to go after right now, this would probably be close to the top, because the number of companies advertising green stuff will explode in the next couple of years,” said Josh Bernoff, an online media analyst with Forrester Research, a consulting firm. “And having an established company behind it is a good way to kick something like this off.”

One thing that the article doesn’t mention, but which I would suggest is quite relevant, is the fact that magazine and newspaper sales are slumping right now as more and more people turn to the internet for their information. Publishing companies who produce this kind of media have traditionally been bloated due to the heavy profits they’ve earned from advertising. Now, more and more companies are finding cheaper and easier ways to advertise products on the web, and magazines and newspapers are losing massive amounts of revenue and finding themselves forced to let nonessential staff go. They’re looking for anything they can hold on to now, and a trend like environmentalism seems like just the ticket to most.

But think about this for a moment. Are publishing companies who publish periodicals really the companies people who are concerned about the environment should support? The argument can be made for an organization like National Geographic, since they are socially responsible and have environmentalism as a core value. But many of these other companies create products with a high expectation of waste. Magazines typically only sell 33-50% of their newsstand copies, and the rest are promptly destroyed when the next batch arrives. Newspapers are one of the most wasteful products in publishing since they’re designed to be disposed of daily. While the unsold product is recycled, recycling is itself an energy-intensive process that isn’t able to turn 100% of the input into usable output, and the cost of recycling makes it cheaper for media companies to use new paper than recycled content.

And what about websites? Computers are fairly energy efficient, but the old CRT monitors many people are still using are not. Laptop computers use dangerous batteries, as do PDA smartphones and standalone eBook readers. Computers also heat up rooms and offices, requiring air conditioners to be run more frequently, which in turn consumes even more energy. Granted, websites create less waste than paper products, and electronic periodicals are more environmentally friendly than paper ones, but the tradeoff is higher energy consumption and increased production of electronic devices, most of which last consumers for a year or two before they’re replaced.

Now, I don’t want magazines, newspapers and computers to vanish because they’re not 100% eco-friendly; that sort of thinking is the reason that most people aren’t willing to commit to this “going green” stuff past a certain point, because it isn’t realistic. I simply want people to understand that this “going green” stuff is just a smokescreen that’s being used to sell things. As a publisher who is producing a series of children’s books about nature, I’m definitely planning to talk about conservation and wildlife protection. But I don’t want to do it in a phony way, that’s designed to sell books and nothing more. I want people to really think about nature, and to ask themselves if it’s part of our responsibility to protect it as we develop our own society.

I’ll close this article with this thought: there is a big difference between being socially conscious and being a part of a trend. If a publisher wants to take advantage of the “going green” phase, now’s the time to do so. But when the trend is over, and consumers return to wasteful excess, will the publishers who once preached “going green” be able to stay consistent with their message… or will they be the ones leading the charge to consume new products as often as possible?

-SJJ

How much should a publisher spend on the production of a comic book?

Believe it or not, there’s no standard answer in the industry, and the fees that writers, artists, letterers and editors are paid varies widely between companies. Obviously, Marvel and DC pay the best, and they tend to attract the topmost talent as a result. Other established publishers, like Image and Dark Horse, also pay fairly well. Indy publishers can’t generally afford those rates, and they have to budget for lower costs… which generally means lower quality.

With that said, there are ways to keep costs down, and there are always top-notch artists who are willing to work at a lower rate in exchange for more creative control and/or profit-sharing. But let’s begin by looking at my estimates of the rates artists are getting in the industry today…

First off, let’s get the big myth out of the way: no one is getting rich from doing comics, save a handful of creators who were smart enough and/or lucky enough to get into the business side of things. And most of them aren’t “rich” so much as they’re “well off.” That’s important to understand, because there’s this weird idea throughout the ranks of the fans that the “big names” are highly successful. That might be true for someone like Todd McFarlane, who created a hugely successful comic book line, sold the rights to a major motion picture, and then applied his earnings towards starting a toy company. But I assure you, he’s the vast exception to the rule.

My experience in comics has been that most of the people working in the industry are doing so freelance and part time. Most of them cannot afford to live in New York, Los Angeles, or San Diego, and most are doing other work to subsidize working in comics. Only a handful are making a living doing this full time, and of those, even fewer are earning an envious income.

So, with that said, here are the rates I’ve observed publishers paying (excluding, of course, Marvel and DC):

• Writers: $10-35 per page, or $220-770 an issue. Writers are in large supply and short demand, and only those with massive fanbases are worth paying more, no matter how skilled they are or how good their ideas are. But don’t feel too bad; a comic book script only takes a few days to write, and some writers can handle 4 or 5 books a month. The sweet spot for scripts seems to be around $500.
• Editors: This varies, since editors often are on staff and not hired freelance. I’d say per book, editors generally range from $50-500, depending on the work they’re doing and the skill required. The upper part of that range is generally reserved for editors who are not only responsible for checking scripts and reading proofs, but also making schedules and keeping people on said schedules. That’s a lot more work than it sounds. Still, I’d recommend $200-300 per book for most editors, and more only if they’re really working hard.
• Artists: $75-200 per page, or $1650-4400 per issue. Pencil artists and inkers are always the most expensive part of the process because they spend the most time on the pages and require the most skill. Many publishers are phasing inkers out and using digital inks over pencils instead. I’m not sure if this is a good move or not; some pencils aren’t strong enough not to be inked. But it’s hard to deny the fact that it makes the books much cheaper to produce, and therefore, much easier on the publisher.

  $200 is a bit much to pay an inexperienced artist, but it’s a good price for an artist who’s willing to handle pencils and inks together. I’d say $100-150 is the “sweet spot” for most indy artists, and $200 is good for established pros who are returning to indy books. But publishers should definitely be careful not to overspend. I know of a situation where a publisher was paying an artist $10,000 per book, or $455 per page. The artist wasn’t worth it, and it did not surprise me when the book stopped midway through its run and lost a ton of money.

• Colorists: $35-125 per page, or $770-2750 per book. Colorists vary widely in quality and ability, and those on the low end are usually artists from other countries looking to get their big break in the US comics industry. I don’t know of any colorists who aren’t doing colors digitally these days, and most can turn pages around fairly quickly. Therefore, I’d say $75-100 is the “sweet spot” for paying a colorist, though some of the guys who work for more can do some amazing things that the lower-end guys lack the skill to do.

  I’d note that Pat Lee’s Dreamwave Studios, which was noted for its flashy artwork and great colors, used an army of low-paid colorists on each book instead of individual pros. If you have the volume to afford in-house colorists, it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But keep in mind that Dreamwave tanked rather quickly once its Transformers books dropped off in sales, so it might not be the best company to follow.

• Letterers: $15-50 per page, or $330-1100 per book. Some publishers attempt to letter books themselves, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so, since lettering is an art of its own that requires specific knowledge to do properly. Also, letterers are supposed to either be using their own fonts or using legally licensed fonts in their work, saving the publisher from legal troubles. Good letterers work fast, ask smart questions about potential typos, and get pages ready for proofing. I’d say $25-40 is the “sweet spot” for competent letterers, though some may charge more if they offer post-production services or other services, like logo design.

(If anyone has specific knowledge of the rates being paid in the industry, please feel free to post them in the comments section!)

Contracting good people is important, but working from a budget is key. I generally start by assigning a production budget to the book as a whole, and then I subtract in-house editorial fees and break it down into costs per page. So, for example, if I budget $250 per page, I can spend $100 on my artist and then try to divide the rest amongst the writer, colorist and letterer. Obviously, for that low of a price, I’m not going to be able to afford an inker, but that’s how it goes when you’re an indy publisher — you have to be realistic about cutting costs, even if it’s at the expense of putting an extra burden on the pencils. But $250 a page is $5500 a book… and that’s not counting the cover or other production work! To make back $5500 at 3.99 per issue with the standard trade discount, you’d have to sell close to 3200 copies of a comic book. And that doesn’t include the costs of printing or marketing. I’ve heard that some publishers budget upwards of $15,000 per issue for production alone. I hope they’re running ads — otherwise, they’re going to run out of money fast, unless they can somehow get their sales up into the tens of thousands.

Cutting costs is always smart, provided that you do it properly. In my experience, writers are the people who are willing to work for the least. Some will even work for free in exchange for a chance to be professionally published. Don’t feel bad about this. I personally believe in paying people for the work that they do, but to a writer, having a professional credit is often the most important part of the deal. Consider that their payment. You can always pay them points on the backend if needed. (Chances are good you won’t have any profits to share, but it’s a nice thought nontheless.)

Artists (and colorists and letterers, too) will generally expect to be paid the agreed amount, with little flexibility. That’s because artists put in considerably more work than writers, often at the expense of free time or personal lives. Artists are generally the first to jump ship when financial troubles surface. Make sure they get paid on time. One of the best ways to burn your bridges in the comic book industry is to develop a reputation for not paying people in full or on time. I saw this firsthand at one of the publishers with whom I used to work — it was ugly then, and it still has consequences for them to this day.

All in all, I’d say the “sweet spot” for production is $5,000-7,000 per issue. If you can get away with less, do so. Just make sure that your quality doesn’t suffer. After all, including printing, at $3.99 with the usual trade discount of around 57%, you’re going to have to sell upwards of 7,200 copies just to break even… and that’s going to be a hard thing to do if your book’s quality is inferior to other titles on the market.

I welcome other publishers to share their input here. It’s always great to hear from people who have firsthand experience!

-SJJ