3 Comments | Posted: December 23rd, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing
I was recently mentioned by a creator in an interview on a popular-ish website in which she stated her disappointment that multiple bloggers (including myself) had not followed up on an email from her concerning her new digital comics.
- I do not run a comics news blog.
- I am not obligated to run any press releases.
- To be frank, I’m probably not your target audience.
I work in marketing. I get it. You want to reach out to people who you believe are evangelists and trendsetters. Honestly, I’m neither and there are tons of websites that get more traffic than me and have a broader spectrum in their postings that “Whatever shit hoves into Kevin’s view that he likes enough to type the bare minimum number of words about.” Forces Of Geek and Alert Nerd are two more-than-passable places that have a strong personal voice and are always looking for new content they think their readers would like, and those were just off the top of my head. I’m sure their sidebars will reveal many, many better targets for your campaign than my personal website.
(And as a slightly-rancorous aside, don’t call me out when I don’t cover your work, especially when it’s obvious that you’ve not looked at my site in years and seem to have missed out on the fact that I’d much rather tell people about my own comics than talk about someone else’s.)
24 Comments | Posted: December 13th, 2009 | Filed under: Meta, Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: larry doherty, larry's comics, lawrence doherty
So, a local comics show and indie-friendy crafts festival was held by my local comics shop this weekend. Also attending this event was Larry Doherty and some of the employees from Larry’s Comics, based in Lowell Massachusetts. Larry has been the subject of internet controversy recently, and I actually made several posts about his email newsletter without mentioning the business name. Larry went around offering Drake’s snack cakes to people and it was a nice gesture that I didn’t particularly want to take advantage of because I don’t actually like them and I wasn’t hungry at the time. I was checking messages on my phone when he came around and I shook my head and mouthed “No” at him.
His response? To inform me that I’d obviously “had my share of donuts” before, then lifting up his shirt to expose his stomach and chest to me and Ming, whom I was sharing a table with. I was baffled at his actions and had other people at the table, so I let Larry walk off and continue his deliveries. After Ming and I had dinner, I came home and made a comment about the incident on twitter. What follows are my tweets from tonight, along with his comments back, which I’ve put in red for your convenience.
So, @larryscomics insulted me then showed me and @mingdoyle his bare chest and stomach. That was something.
about 8 hours ago from web
(I refused a Drake’s snack cake; he said “C’mon, you’ve had your share of donuts before!” and then said “ME TOO!” and flashed us.)
about 8 hours ago from web
(Yes, @larryscomics, I am fat. You’re a shithead. I win.)
about 8 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin Hey Kevin. Your not much of a “personality” in person BUT your a powerhouse at home on the Internet. Hope you had fun today
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
@BeaucoupKevin typical. At the show Kevin was a gentleman. At home he has nasty musings to share. Wanted that Twinkie didn’t ya big boy??
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
Really, @LarrysComics? You interrupt me and insult me when I’m checking my messages and I’m supposed to be a personality for you?
about 6 hours ago from web
And, @LarrysComics? Maybe I reserve my personality for people who don’t represent every worst aspect of comics-fan-as-retailer.
about 6 hours ago from web
.@LarrysComics Larry, I was polite because there were other people there. Unlike you, I have consideration for third parties.
about 6 hours ago from web
And yeah, @larryscomics, I’m a “big boy.” At least people weren’t asking which table was mine so they could avoid it.
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin I think you were pissed because like most shows I attend I was surrounded by family and friends including the promoters
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
@BeaucoupKevin your from new England chump. You know damn well how my shop ranks, and what it stands for. Ask YOUR retailer what they think
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin.
.@LarrysComics Really. You really do have the most remarkable powers of self-delusion. If you were doing so well, why’d you leave at 3:30?
about 6 hours ago from web
.@LarrysComics I’m not going to use other people as a reference point. I simply said what you did and how you acted. You insulted me.
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin sold my stock to Patrick Jamal. Then went to Arlington and bought a warehouse. Confirm THAT with any of the 3 promoters
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
@BeaucoupKevin Kevin is pissed because I was handing out snacks to small press like I have done for 20 years!? I AM a douchebag
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
.@LarrysComics Good for your business. You still insulted me and then flashed me and the woman I shared a table with.
about 6 hours ago from web
I don’t know why @LarrysComics keeps thinking I need to ask my friends how well his business was doing at the show.
about 6 hours ago from web
I don’t know why @LarrysComics thinks I care about how well his business is performing. His business has nothing to do with his actions. about 6 hours ago from web
If .@LarrysComics thinks I’m pissed because he was handing out free food and NOT because of how he acted when I refused, boy, I don’t know.
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin Kevin. YOU commented on my early departure. I told you WHY. You know damn well you were not offedded by me offering you food
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
.@LarrysComics Wait, you just said this: http://is.gd/5loDX and then you said I wasn’t insulted by that? What?
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin your just playing up the fact that you met fucking cretin Larry ,bane of the comic book industry.
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
Seriously, @LarrysComics, best of luck with your business. I’ll just be sure to make sure that people know how you acted.
about 6 hours ago from web
No, @LarrysComics, I didn’t MEET you. You walked up, offered food, I refused, you insulted, flashed your chest and stomach, and left.
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin I held a box of drakes cakes. You politely pointed to your fat gut to decline. I lifted my shirt showing my gut. All laughed.
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
.@LarrysComics You’re not telling the truth, Larry. I did not point at my stomach. I shook my head and went back to my messages.
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin best of luck with your artwork. I’ll be shure to let people know how you acted
about 6 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
.@LarrysComics Be sure to tell people that I refused a snack cake. Go on and do that.
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin whatever Kevin. You are simply making something out if nothing to draw attention to yourself. Everyone had fun today but you
about 5 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
“Whatever?” You know @LarrysComics, I had a great time today except for our interaction, and I didn’t have to insult anyone!
about 6 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin look in the mirror Kevin. Do you think anyone on the planet will think YOU turned down a fucking Twinkie? That’s a stretch
about 5 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
.@LarrysComics Again with saying that I’m fat. Yes, Larry. We know. I turned down a snack cake from you because I don’t like them or you.
about 5 hours ago from web
@BeaucoupKevin I thought you seemed like a nice guy in person Kevin. Kinda a nasty fellow on the Internet though aintcha??
about 5 hours ago from Echofon in reply to BeaucoupKevin
.@LarrysComics You insult me repeatedly when I say what happened and I’M nasty? OK.
about 5 hours ago from web
Some comments:
- I’m a big guy. I’m fat. I know that. People that have met me know this. It’s something everyone’s accepted.
- I am a guy who writes things, not an artist. Some people have paid me to write things. A significant portion of my day job concerns writing things.
- I was ruder than I should have been with the “shithead” comment. Poor form, but honestly, the way he acted was beyond rude for someone whom I’d never met before.
- Larry’s Twitter feed shows how he acted to other people when called on his behavior. Yes, many of them were less-than-polite, following my bad example.
Why make this post? Well, I think it’s a way to show people who might do business with Larry’s Comics, (whether it be at a comics show or when visiting their business at 66 Lakeview Avenue in Lowell, MA) how he treated someone who refused to eat a fifty-cent snack cake. You can also do the same with my own behavior and decide you don’t want to read any of the comics I write.
Edited To Add:
Someone sent me screenshots (albeit tiny-ish ones) of Larry’s half of the conversation, just in case it gets deleted.
8 Comments | Posted: June 18th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing
Hey, guys, remember the NOT BUY retailer? Here’s the a few recent missives from his shop’s Twitter account:
“Adam Hughes can sure draw a nice pair of chesticles, fun bags, dirty pillows, Power Girl #2 will sellout by the end of the day!”
10:13 AM Jun 17th from web
“I wish I could put a piece of tape on Action Comics Annual #12’s offensive $4.99 cover price. What overpriced trash”
10:14 AM Jun 17th from web
#haveyouever bought a comic with stunning artwork even though you knew the story was ass??
4:50 PM Jun 16th from web
Yyyyyyyeah.
2 Comments | Posted: May 28th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing
So, I’m reading Robot 6 this morning and the above ad catches my eye. Alongside The Boys and Project Superpowers, Dynamite Entertainment publishes a fair amount of licensed work and material based on established IP, stuff like Battlestar Galactica and the new Sherlock Holmes comic. One of the works it doesn’t have the license to, however, is Star Trek, which is currently being handled by IDW, and as I’ve discussed before, you shouldn’t advertise what’s not yours.
So why does this ad feature Jim Kirk and Spock with a big Dynamite Entertainment logo? Because Dynamic Forces is running a collector’s show featuring Star Trek on QVC a week in the past1.
The relationship between Dynamite Entertainment (who makes comic books) and its parent company Dynamic Forces (offering collectible comic books and tchochkes) is fairly well known, but this is just plain confusing to the audience. I clicked on the ad because I wondered if Dynamite had gotten a license to NuTrek while IDW kept the older material, similar to way that Malibu and DC each published DS9 and TNG comics in the 90s, not because I was interested in getting a Vulcan Science Academy Spork2 set, autographed by Zachary Quinto. This is just an embarrassing, sloppy mistake that shouldn’t have gotten as far as it did. While I’ve got no doubt that the companies share marketing resources, this should have been caught immediately, not by a third party when it was on a major blog a week after the fact.
1 With time travel being essential to the plot of the new Star Trek movie, I’m going to assume this was intentional.
2The Spork is the most logical of eating utensils and its name honors Surak, so stop making that face.
5 Comments | Posted: April 8th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing, Wacky Out Of Context Panels | Tags: heroes world
Do you think that in some meeting at Heroes World, there was a manager that insisted that some kid, somewhere would be all Hank Venture over this ad? “Holy moses, you guys! It’s Logan’s Run numbers 1, 5, and 6? In the same package as Howard The Duck #3 and Red Sonja #5? This is an awesome deal, even without Ms Marvel #1! Let’s go get our nickels together!” ?
2 Comments | Posted: March 5th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: altered reality game, arg, boom studios
So, there’s this comic coming out by Mark Sable called Unthinkable and it’s about a top-secret thinktank and conspiracies and military actions and all of that stuff. It sounds like the sort of high-quality, high-concept thing that BOOM! is known for, and they’ve done something pretty notable this time around, creating an Altered Reality Game for the book where you can be assigned missions and inform the backstory of the comic before it even comes out. You can read more on their site about the title and the game.
(As much as I hate to admit it, this is a pretty clever thing Ian Brill, Chip Mosher and the gang came up with. I’m not the sort of person who goes for ARGs (as I spend most of my gaming time in Liberty City, enjoying the fine murder simulator that is Grand Theft Auto 4, but I know there’s a whole audience that eats this sort of thing up. Hell, if Nine Inch Nails can get a bunch of fans to dedicate themselves to cryptography and geocaching, then comic book readers are an easy-as-hell mark.)
5 Comments | Posted: March 1st, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing
26 Comments | Posted: February 24th, 2009 | Filed under: Reader Participation, Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: buffy, dark tower, the stand
This article from Publishers Weekly has me thinking about outreach efforts like this, and I’d really love some anecdotal evidence from the funnybook slingers out there. This quote stands out to me, from Marvel’s David Gabriel:
Again the comic shops have the ability to reach a huge number of consumers as well. Look at the amount of fans driven into stores for the Death of Captain America, the unmasking of Spider-Man, the Dark Tower comics launch, and recently the Amazing Spider-Man #583 featuring Barack Obama on the cover. We’re pretty certain that this book has the potential to bring thousands of new faces into comic shops and from there be introduced to a whole new world of graphic novels.
In my (admittedly
very narrow, as I am extremely part time) experience with the buyers that come in specifically for property-oriented works like
The Stand and
Buffy, I’ve seen a distinct disinterest in anything that’s
not those books. My local shop maintains a pull-box just for these customers and even mentioning good, accessible work like Whedon’s stint on
Astonishing X-Men or the future-Slayer book
Fray when they pick up their books has been met with a collective cold shoulder. Those readers seem to just want their Buffy or their Stephen King or Angel or whatever. Have there been retailers that have been able to to convert these readers into real customers with an interest in the medium at large? What’s their secret?
25 Comments | Posted: January 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: dc, marvel, twitter
A lot of people are touting social media and how it’s changed how fans interact with brands, claiming that it allows for transparency and a level of engagement that goes above and beyond websites and blogs. Jennifer Van Grove at Mashable wrote a great blog entry about the best Twitter brands and the people behind them. While it’s interesting to see how companies and their customers interact publicly, it’s also important to note how professional these exchanges are.
And when you think of professionalism, Marvel Comics immediately springs to mind. Let’s look at the following exchange between a fan of the publishing concern and the company’s official Twitter account.
To review: a fan mentions that they read ten Marvel comics this weekend, and got rid of 20 weeks’ worth of DC’s weekly Trinity, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. They are told, by a Marvel representative, that they’re amazed that someone could/would read 20 issues of this comic. (The original Marvel tweet has since been deleted, but someone smarter than me screencapped it and sent it my way.)
Kurt Busiek is currently writing a sequel to his Marvels series for the publisher. Marvels was a crown jewel in the publisher’s line through the 90s and continues to sell well for them because it’s actually very good. Mark Bagley was a mainstay of the Spider-Man titles through the 90s and drew over 100 consecutive issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, a title that helped the company’s publishing division ride the success of the cinematic version of the character to financial solvency.
In other words, to get a cheap shot at their perceived “competition,” a Marvel representative threw two of their most respected creators under the bus. This “competition,” by the way, has been blown vastly out of proportion over the years mostly by Marvel and its fans. While I can appreciate the tongue-in-cheek tone they’ve embraced (“Not Brand Ecch” and “Distinguished Competition” being two of my favorite bits they’ve used,) there’s a distinct difference between winking at the readers and outright badmouthing of another publisher’s product. Despite the inflamed passions of fans on both ends of the spectrum, it’s not like either DC or Marvel’s comic book divisions are making cars – they’re putting out $3-$4 doses of serial entertainment. The closest thing to comics and how they’re purchased is America’s movie habit and while Fox and Paramount certainly compete for weekend dollars across America, you never see either studio trashing the other for the quality of product. (Most likely because they know that neither of them has a leg to stand on in that department.)
There’s room for more than one major company putting out comic books. That sort of dismissive, we’ll-finance-anyone used-car-salesman bullshit cheapens Marvel in multiple ways and while there’s plenty to say about DC’s inability to grasp Twitter and the like, I think it’d be better to not have said anything at all than indulge in cheap snark at the expense of your brand’s respectability.
23 Comments | Posted: January 14th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking About Comics, Thinking about Comics Marketing
I got an email from a friend of mine in the South today about how his local shop handled the Obama/Spider-Man cover. Please note that it contains racially-charged language that may be considered offensive but is still very much part of the vocabulary of people who really shouldn’t be slinging it around:
OK, here’s what happened at my LCS today. You are not going to fucking believe this…
Edited To Add::
The author of this email, Dr. K, has posted his story.
28 Comments | Posted: December 22nd, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: chris sims, flashback universe
Despite the fact that I’ll never tell him to his face, I consider Chris Sims to be one of my better friends, and was glad to hear that he had a new comic coming out through Flashbackuniverse.com. Unfortunately, they seem to have decided to use just the .cbr format for their offerings, which means that there’s too many steps between me and reading the comic.
Let’s say I heard about this Christmas comic Sims has done and want to enjoy it. To do this, I have to visit the Flashback Universe downloads page, where a link to download the comic is at the top of a long list of other comics set in the same world. I’m given the option to preview the story or download the file.
The links explaining what a CBR viewer is, how to display the comics, and explaining the file type are all fine and good, but people want content, not explanations from the internet, especially when it comes to entertainment. Heck, Zuda’s viewer is awkward as all get-out, but it takes just a click to get started with a comic, and when you’re trying to get people engaged with the content that you’re offering them, you want to remove any and all barriers between them and the product, especially if you’re offering it for free.
Here’s three things I would do if I were going to have Chris Sims write a comic story for me that I wanted as many people as possible to read:
- Give the comic its own page on the site that people can link to without saying “Go to the Downloads page, scroll down a bit, then click on the download button.” Make sure to include buttons that allow people to submit and vote for the comic on sites like Digg, and include a form that lets people share the link via email. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to spread the word for you, especially with a time-sensitive piece like a holiday comics story.
- I’d still offer .cbr downloadables as an option for people who are familiar with the format, but to make it easier for the vast majority of readers, I’d put the entire thing online as .jpgs and use either a web gallery (which Chris is doing on Action Age stories) or a content management system to display the pages in an easy-to-follow format.
- Having a more popular product is a problem most publishers I would want, I think, and if I were interested in making a little cash to cover my increased server costs that the former two items would incur, I’d include Google or Project Wonderful ads that are displayed above or below each new page.
I can see why Jim Shelly has chosen the method he’s using now: it’s easier on him to package the comics, but what’s easier on the publisher/producer/etc usually makes it more difficult for the consumer/reader/fan.
Edited To Add: Flashback does offer a serialized webcomic on the site: Mr Crimson, which gets a new page every week. While I prefer the larger-dose-per-installment formula, it’s a way to get people back to the site on a regular basis.
Even more edited to add: There’s now a webcomics/gallery version of Chris Sims’s Christmas story for Flashback, “Saturn Knight Before Christmas” available.
54 Comments | Posted: December 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: design
The other day, Bully pointed me towards a fun-looking book design challenge over on Typophile. There’s some really nice work there using a simple set of basics: take the title of a random Wikipedia article, go to the Life archives on Google and use that article title as a search term, and go to town. While some people seem to have never actually seen a book in their lives, others came up with “covers” that made me stop and think about reaching for my wallet. (The Bordeaux Wine Regions one is just perfect, as is the “book” featuring Haydn’s Symphony No. 79.)
This, of course, got me to thinking about how comics, particularly the ones coming from DC and Marvel, compare in design to what’s on the book market lately and what I would do to sell graphic novels and trade paperback collections alongside Twilight and whatever adventure Tom Clancy’s Op Center has found themselves on this time. A lot of the design concerns of comics that come from their days as newsstand periodicals (logo on top) and the direct market reaction to those (tiered displays that only show the top 25-30% of a book) disappear in the book market, where tables and full-flush displays give people a view of the whole cover.
It goes without saying (but I suppose I should say it anyway) that I didn’t create these to slight the original artists who worked on any of these series at all, but to work on these purely as marketing and design exercises and think of how comics are presented to the world outside of the direct market. There are quite a few companies (Top Shelf, Fantagraphics,) creators (Bryan Lee O’Malley, Chris Ware,) and designers (Ch*p K*dd that create books that look terrific when they’re in the wild, but I think a lot of the comic book design mentality revolves around a culture that already exists, particularly in the case of Marvel and DC’s superhero lines.
One of the things that comes up when I’m throwing the design football back and forth with Birdie is that Daredevil books rarely look as good and noiry as they should. The recent paperback reprints of Miller’s run on the title feature near-identical covers and blur together while the Omnibus editions are attractive, but priced far out of the reach of the casual buyer. (Also: as far as I can tell, The Man Without Fear is currently out of print. Why would you want a book by Frank Miller to be available with his directorial debut hitting theaters soon, anyway? Toby in the comments points out that a new edition hit comic shops yesterday, but it’s not on Amazon yet. Heh.)
With this cover, I opted for a photograph of New York City during a blackout (obtained through the Life online archives.) It’s an evocative image that represents the blind vigilante: the city, dark except for a single shining building in the foreground with a river of light in front of it. The blurring on the title is a fairly-obvious pun, but it looked too nice to resist. I played around with the text’s placement for quite some time before opting for a forced perspective that called back to my favorite logo for the original series.
Speaking of fairly obvious, I’ve made it easy to deduce that Whiteout is about a murder in a place where there’s a lot of snow. (This time, it’s Antarctica.) This one’s more rough concept than actual cover, because given the chance, I’d probably attempt to create this photographically with snow and fake (or real, if I had an intern handy) blood. One of the posters for the upcoming film version uses a similar idea, and I know I got the blood splatter’s angle from Watchmen without even looking. If you’re going to steal, there are many, many worse people to swipe from than Dave Gibbons.
Honestly, this was mostly a reaction to how ugly I thought the recent direct market edition of Welcome Back Frank was. Three different fonts, two different versions of the skull icon, and the book’s title was buried at the bottom? What a mess. Ideally, this would be printed with a flat matte black-and-grey background with the type featuring a nice coating, helping sell the whole “handbook” look and feel a bit more.
(It’d be a fun challenge to design a whole Punisher Max series using a similar motif, with cover elements that relate to the story. While I may avoid Twilight and its brethren like the plague, I think the covers do a nice job of being different from one another while providing a unified look for the series.)
So blatant. I should be embarrassed, but I’m not, mostly because I think the original photo is quite nice on its own, plus that font does a lot of heavy lifting. I was initially looking for images that features a single man in a crowd or sea of women, but I like this because it represents a quiet moment away from the maddening life he’d soon find himself on. The only changes I’d make is to add a monkey if I were going to commission a photo that did the same thing.
While it’s unlikely that something like The Sinestro Corps War or New Avengers could sell to a much larger market, standalone books or series that require very little knowledge in the way of continuity outside of the titles themselves could show elevated sales if they didn’t look so offputting to a lot of people. Marvel and DC have crafted brands that work terrifically in the direct market, but in the book world, content comes before publisher, and that’s how I approached this project.
3 Comments | Posted: December 5th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing
Is it just me or do things like this stick out like a sore thumb to everyone else when they come across them? I wonder if Comicraft’s paid for the space and not replaced their ad or if there’s just no one else paying for that space to be occupied and Publishers Weekly is just letting it fester. You’d think that both parties would be interested in maximizing the dollars that space could be creating.
(Or maybe the bullet that hit the rest of online advertising means that no one really cares about a skyscraper ad on a popular comics blog. It’s not worth fixing for Comicraft because it costs so little and it’s not worth switching over for PW because, hey, it’s only making $5 a week.)
11 Comments | Posted: November 28th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: comic shops, comics marketing
I’ve been asked if I’d like to redesign my local comic shop’s website, as I do that internet marketing thing for my day job and have been kvetching about the damned thing for ages. As it stands, it uses a Flash landing page and a color scheme that is, at the very least, difficult on the eyes, as it employs orange text on a white background, something I believed the UN declared to be torture in the mid-90s. I have some pretty clear ideas about what I want to do with it: blog integration, easily updated content, improved navigation, and making sure some very basic information (location, phone number, and hours) are available on each and every page, but I also wanted to make sure that I knew what to avoid, so I started browsing.
Names, addresses, phone numbers, etc have been erased to protect the guilty.
This popular comics shop’s site uses gray-on-gray text in its navigation and header (where the address is located) and while I appreciate clean design and white space, but I don’t know if a particularly buxom Mary Jane Watson giving readers a come-hither look is an image I’d use to promote my shop versus, say, a picture of my shop or text that describes the shop or this week’s releases or my shop’s blog, which could include the three previous items. I mean, I like large-breasted redheads as much as the next guy, but if I’m looking to find out what came in this week, that chick’s just in my way, man.
One thing of note: this retailer’s site does feature a well-written, informative blog that manages to sell and point people in the right direction without slapping NOT BUY on things and feeling smug about their superiority. Unfortunately, it’s hosted on Blogspot and displayed in a frame, meaning that the content isn’t associated with the shop in the eyes of search engines. In other words, people who get to the shop through searches looking for reviews and release lists would get the Blogspot version of the blog, not the one that’s on their site. You can also use that blog’s links to go back to the shop’s website in a window on its own website in a recursive loop.
This shop has a domain that I would pay real money for, if I were going to launch an online comics shop.
It also displays what happens when people don’t spend a couple of hundred dollars on getting a good, informative, three-or-four page site on the internet. There’s no proper metatagging and no useful information is available to search engines because of the way they’re using Javascript to display copy on the pages, and worst of all: there is no phone number or address for the business on the homepage. In fact, it took me a little while to realize what the name was.
This is a local shop that’s very well-regarded for being an indie icon, where minicomics and small press books rule while the staff sneers down at you from on high. It’s interesting, then, that a shop that displays the new Kramer’s Ergot it its window has set up its virtual presence in the place where people debate whether Angel would be a top or bottom when having his way with Worf.
That said, at least they’ve got their contact information front and center.
Don’t do this. Just don’t.
These guys have created an ugly, ugly site (seriously, the below-the-fold on-page copy reads like it was created by a keyword-spouting bot) that ranks well for the term “comic shop.” Seriously, here’s a sample:
Comics for sale include collectible comics like Archie, Action, King, Paul Terry, Phantom, Seaboard, Superman, Batman, Detective, Fantastic Four, Green Lantern, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, X-Men, Spawn, Little Lulu, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich, GI Joe, Transformers, Warren Magazines, Wonder Woman, Vampirella. Used comics with genres like Anime, Big Little Books, Crime, Funny Animals, Religious, Romance, Mystery, Horror, Graphic Novels, Manga, TV Comics, Movie, Newspaper Strips, Sci-fi, War, Western and alternate and independent publishers Antarctic, Kitchen Sink, Bongo, Caliber, Valiant, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Whitman and Quality in reading grades as well as collector grade comics for sale.
Big blocks of keyword-heavy text may get you rankings (at least until Google changes its algorithm), but they don’t increase conversions one bit. Especially if the shop’s address is nowhere to be found. Nor did I catch the name of the shop until I noticed the smallish logo in the top left corner.
Finally, here’s a site that I can point out and link to because the shitty, shitty comics shop it was related to finally closed after clinging to the underbelly of the Las Vegas comic book scene for far too long. I went to Kool Kollectables once and hated it enough to write about it. It’s not just one or two things that made this website fail: every single page is an abomination and representative of exactly how most comic shops present themselves both online and in person. Spend some time and click around. Savor the Lady Death background images and suddenly-changing header graphics while you marvel at the the copiously-deployed BLINK tags and poor grammar.
Sometime next week, I’ll point out shops that I think do things very well and why. This time around, i won’t have to obscure any names. I hope.
18 Comments | Posted: October 1st, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: primortals
Put your answers in the comments.
12 Comments | Posted: September 25th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: minx
Here’s five reasons Minx died fairly young.
5.
DC didn’t include a free 16-pack of Crayola pencils with each book.
4.
No Geoff Johns? No teenage mutilation? No deal!
3.
Needed more yaoi.
2.
No crossovers. A The New York Four Meet Kimmie 666 would have forced fans of one to buy both titles.
1.
I honestly think it was marketing. I saw no posters or copies of the Minx books outside of the direct market – something I was looking for at local and chain bookstores following the announcement that Cecil Castellucci was involved and googling her name because it sounded sort of familiar. The initial New York Times Article mentioned that there was a “significant” marketing budget in place with Alloy Marketing + Media handing the campaign, but I never saw where it was being spent. That could just be because I’m outside of the target audience, but the fact that the people at Porter Square Books, which has a respectable young adult and kidlit section hadn’t heard of the books – especially The Plain Janes was part of the first wave was hitting says something to me.
But, as Spurgeon says in his post-game analysis, every market failure can be blamed on marketing. One of the big factors cited in his piece was shelving: when I saw the titles in the wild, they were lumped in with the manga and Marvel collections, not the YA section. This would be a key factor in your success, especially when the people who wrote and sold many copies of Flirting in Cars and The Queen Of Cool are your authors. I’d certainly place “Putting Things Where They Should Sell” under the “marketing” umbrella, even if Shannon Smith seems to separate shelving and marketing in her comments.1 The last two times I saw Minx operating in any sort of marketing complex is working within the imprint’s already-existing niche: a table at MoCCA 2008 gave away galley copies of this year’s titles and the group sponsored the most recent Friends of Lulu awards. These are not events where young adult women unaware of the brand are likely to gather in significant numbers.
I’m not going to act like there’s not other factors, though. A majority of the books were fairly indistinguishable from the others at a glance. It’s telling that I never remember the title of one of the books I enjoyed reading and those that I do remember generally fall into the “interesting failure” area or were out and out disappointments. I know that I wasn’t the only person who was puzzled at the ending of The Plain Janes, which seemed to just halt suddenly instead of providing a proper finale, a problem that would have been alleviated with a simple number on the spine or some other notation that it was the first in a series. The one title I was really gung-ho about, The New York Four, was unlike any other Minx book, feeling more like a thematic cousin to creators Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly’s Local than the quirky elevator pitches that marked most of the other books.
No matter what the factors were in the imprint’s failure, Minx was a victim of numbers more than anything else. While Oni Press and the like can get by selling mid-market black and white graphic novels and getting the occasional Hollywood option to shore up finances, expectations for any DC imprint are likely to be much, much higher.
1I should note that In Spurgeon’s piece, Shannon Smith states that the venture seemed very well-marketed towards Borders compared to other DC and Marvel efforts, but it was dwarfed by the dog and pony show the manga publishers put on each month.
15 Comments | Posted: September 18th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: comics marketing, facebook
Facebook is one of the best timekillers/ad display ideas that’s come across in quite some time. Where MySpace reveled in its Geocities-meets-Friendster garishness, Facebook made everyone conform to some sort of design standard and made sure that nobody in the office would know you were visiting the site due to an errant profile blaring “Crank That.” It gives you one “landing page” that lets you see whatever activity your friends wish to share with you and access to the various applications you may want to use.
As a marketing tool, it offers a nice extension of your brand, giving people who enjoy your comic book/strip a place to gather and talk about your projects:
However, this is why I would never, ever use it as my sole online presence versus having my own domain as the primary point of contact between me and the customer base:
Despite the fact that Facebook is free and super-easy to get involved with, that little login section is a barrier between the customer and you. Marketing is, at its core, about eliminating those barriers and making sure that your audience is able to listen to what you’re trying to say with as little work as possible.
More and more I’m seeing creators (such as Billy Tucci in Chris Sims’s comments) using Facebook as their main method of communicating to their fans. While I can see the appeal: it’s free and easy as hell, it’s not an example of reaching out with your message. Instead, Facebook groups and the like are preaching to the choir: people that have already added you as a contact. They know what you’re selling. Throw in the fact that all of your content is hidden from the search engines because of its closed system and it’s plain to see that Facebook is lousy for acquiring active, inquisitive customers unless you’ve got a social media manager doing the heavy lifting and customer engagement for you.
It boils down to this: If you’re serious about your product, you should have your own domain. If you can’t spend $10 a month maintaining your own domain, then maybe you’re not serious enough about your business. Business cards and emails shouldn’t feature a url like http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26254088540 or http://www.myspace.com/therackcomic on them: they should present something that anyone can type in within seconds and look at what you’re trying to sell, be it www.therackcomic.com or http://www.dccomics.com.
Once you’re up and running, it’s important to note that almost every webhost in the world allows you to add a new domain to your existing account with them for the cost of registering a URL. With Dreamhost, it’s literally two minutes from “I want to buy a domain” to starting the initial stages of development, which in many cases could be a basic Wordpress installation, a template that will be customized, and a nice gallery package: perfect for title-specific websites. A great example of this is PhonogramComic.com, even with their “click here to enter” front page.
It’s easier than ever for creators and publishers to have a platform that allows people from anywhere in the world to see what they have to offer. Facebook and the like provide an easy way to do things, but it’s not the best way. Each new project is a chance to sell more of your work to new people – do the lifting so they don’t have to. Use social media and networking sites to fire up your existing base and keep them abreast of things, but use the web to get new people on board.
6 Comments | Posted: September 8th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: comics marketing, crystal fractal comics, web marketing
Crystal Fractal Comics (which is located, counter-intuitively, at crystalfractals.com and not crystalfractalcomics.com) is a small publisher of superhero comics located in Toronto. They, like a couple-dozen other comics companies (cf Platinum Studios) that have cropped up in the last few years or so, are “seeking to diversify the industry through the dynamic storylines and characters of its titles.”
Apparently, they include Batman among those characters:
The graphic on that sidebar there doesn’t act like an ad on the web should: there’s no way to click through to get more information about The Dark Knight, so why’s it there? Here’s three theories.
- They want people visiting the site to go “Oh, these people are involved in licensing comics properties! Properties like Batman! Maybe they can get me Aquaman!”
- Similarly: “Batman endorses them! I trust Batman! I will do business with these people!”
- Crystal Fractal Comics offers advertising space on their site and they slapped a graphic in that spot as a placeholder. However, instead of sticking in an ad for said space, they thought The Dark Knight would look nicer there.
I suspect the third, which is the most innocuous choice, but I’m of the attitude that smaller publishers benefit very little by having ads for other companies or products on their site: they likely don’t get the traffic that could command a high enough rate for it to make any real difference in their finances, and their brand impression becomes muddled right off the bat. Someone like me (and likely the sort of person who buys up superheroes and the like for the screen) thinks that if a publisher can’t afford the $12-20 a month that hosting a website like that would cost without throwing ads on their front page, then maybe they shouldn’t be in the game to begin with.
(A side note: If you’ve been to the Marvel Comics site, you might have seen what is an amusing phenomenon: DC animated projects advertised on the site’s homepage, likely through a mass media buy done through Warner Brothers. Right now, Heroes (a Universal property) is sponsoring episodes of X-Men: Evolution on the Marvel site, and the comics related to that series are published by Warner Brothers, so I suspect that at that point, the money becomes impressive enough to ignore pesky things like brand solidarity. This is probably doubly true since Marvel became its own production house and is looking for better distribution deals for the films.)
