A school of thought that has become prevailant in the comic book industry is the idea of “if you built it, they will come.” In other words, the act of creating and printing a comic book will automatically result in sales. Comic creators believe this, a lot of comic book publishers believe this and even some online comic distributors believe this. My automatic response would be to call these people “morons,” but I’m in a good mood today and will just call them “uneducated.”
The problem with a lot of indy comics is that they are created without an iota of thought towards commercial success or a book’s target market. The majority of comic creators and comic book publishers create a book with the ideo of selling it to comic book buyers. They are attempting to sell their book based on its format and not its content, which is incredibly near-sighted and leads to commercial failure in almost all cases.
If you are looking for any level of commercial success then you should be thinking about your potential market and your book’s target niche from the very beginning. Properly aiming your book at a niche is as important a part of the creative process and should be tied in to every stage of comic book creation – doing research, writing your story and even doing your artwork.
Finding a solid niche for your comic book (or any product, really) can be the key to a commercially successful, profitable business versus an obscure failure. Check out the above video for more info on how to do it.
-Mat Nastos
http://www.NiftyComics.com
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