Since I started this series of articles on marketing for comic book publishers I’ve been getting email questions from my readers (and watchers of the new videos). The most common question from comic publishers and creators so far is “What is an affiliate program and how do I get one started?” I hope to answers those questions in today’s video post. (more…)
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.” (more…)
I know a lot of comic book publishers and comic creators are already familiar with blogs, and many of them run blogs for their books. What I also know is the majority of them are doing it completely wrong. While it is a noble effort to run a personal journal or gallery blog, they do absolutely nothing to aid you in building either your brand presence or valid, targeted traffic that will help sell more comic books.
And, yes, I realize the top of my head is cut off in the post. I’m using a new camera and haven’t quite got it down yet! (more…)
Since I started my latest series of articles on marketing for comic book publishers I’ve received emails asking me about affiliate programs and what they are. The best way to describe what an affiliate is to someone is as a freelance commissioned sales person. An affiliate will go out and using whatever methods they specialize in will go out, market your product and refer sales back to you. These methods might be blogging, articles, PPC, coupons, classifieds or one of about a thousand other techniques.
It doesn’t matter how they do it, what matters is they bring sales to you in exchange for a commission that can be anywhere from 5% up to 50% or more. The percentage in any given case is determined by the company recruiting the affiliates and is based on what margins the company can give up and still make a decent profit. A lot of affiliate programs pay in the 8-12% range. As a comic publisher I’d probably offer around 25% of a sale to my affiliates. But that’s me. If you go too low, you won’t get anyone to sign up…too high and you won’t make any money. (more…)
Last time I talked about how to better leverage the internet to help build your sales and presence as a small press comic book publisher. I’ll be coming back to the internet and ways you can expand what you’re doing by using it, but right now I want to move to talk about a place that most small press comic publishers aren’t really doing much with — the offline world. Although, some of these tips do crossover with the online world as well.
In the past I’ve said over and over again “by focusing on the comic book industry you are limiting yourself — cutting your business off at the knees — by not opening up to the mainstream.” This is also true by limiting yourself only to the internet as an advertising platform. You might be surprised to hear me say that because of how I earn my living and my own love of the internet. But it’s true. Moving your branding offline and out in to the real world can be one of the best things you do for your business.
Now, I know a lot of you are saying “I go to comic conventions” or “I go out and talk to comic shops in my area.” You’re limiting yourself because the comic industry is a dead end for the indie comic publisher. It is — no one wants your books in the comic industry outside of other creators, and even they probably don’t want your books. However, the mainstream public will buy your book, you just have to let them know it.
What follows are 5 tips for marketing your comic books offline and how to start building your business locally. Remember, in spite of it being a global economy these days, every business is a local business and that is where you can start. (more…)
Most comic book publishers these days will have their own websites. The smart ones will have their own domains, the less-smart ones will only be on free hosts such as Myspace, Comicspace, Geocities or one of a thousand other choices. Unfortunately, most publishers stop there when it comes to their online presence.
Today I’m going to give you a list of 6 ways to expand your market by leveraging the Internet to its fullest extent. (more…)
In general, the comic book industry lacks business sense. This is almost universally true with comic shop owners, comic book publishers and comic creators. Just because you have a lot of comic books in your collection does not mean you have the ability to start and run a comic book store. And, just because you can write or draw does not mean you should publish your own books. Well, let me rephrase that, you can give it a try but odds are you are going to fail. I know as an indy publisher I’m supposed to be all warm and fuzzy when it comes to talking about creating comic books and the industry. However, while comic books are my first and one-true love, I love running a successful business almost as much and am not by any means a hobby publisher. If you’re a hobby publisher then this post is not for you. If you are interested in trying to take your business to the next level, then read on! (more…)
I’ve talked before about affiliate marketing and how it relates to the comic book industry. In fact, small press comic book publishers can learn a lot from affiliate marketers and how they earn their livings.
The first affiliate marketing technique every indy comic publisher should familiarize themselves with are the social networking tools. The biggest of these are Digg, Facebook and Technorati.
Become familiar with these sites and become comfortable in using them to promote yourself and your comics. Use them to make a name not only for your comic books but also for yourself. Stories about or by you that get picked up and go viral are just as important to the development of your brand as the ones on your comics are. (more…)
Greetings!
I get a lot of emails asking me about my thoughts on the state of the comic industry in general and about the state of the indy side of the industry in specific. It’s funny that I get this email because my actual involvement with the industry is very limited — I don’t really sell to many comic shops, I only do a couple of convention appearances a year and those are generally science fiction oriented ones (go BayCon!) and I don’t really participate in any of the thousands of comic message boards out there (sure, sometimes I get sucked in to posting a couple of responses on the Dimestore forums, but the overall attitude of comic “fans” these days really turns me off).
Now that I’ve written a few times about what I’ve done in order to get Cadre comic book sales up in nearly the 9000 copies sold per issue range the emails have changed focus to “what about comic book distribution.” The problem with emails like that is what the writer is actually saying between the lines: “Okay, now you’ve told me that selling comics on my own is hard work and I’m a lazy bastard, tell me how someone can create a new distributor because my books weren’t good enough to be picked up by Diamond.” Or “were picked up by Diamond but I don’t support my books with marketing or money to make them successful.”
Truthfully, for the industry as it is now, Diamond is great. Sure they don’t support indy books, but why should they? The majority of indy publishers think “advertising” or “marketing” means to set up an account on Myspace or ComicSpace. Sure they might be doing a couple of conventions or take their books around to some local shops so they can act like “big men on campus,” but they have no clue what it takes to run a successful business. (more…)
A friend of Nifty Comics and fellow indy publisher, Shawn Granger of King Tractor Press, asked me after my last post how we’re starting to hit semi decent sales now after a year and a half back at publishing. I actually get a lot of requests to go over the process — one guy emailed me after his saw the Cadre in a local Borders store up in Seattle — and so I thought I’d share what I sent him to see if it helps.
The first thing to keep in mind is that Nifty Comics has been around in various forms since 1995. We’ve run through Diamond and Capitol City (when they were around) in the past and had some pretty decent sales. During the comics boom in the mid-90s we had a mini series that sold right at 30,000 copies. Of course, this was when comics were selling hundreds of thousands and millions, so our numbers were considered crap for anyone trying to be serious publishers. A good thing that came out of it was that BKN International optioned a pilot of the Cadre. It didn’t go anywhere, but it’s pretty cool to have a 20 minute animated version of a comic I created.
We run a couple of issues post-crash, but the numbers were abyssmal — under 1000 (under 500, actually) through Diamond, direct to stores and FM International. Although the books we ran were all “Small Press Spotlights” and received great reviews. (more…)
