comic book marketing Posts

Comic Book Marketing Techniques: Combat Customer Apathy – Ignore customers at your own risk

Keeping Your Readers Coming Back – A Primer

Hey there, guys and gals.  It’s Mat Nastos back again with another bit of marketing advice for your indie comic book publishing adventures.  Today I’m going to talk about how to keep from losing your audience while you are making it grow.

Stan Lee is a genius.  Everyone in the comic book industry knows it.  Unfortunately, most people don’t realize his true genius lies outside of having created Spider-man, the Hulk, the X-men and the Marvel Universe itself.  The real force behind the genius of Stan Lee was that he knew the reason why most businesses lose customers. 

I know what you’re saying to yourself right now.  You’re saying, What in the hell are you talking about, Mat, and what on Earth does it have to do with drawing the Wolverine?”  Truth be told, it has absolutely nothing to do with drawing the Wolverine and absolutely everything to do with why a lot of comic book publishers lose sales after their first issue and, eventually, cancel their comics.

The major reason why comic book publishers (and businesses in general) lose business is because of customer apathy.  In other words, most comic book publishers are chasing away customers by ignoring them after the initial sale.  Marketing experts estimate that over 65 percent of all business lost in the US is from apathy after the sale.  And even back at the beginning of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee knew this. (Read the rest of the article at http://comicbookmarketing.com/)

September 11, 2008 | 3 Comments

Comic Book Marketing, Part VII: Getting your affiliate program started

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. Read More »

March 29, 2008 | 2 Comments

Comic Book Marketing, Part VI: Target Your Niche and Increase Your Sales

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.” Read More »

March 28, 2008 | No Comments

Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part V: Blogging for Dollars and Why your Blog Sucks

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! Read More »

March 17, 2008 | No Comments

Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part IV: What the heck are “Affiliate Programs” and how do you get started with them?

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. Read More »

March 6, 2008 | 2 Comments

Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part II: 6 Internet Marketing Tips for Comic Book Publishers

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. Read More »

March 2, 2008 | No Comments

Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part I: An Introduction

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! Read More »

March 2, 2008 | No Comments

Affiliate Marketing for Comic Book Publishers, Part 1: Social Networking

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. Read More »

November 12, 2007 | No Comments

Comic Book Publishing — Marketing Techniques for Dummies

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. Read More »

September 19, 2007 | 1 Comment
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