On Facebook
On Twitter
On Google+
On YouTube
On Linked In
On IMDB
On Amazon
On SmashWordsA 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 »
Nifty Comics Posts
Nifty Comics on WOWIO!
Hoooooo!
That’s right, Nifty Comics has teamed up with Wowio.com to offer all of our comics for free online. As a comic book fan myself, I know one of the toughest things is to pick-up a new comic book sight-unseen. To address that problem, Nifty Comics is now offering all of our back issues FREE on Wowio.com. All you have to do is complete their free registration and you can get on with downloading the adventures of your favorite indy superheroes for absolutely free as downloadable PDFs. You’ll find the link to all of our books below. Check ‘em out!
Nifty Comics on Wowio.Com for FREE!
Cadre Volume 1 TPB Now Available!
Yo, yo!
This is just a quick announcement to let everyone know that the first Cadre trade paperback volume is now back from the printer and available for purchase in our online store. Here is the solicitation blurb:
When the citizens of Empire City face almost certain annihilation at the hands of a supernatural foe they can’t begin to understand, where do the turn? They turn the Cadre. An elite team of superheroes, each with powers and abilities far beyond that of normal folks, The Cadre band together to prevent the destruction of their city, and decide to stay together to continue combating threats only they can handle. The Cadre Volume 1 Trade Paperback collects issues 1-5 of the acclaimed ongoing series, and includes never before seen sketchbook material and a rare look from script to finished inks. 150 pages, loaded with extras!
Click here to find out more or to purchase Cadre Volume 1 TPB!
Bite Me, Fanboy the Movie: Blooper Reel
Check out the blooper reel we put together for the DVD release of “Bite Me, Fanboy” the movie. This was filmed in 2001 and features the entire cast and crew. For more information on “Bite Me, Fanboy” the movie on DVD, Click HERE.
BUY “Bite Me, Fanboy” on DVD HERE.
Fionn Issue #1
With our newest series, Nifty Comics moves into the realm of fantasy with FIONN #1.
James Andrews has been haunted by dreams of gods and demons for his entire life. These visions have focused around the life of an ancient Celtic hero known as Fionn who battled the evil god, Balor, and his legions of Fomorians, an army of giants and monsters. On his 21st birthday, James discovers that those dreams are real and that he is Fionn reborn once more.
FIONN #1 brings the rich history and mythology of Scotland to the world of comic books. A new Scottish hero is born! Read More »
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 »
The Ancient Chinese Secret for Indy Comic Sales and the History of Nifty Comics
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. Read More »
The Cadre ranks in Diamond’s Top 300 Comics Sold…well, kind of…
I’ve been neglecting Nifty Comics a bit lately because of my other work. As most of you reading this know, I do a lot of film and television work in addition to running a small internet business outside of the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, that stuff takes up most of my time…as you can probably tell from the fact that the Nifty Comics website hasn’t been updated in a few months (heck, the last comic we put up for direct order was Cadre #4 and Cadre #7 was just released in stores!). I’m hoping to change that and get back to posting once a week, along with adding more content to the “Storytelling” section of the website. In theory, anyway.
Well, this weekend I’ve spent a lot of time working on getting the Nifty Comics house back in line and one of the things I did was send out all of the Cadre #7 orders to retailers, distributors and fans who have ordered the issue. I knew that we had a little over 7000 preorders back in August but what I very quickly realized was that we’d sold out almost completely of the entire 8000 unit print run we’d done. By “almost completely” I mean “I’ve got about 15 copies left and that’s it.” That’s right, Cadre #7 has sold more copies in its first month than any other normal issue we’ve done. Fionn #1 sold more but it was a special issue done for an event which boosted sales on it. Now, all of the past issue have sold around that number or more over time (Cadre #1 is up around 15,000 units sold), but this is the first time we’ve hit 8,000 units at release.
I was excited about the number, but not overly so because we’ve been selling pretty well for the past year. I wasn’t excited, that is, until someone suggested I take a look a Diamond’s Top 300 Comics and see where I would rank with those numbers. Read More »
Success Kills — why more comic sales might not be a good thing!
I like to ramble on in this space from time to time about my experiences as an independent comic book publisher. Recently I wrote about some of the things I do to expand the sales and reach for the comics I publisher under the Nifty Comics banner. I also talked about how our initial orders (meaning upfront orders that come in either before printing or right as the comics are released in the first week afterwards) have started to hit the 8000 mark.
Now, I’m going to tell you why getting 8000 in sales can be a bad thing if you’re not ready for them. (read entire article at www.ComicBookMarketing.com)
