Posted in: Comics, Indie Comics | Tagged: kickstarter, next door

Comics Journalist Tries Comics Publicity… Fails

Published Sun, 30 Aug 2020 07:30:06 -0500

Zack Quaintance writes for Bleeding Cool: I've written about comics for a few years now, both on the blog I created — Comics Bookcase — and as a staff writer at The Beat. In the service of that, I've easily read several hundred press releases promoting all manner of comic books, from high-production Big 2 corporate comics to abstract comics made by far-flung solo creators. It's been a trip. Then in August, all of a sudden, I found myself having to actually write my own comics press release when I launched a Kickstarter for my debut as a comics writer, Next Door.

And, I will admit, I was not good at it. Moreover, I was not good at comics promotion in general. I biffed basically all of it, and I'm more than happy to tell you the embarrassing specifics of it. But first, a word about my comic Next Door. It's a 30-page crime comic one-shot set in California amid the backdrop of the housing crisis. It's about a night of violence that erupts between neighbors, born of paranoia, by intruding privileged gentrifiers toward long-time residents who are being pushed out. In this book, you'll find hints of The Dregs, some of the timely themes of Bttm Fdrs, and the over-the-top dark sense of humor from Stray Bullets.

Comics Journalist Tries Comics Publicity...Fails — Comics artwork from Next Door. Art by Pat Skott

I wanted to share that now to point out how far my marketing on this thing has come. That spiel above is…I think pretty good, mostly. To really appreciate it, you have to see where I started. I have since scorched all evidence of it from the Internet, but I think my original elevator pitch for this thing was, "It's Death of a Salesman meets Noah Baumbach movies plus also Ed Brubaker!" I'm not entirely sure my own mother would have backed that. Maybe she'd have picked the NO REWARD tier. Maybe.

The other mistake I made was not posting all the preview pages we completed on our campaign page at launch. Super talented artist Pat Skott mostly does the linework for our book; we're Kickstarting to get it colored by Ellie Wright and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. In advance, we paid out of pocket to finish a four-page preview…and it turned out great, encapsulating our characters, hinting at our conflict, and foreshadowing darkness to come. It's good, and yet I decided it best only to share two non-sequential pages (I just sighed and put a hand to my head).

I eventually corrected this, I rewrote my book descriptions, and we've had a higher-than-usual middle portion of our campaign as a result. I've always believed in our comic. It's a story about danger where you live, compounded by communities not trusting each other, and I think in 2020, we can all relate to that. I just underestimated the skill it required to get all of that across to potential backers and readers.

I'll close with a final shameful confession — as a comics journalist; I've underappreciated folks who do make a living marketing and promoting comics. I've ignored press releases, reacted irritably to pitches, and bristled at requests for coverage. I never understood how integral promo was in connecting strong work with audiences who will love and appreciate it, especially in an industry as high on options and short on intuitive new release tracking mechanisms as comics. Marketing feels like a dirty word, but it's integral to the health of Team Comics. Anyway, have I mentioned you can back Next Door on Kickstarter now? Oh! And enjoy this Next Door cover by the fantastic artist Anna Readman. I also inexplicably did not roll out at project launch…by the way, if we hit $8,000 by campaign close on Friday, we'll be adding a short story featuring that Very Good Boy below.