Posted in: Comics | Tagged: archaia, boom, comicon, idw, image comics, Independent Comics, san diego, sdcc

Rise Of The Independents – How To Market Books Outside Of The Big Two

Published Wed, 24 Jul 2013 21:00:25 -0500

Joshua Stone writes for Bleeding Cool:

This panel was moderated by John Siuntres, host of the Word Balloon podcast. The panel was made up of the top marketing people from the different independent comic book publishers. Ron Richards was there for Image, Filip Sablik and Stephen Christy were there for Boom/Archaia, and Dirk Wood was there for IDW.

The first question asked was whether superheroes made sense for the indy comic book companies. Ron gave his personal opinion, not that of Image Comics, and said he thinks Marvel and DC have cornered the market on superheroes. Any book from an indy is fighting 75 years of Superman and 50 years of Spider-Man. Filip felt indys can do superhero books, but they have to be done a different way. Current examples of this that the panel gave were Suicide Risk and Deathmatch. At this point Ron added, regardless of what he said before, he does believe that Invincible is one of the best superhero books on the market.

Filip talked about how Image has done a great job in defining their place and space in the market. As an example, he said a book like Chew could not exist anywhere but with Image. Ron said that throughout the con, the lines for John Layman (Chew writer) and Rob Guillory (Chew artist) have been incredible.

The panel was next asked about how they present books to libraries. Dirk said this was very easy for My Little Pony, as it has just sold itself. Filip said the same was the case for Adventure Time. A licensed product, done well, is an easy sell. Ron said that when companies come to him about licensing their characters, he recommends other companies, because it's not what Image does.

Stephen said that Mouse Guard allowed Archaia to get into the libraries. This then made it easier to get books like Rust and Cow Boy to follow suit. Ron said that he attended the American Library Associate Annual Conference this year, and that libraries look at age group and book format when it comes to stocking books, not the creators. When he spoke to librarians about Peter Panzerfaust they loved the idea, but they deflated when they heard it wasn't hardcover. This pushed Image to make the decision to release a 10-issue hardcover of the book.

The talk of hardcover books got Stephen to mention how disappointed he was in the poor quality hardcover books that Marvel and DC release. He said that they use glue for binding that will definitely deteriorate and breakdown. There was mostly universal agreement from the panel and the audience on this issue.

The next topic was the use of Social Media as a marketing tool. Filip said that the most important thing about using social media is that you engage fans in an authentic conversation. He also said it is very effective for use with licensed products, as you can more easily hit the fans of that audience who are not the Wednesday comic book store customers.

Ron thought that social media was overrated and that there is too much noise on that channel. He said Image uses the Image Expo to announce their new products to avoid all the tv and movie noise that blocks out comics at SDCC.

During the audience Q&A, someone asked about the distribution of books through something other than the comic book stores, and Filip mentioned that Boom is getting ready to pick books into Costco. I caught him after the panel and he expanded on this and let me know that they were starting it as a limited trial in Costco Canada only, and that it would be the Adventure Time books.

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