Who are you?

I’ve recently been testing out some tactics on WordPress to boost readers of this site.  Posting more often, being more interactive, checking out the blogs of others.  And it’s helped.  Views have steadily been going up.  But I quickly grew uncomfortable with this idea of self-promotion, because it turned people into numbers and I’m a little grossed out by that.  I had to reevaluate the purpose of this site.

I realized my real goal is not to boost readership, but to boost relationships.  

So, with that in mind – I want to get to know you as a person, not as a number.  Maybe you’re a new visitor, maybe you’ve been coming by for a long time, maybe you’re a friend or family member, whatever it may be, I invite you to fill out this little quiz and post your response in the comments.

1. Where are you from?

2. What is your creative passion?

3. What is your favorite Tom Cruise movie?

4. Which author (alive or dead, fiction or non-fiction) would you want writing your biography?

5. Do you have a blog or other online home?  If so, where can I find it?

I’m gonna try to keep this a regular thing, post one of these every couple of weeks. Look forward to getting to you know you!

Empathy

All wars begin because of one thing.  Romantic break-ups, political disagreements, family fall-outs, religious persecution… all because we lack EMPATHY:

The ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others.

If you want a successful marriage, if you want a successful business partnership, if you want a successful marketing campaign with your clients or customers – the key is empathy.  It’s not about convincing someone else what you want, but it’s finding what the other person needs.  And the only way to do that is to put yourself in their shoes.

I had an old friend contact me the other day for coffee.  I hadn’t seen him in years and thought it would be good to catch up.  But the moment we sat down, he goes into a pitch on something he’s trying to sell me.  He only cared about what he wanted at that moment.  He could care less about what I needed.  And I haven’t talked to him since.  A much wiser decision would’ve been to catch up, build a relationship, get to know me on a personal level and find out if I even needed what he was offering.

Why do we have such a hard time with empathy?  I think mostly because it’s difficult.  It takes work.  It’s much easier for us to corner ourselves off in this black and white world where we are always right.  Where the world revolves around us.  Where all relationships exist to help us reach our goals.

Just about every time I see my step-dad, we argue over politics.  He tries to convince me that his political beliefs are “right” and mine are “wrong.”  I always kind of laugh and shrug it off (he doesn’t care for this response).  But what does he gain from me agreeing with him?  What does he lose by me disagreeing with him?

Because the moment we clash with someone who might have a different perspective, our black and white world becomes grey and all those walls we’ve built up around ourselves crumble.

Being empathetic is being vulnerable.

It’s not enough to just assume what the other person wants (humans are really bad guessers) but we have to actually communicate to find that out.  Listen to your clients.  Listen to your spouse.  Don’t try to impose your view on them, but accept their view as their own and figure out how you can serve that view.

We all come from different walks of life and we are going to have different needs, but it’s important to realize that it doesn’t make one person wrong and one person right, it just makes us different.  And we have to celebrate those differences, not impose our point of view on everyone else.

What can you do differently this week to empathize with your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, co-worker, boss, mom, dad, brother, sister, friend, neighbor, fan or client?

How to be the Steve Jobs & Walt Disney of your industry.

Here’s another great post by the king of great posts, Seth Godin, in which he proposes “an antidote to a corporatized, unfeeling, profit-maximizing world.”

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, no matter how creative or rewarding, I can bet with 100% certainty that it often feels corporatized, unfeeling, and profit-maximizing.  Your industry will probably chew you up and spit out your soul.  There’s a good chance your industry will take all of your wide-eyed ideological wonder and turn it into bitterness and regret.  So how do you slay these cynical dragons of crass commercialism?

Godin gives us examples: “No one reports liking Steve Jobs very much, yet he was as embraced as any businessperson since Walt Disney.”  Steve Jobs.  Walt Disney.  These are men that we remember for their brands, Apple & Disney respectively, not for their personality.  Brands that not only sold a product, but sold a lifestyle, that sold passion and heart.  What did these two men do to elevate these brands above their corporatizing, unfeeling, profit-maximizing worlds?

According to Godin, THEY CARED.  He suggests that we have to care about the people we are marketing to, and that we have to care about our product.  And that’s certainly true.  These two men were so successful because they were passionate about their craft.  They didn’t make products for a target audience, they made products for themselves.  No one loved Apple products as much as Jobs and no one loved Disney movies as much as Disney.  Their passion comes through in their product.

I feel like the “care more” mantra is cut short though.  I believe that what you really have to do is care more about your product than you do about yourself.

Jobs & Disney certainly weren’t ego-less, but their goal was not to get famous, rich, or universally loved.  Their goal wasn’t even necessarily success.  Their goal was to make the BEST PRODUCT POSSIBLE.  And when that’s your central goal, all of those other things will follow.

As a writer, it’s easy to get frustrated that I’m not at a certain level or not making a certain amount of money or not attracting a certain kind of attention from certain types of people.  What kind of stories am I going to generate from this mindset?  Stories of bitterness and cynicism.  Stories that no one wants to read.

If it’s my ambition to find personal success, then the message I’m sending out into the world is one of selfishness.  But if I choose to care more about my stories than myself, if I choose to care more about my readers than myself, the message I’m sending out into the world is one of caring.  A message of passion.  A message of hope.  A message that inspires people.

Is your goal to find personal success or is your goal to inspire your audience?  I really believe the latter always leads the former.  But it rarely works the other way around.

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my very favorite films, Jerry Maguire, as Jerry (the sports agent) points out to his only client, Rod Tidwell (the football star), why Rod is holding himself back:

Here’s why you don’t have your ten million dollars yet. You are a paycheck player. You play with your head. Not your heart. In your personal life? Heart. But when you get on the field, it’s all about what you didn’t get, who’s to blame, who under-threw the pass, who’s got the contract you don’t, who’s not giving you your love, and you know what, that is not what inspires people. That is not what inspires people! Just shut up and play the game. Play it from your heart. And you know what? I will show you the Quan. And that’s the truth. That’s the truth man! Can you handle it! Just a question between friends, you know!

To which Rod responds:

I don’t want to be friends no more!

• Look Them in the Eyes (or how everything I know about networking I learned from dating)

My brother is a born salesman, he’s constantly rising the corporate ladder of whatever fill-in-the-blank company he’s currently working for.  He quits one job, immediately gets a new higher paying one.  He started a coffee shop from scratch, only to turn around and sell it six months later.  He’s one part Gordon Gecko, one part Patrick Bateman.

If “born salesman” is at one end of the spectrum, then “starving artist” as at the other.  One look at my bank account, and I’ll let you guess where I land (usually in the negative).

I have a theory for this.  I believe that creatives usually have some kind of pain in their past, and as a result disappeared into their imaginations to deal with it.  This is certainly true of myself.  And while this has led to a rather creative & talented mind, it’s also led to a terribly shy, somewhat bumbling personality.  If you’re anything like my brother, then this essay is not for you.

For us creatives, the problem is that if we ever want to be successful (read: pay our rent) then we have to be salesmen.  We have to master self-promotion.  Here is my 4-step process to doing so.

1. Get out of your comfort zone.

I would much rather sit at home typing safely into my computer than put myself out in the real world.  The real world is harsh.  Rejection is personal.  Technology provides us with a buffer of safety.  You don’t have to look in the eyes of someone who is telling you your life-long dream is a terrible idea (there’s also nothing more satisfying than looking into the eyes of someone who “gets it.”)  But in the world of writing, at least in film or comics, it is extremely hard (if not impossible) to “break-in” from behind your computer.

In the past month I’ve gone to two events – Nashville Screenwriting Conference in Tennessee and HeroesCon in North Carolina.  Both provided me with experiences and contacts that would never be made sitting at home.  I personally believe that you don’t have to move to a new city to follow your dreams (some professionals disagree with me), but I do believe you have to at least travel to where others in your industry are from time to time.  Both comics & film are about relationships.  Talent takes you a long way, but nothing replaces relationships.

2. Look them in the eye.

Craig Mazin, the screenwriter behind Hangover 2, told a story at the Nashville Screenwriting Conference about an anonymous writer who slid a letter under his hotel room door.  In the letter, the author introduced herself and stated that she had left her script for Craig to read at the first desk.  Craig said that this person made the wrong decision and he refused to read the script.

This was of course an awkward story as the author was sitting in the room, but it was a very important lesson.  If you want to make it, you have to have the guts to put yourself out there.  Nothing replaces a handshake.  Nothing replaces looking someone in the eye.  Craig will forever know this writer as the writer too afraid to face him in person.  Would he have read it if they did talk to him in person?  Maybe not, but they would have at least had the opportunity to make a good first impression.

3. Sell a personality.

Great stories are about great characters.  The first ten minutes of a film should set up your character so that the audience falls in love with them, so they are invested in that character’s plight for the next 90 minutes.  No matter how great the plot is, if the character’s aren’t worth investing in, the story suffers.  The same applies to your career.  You could have a great plot (written ten screenplays, shot a bunch of shorts, created a 1000 page graphic novel) but if the powers-that-be are not interested in YOU, then they won’t be interested in your art.  (And by powers-that-be I mean the gatekeeepers: agents, publishers, pros, managers, producers, investors, etc.)

If you stay behind your computer screen, you are nothing but a product.  A faceless, personality-lacking, dime-a-dozen drone.  Your greatest product is yourself.  Get out and sell you.  BUT your first goal should not be to “sell them.”  Just like a bad salesman, the gatekeepers can see you coming a mile away.  Don’t be the telemarketer.

I don’t know much about sales, but this sounds like something they would say: “You have to earn someone’s trust before you can sell to them.”  The key is trust.  The key is friendships.  If you come up to someone and immediately start in with your pitch, they never get a chance to know your personality, only your product.

4. It’s a date.

Practically speaking, how do you “sell yourself?”  Well, think of it as a date.  What’s the worst thing you can do on a first date? Talk all about yourself.  The key to getting that second date is asking questions (and to actually be interested in the answers).  Getting to know the person sitting across from you.  If it’s a good date, they’ll be interested in you as well, and that will hopefully lead to a second “date” where you can talk more about your career and goals.  And if they aren’t, then you politely move on to the next suitor.

The thing is, in the grand scheme of things, these friendships are going to be more important than whatever career you have anyway.  The friendships I’ve made in the industry, I wouldn’t trade for anything, not even “success.”  Life is ultimately about relationships – the people we bump into while we’re busy living life.  Those are the moments that really matter.

In the opening paragraph I made my brother out to be this superhero, but the truth is his success lies in the same principles I’m discussing here.  This was made clear to me when he recently shared his definition for success, quoting Sir Winston Churchill: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Just like dating, you’re going to have some bad ones.  You’re going to get hurt.  You’re going to be beat down and disappointed.  You’re going to fail a lot.  But if you keep at it, you will find what you’re looking for.

- Hudson

• Mark Andrew Smith’s Secret Society

Mark Andrew Smith is the Harvey & Eisner award winning writer/creator of the Amazing Joy Buzzards, Kill All Parents, & Aqua Leung (all published by Image Comics), as well as co-creator and editor of the brilliant Popgun anthologies.  Along with artist Matthew Weldon, Mark is currently working on his second volume of New Brighton Archeological Society, the all-ages original graphic novel series, following the fantasy adventures of the “world’s most famous explorer’s” offspring.

How did you first break-in and get connected with Image?
It seems like so long ago.  I think it was a case of determination and then finding Dan Hipp to work with on the Amazing Joy Buzzards.  Those two things started the career that I have now.

How did you get hooked up with artist Mathew Weldon?
The New Brighton Archeological Society began as a series of shorts in the Popgun Anthology with Matthew Weldon who I met when he did a pinup for one of my other books.

What’s your process like?
I’ll usually work in scene sections.  I’ll be about 40 pages ahead of Matthew and then when he catches up I’ll write the next 40 pages until the book is finished.  I like it because it gives me enough of a break in between to muster up creative forces and then I can see his art as it comes in and be inspired as I write the next scenes.

Why an all-ages OGN?
I enjoy the Original Graphic Novel as a format to read but also I enjoy it as a writer for the space and freedom it provides when creating a story.  With monthly comics I feel like I’m too ADD to wait for a month.  It’s hard to remember what happened in the story after a month.  But the direct market is really based on monthly books and that’s what a lot of readers enjoy.  My next project out in May, Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors, is a Young Adult monthly series.

A huge drawback is that when an Original Graphic Novel comes out it’s got a life of about three months if it’s lucky and then it’s gone.  But if you do a monthly series then your name is out for a year with the same amount of work and it can go farther to build an audience.  For readers and comic/bookstores it’s hard to take a risk with something in OGN format at a higher price-point that isn’t yet tested material.

Do you think the format is currently overlooked or underexplored?
I don’t think that this particular area of comics is that overlooked and there are a lot of all-ages OGNs that do well.  I think it’s much more the larger picture of retailers not ordering a lot of copies of untested material and not reordering when it sells out.  The market is flooded and most creators do almost nothing to promote or sell their books.  I think creators really should do their best to get the word out about their books outside of the comics market.

Talk about your marketing strategy a little bit.  Currently you have a campaign going at Kickstarter to help in production on the next volume, but I imagine you’re also constantly trying to bring new readers in.  What creative things are you doing to promote the book?
The answer to that question is ‘everything I can’.  I feel like I can be smart with marketing but I don’t want to give away my tricks here for others to use because I learned them over time and they’re mine.  I definitely have a playbook but also I wish the book would market itself or elves would do it for me.  We did a lot of things that didn’t work also like mailing hard copies out to YA review sites and creating a website.  We probably spent $300 mailing out copies and got ten quick reviews.

I think a while ago I heard some famous Authors state that giving away stuff for free was a good way to get people buying the material.  So we thought we’d experiment and try it out by posting the comic book online.  Web Comics and the idea of doing those were also interesting to me at the time in having something that got over a certain number of subscribers.  I think it was great to try but this idea didn’t work or have much of an impact.  For webcomics it’s important to follow the form and have something new and then for the free material angle.  I think it just didn’t circulate around enough that it was there and that people were able to read it or the updates were so slow that it was hard for people to follow.

So those ones failed but other things that we do are very successful and have an impact.  We tried and not everything works.  Still it’s important to try new things out.

Is New Brighton available digitally?
I’ve really wanted to get New Brighton onto the Ipad but the wait is next to impossible with the Ipad gatekeepers.  I think that approach of the gatekeepers isn’t the best because they all go through one app and then they’re in a candy bowl with a million other books.

The trick is to stand out and to get in front of as many people as you can.  I’d like to finance our own app and also go straight to ibooks store.  I’m going to look into that and getting my own distribution digitally.  I like print because anyone and everyone can publish digitally.  I would like to distribute digitally also but not solely digitally.

What does it take for you to consider your book a “success?”
I think what’s important is to get your book out in front of as many people as you can.  I think our book is already a success on a personal level.  I’d like to get to best seller status of course.

I think success for me then probably means that the book pays my bills and Matthew’s bills for the time that we’re working on it.  But we’ll keep working on it for free and do our best to finish the series.

How and where can we find out more about New Brighton and your other projects?
New Brighton Archeological Society has a Facebook group that people can join and they can follow me on Twitter.

Thanks Mark!

- HP

• Loved Iron Man: Now What?

Okay, maybe you’re like me. I’ve seen Iron Man and I want more. Iron Man’s based on a comic book, so there’s bound to be tons of stories I can pick up. I’ve never read any Iron Man comics before, but if it’s anything like the movie, I think I’d like it.

First stop: Marvel.com

Marvel.com seems to have prepared for this scenario, as there are no less than 16 ads for Iron Man related products on their front page.

Let’s start with the first thing that caught my eye: Iron Man Eras , an article detailing the goings-on of Tony Stark just over the past 10 years (not counting the 40 before it). And to be honest, it’s overwhelming. All this talk of Skrulls and Registration Acts and Illuminati… why can’t I just find a story that’s just like the movie?

The answer: You can’t.

A great help is a bio of Iron Man & a list of “Required Reading: 10 Iron Man Collections” is a fantastic reference for newcomers. If you are ready to jump into the world of Tony Stark as he currently stands in comics (which is a very different place than he was in the movie) Marvel has the resources to prepare you.

After you make it through those 10 collections, you might be ready to take on the new series “Invincible Iron Man” (from writer, Matt Fraction), releasing this week with a first issue, or even the ongoing “Iron Man” series (currently at #18). Or you could check out a few new limited series coming soon: “Iron Man: Legacy of Doom” where apparently Iron Man fights Dr. Doom (?) or “Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas”, written by Jon Favreau and drawn by Avi Granov who helped design the Iron Man movie armor. There’s also Marvel Adventures: Iron Man (currently at #4) for younger readers and Ultimate Iron Man, which I think was a limited series and is now over (?).

(I will probably pick up the Favreau mini-series and the first issue of Invincible just to give them a chance as I’m a fan of both the authors.  Maybe they’ll surprise me with their accessibility… but I’m not holding my breath.)

The point being, there is no one easy place to start. It’s a mess.

If I were Marvel, I would produce an original graphic novel to act as a “sequel” to the movie. I’d release it the same day the movie comes out. It would pick right up where the movie left off (while leaving room for the movie’s actual sequel, sure to come.) When I left the Iron Man movie, I wanted to know what was going to happen to THAT character, not a character with 40 years of history. And then, I’d follow up these OGN’s about once a quarter. Make them readily available in bookstores and market the hell out of them.

At the very least, there should be a very clear cut place to start for fans of the movie. Release a free (or very cheap) comic to comic book stores that fills you in on the history of Iron Man and tells you where to start (hopefully with a new #1.) Hell, even pass these free books out at movie theaters when people walk out, with a website to visit to find their local comic book store.

They need to create one very large button on their web page which reads “Liked the Iron Man movie, wanna read more? Start HERE.” Provide a link to where they should start with reading more Iron Man and where they can find that book.

There is so much potential to these comic book movies, but they are so bogged down by continuity that a new reader cannot easily jump on. Even if you could jump on easily, would you want to? The comic book Iron Man looks so different from the movie version.

With movies like 300 or Sin City, you see huge jumps in sales of the respective comics. With X-Men, Spiderman, Batman, not so much. And it’s because there is no one story you can pick up.

These comic book publishers need to WAKE UP and realize that there is a huge massive audience out there a hundred times the size of who they are spending all their time and effort catering to right now. The millions of people who saw and loved Iron Man this weekend is who they need to be aiming their marketing at. Those people need to realize that comics are as cool and smart and funny and entertaining as the movies. But it will never happen if they keep being so inaccessible.

• The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Comic Book (From Concept to Publishing) in 5 Easy Steps.

This is a guide for writers, who (like me) can’t draw, but still want to create a comic. The task of creating a comic book as “only a writer” can be daunting. (As a disclaimer, I have never published a comic… but I’m new to this so, give me a break. I do hope to have at least one book picked by the end of the year.) I have done my research, and have lots of experience with at least the first 4 steps that I think others might benefit from. (And hopefully we’ll cross that magic number 5 together.)

Without further ado…

The writer’s guide to creating a comic book, from concept to publishing, in 5 easy steps:

1. COME UP WITH A KILLER IDEA

It doesn’t matter how great a writer you are – your unique, original idea is what’s going to get you published.

A. Do Your Homework.

Hopefully if you are wanting to create a comic book, you already read comics. That’s the first place to start. The comic book is a different world than the movie, TV show, or book, so get to know it, backwards and forwards. Study your favorite comics. What is it that you like about them? Pay attention to pacing and story and scene breaks. Where are the cliffhangers? Where is the action? Where are the personal moments? How much dialog can you comfortably fit on a page? How many panels per page? How many pages per issue? How many pages to a “scene”?

Get online, look for comic scripts. Learn the format. The weird thing about comic book writing, as opposed to screenwriting, is that the format varies quite a bit, so figure out what you’re comfortable with. Learn how to write for artists. Practice.

B. Create Your World

A great concept equals a great world. Create a world that is unique, that offers infinite story possibilities, & is something you haven’t seen before. The best concept is one that the story ideas write themselves. Look at Y: the Last Man. All the men die except for one. What does a world without men look like? There is so much to explore in that world…. the series could’ve gone on forever and he never would’ve run out of story because it is a fully-formed world. And it doesn’t have to be that elaborate. Maybe your fully-formed unique world could be “competitive high school cheerleading”, or “the secret lives of soccer moms”.

What is your emotional story? It’s not enough to just have a cool super hero idea or a cool serial killer idea. Who are your characters? Who is going to introduce you to this world? What is their story? My favorite comics are the ones that spend as much time on character as they do on plot… and vice versa. You can’t have one without the other. Again, with Y: The Last Man, the book wouldn’t be much if it was just random stories of a world without men, but you are introduced to this world through the eyes of Yorick – the last man on earth. From the first issue you are introduced to an overarching plot & to a character that you are interested in following emotionally.

C. Let it Marinade.

Your initial reaction will be to jump into it immediately, but be patient, let the ideas percolate. Run them through your head over and over… look for loopholes, ask yourself hard questions, get to know your characters. Share your concept with others, get feedback. My first book went through major changes after getting comments from friends and colleagues, and it got a ton better. Before you move onto the next step, make sure you have fully realized main and secondary characters (each with their own emotional stories), a world for you to play in, an overarching plot that can carry your series for 50 issues or more (or, if it’s a single story, fill a 100+ page OGN), and a number of smaller stories, ready to go, that will carry you along the way. The more time you spend in the world of your concept, the more realized it will be.

2. CREATE YOUR PITCH.

For an unknown writer, the pitch is everything. The pitch is what you use to get your name out there, to attach an artist, and to get published.

A. What’s It About?

You should be able to sum up your concept in about 2 sentences. You should be able to cover your first story arc (or entire OGN) in just one page. People aren’t going to be willing to read more than that. (We live in a lazy society, what are you going to do…) A good pitch should have your concept or world presented right up front, and then pull us in with your important character & plot beats.

Imagine that you’ve just read your entire series and you were summing it up for someone. That’s what your pitch is. And give away the ending. Don’t tantalize with “what will danny do now that his dog is stuck in the well?” Whoever is reading your pitch needs to know what’s going to happen from beginning to end. This isn’t for the masses – just for those who will be creating the book with you.

B. What Does It Look Like?

What style are you going for? What other books are out that have a similar tone? Can you describe it as quickly as “Superman meets Bourne Identity” to help create a picture? Who is your audience? If you say “everyone”, then try again. Look for books similar to yours on the market. Try to find out who they market to. Is it horror fans? Young adults? A Manga audience? Your entire package needs to be aimed at that audience and everything, from your pitch, to your writing style, to your artist needs to reflect that.

C. Can You Write?

If an artist is going to take a chance on you, they are going to want to know if you can deliver the goods or not. So, have at least a first issue (or first chapter if an OGN) ready to show them. They’ll want to know if your script is easy to work from and they’ll want to know if you are easy to work with. Again, really take the time to hone yourself as a writer, and make sure that your script is the best it can be. First impressions are everything.

3. FIND AN ARTIST.

Okay, now comes the hard part. You can’t create a comic without an artist. Every artist out there probably has their own stories they want to tell, and if they don’t, they probably have a few dozen writers wanting to work with them. So, how do you pull it off?

A. Where to Look.

Luckily, nearly every single artist in the world can be found in one place – the internet. You can search for artists portfolios and blogs, but the greatest resource I’ve found for artists on the internet is deviantart.com. Every artist I’ve worked with so far has had a presence on deviantart. It’s basically a portfolio & social networking site for artists. You can get on there and browse thousands of artists and look at their bodies of work. Many of them are also photographers or painters, but it has a fantastic comic artist presence.

B. What to Look For.

You should have decided by now what type of art you want in your book. Think about your audience & your voice. Once you decide on the style of art you’re looking for, you can start your search for an artist that fits that look.

The most important thing you want to find are sequential pages. Just because someone can draw a pin-up doesn’t mean they can draw a comic book. Also, just an observation, in my experience, the best artists are the ones with an education background. Look for artists who went to school for art. There are plenty of exceptions to that, many of the greatest artists of all time are self-taught, but a formal training does help.

C. What to Expect.

You have to make it worth the artist’s while. If they are going to put time into your project, they are going to want certain things in return. Comics are a collaborative process. You can’t just tell an artist exactly what you want exactly like you want it. Get your vision across and then step out of the way. Be open to their suggestions. They understand the artists process more than you.

In addition to creative input, they’ll want some compensation. You can do this in one of two ways – I) Pay them up front. Artists can range from about $50-$200 per page. So, a 22 page comic is quite a bit of scratch. II) Work out a back end deal. With most indie comics, this is how you make your money. Your book is published, if it sells, you make money, if it doesn’t, you don’t. It’s a risk, so you need to decide ahead of time who is going to make what percentage of the back end.

4. CREATE YOUR PROPOSAL.

We’ve covered a lot of this territory in the previous sections. But now that you’ve got your pitch & the pages from your artist, how to you pull it all together in a proposal for you to send to publishers?

A. The Personality.

I’m a firm believer that personality sells. So, include a bio of yourself & your creative team. Keep it VERY short. Just a couple of sentences for each. Make your proposal look good. Put some time into it. Hire a designer to spruce it up, if that’s not your thing.

B. The Pitch.

A one-page description of your story from beginning to end. This is the same exact pitch that you sent to your artist (maybe with some tweaks based on your collaboration with the artist).

A publisher is also going to want to know that you’ve thought about your market and that you have a good grasp on what that market is looking for.

C. The Pages.

The goal here is to provide some preview pages of your book. This is more important than anything. Publisher’s need to know that you can tell a good story.

Take (at least) the first 5 pages or so of your project and create a fully drawn, lettered, and colored (if it’s in color) comic of those pages. You can find colorists & letterers by doing a search online. And you’ll want to pay them up front. Create a cover for your book with a logo that shows that you know your audience. Package it all together nicely with your pitch & bio. It’s a lot of work, but so is everything worth while in life.

5. GET PUBLISHED.

A. Where to Look

Let’s assume that you are not Joss Whedon or Kevin Smith. In that case, your first book is not going to be published by Marvel or DC. Luckily, there are lots of amazing smaller publishers out there… many who let you keep the creative rights to your properties. This means, if your idea is optioned into a movie, then you get credit and you get paid. Which, really should make writing for a smaller publisher way more enticing than the “big two,” who keep all the rights to what you create. Do your research. Look at the logos on the books that you most enjoy. Hopefully you already have publishers in mind. Get online, browse for smaller publishers. Find a publisher that is already publishing the types of books you want to make.

B. What to Send.

Most every publisher has a web page. And on this web page they will have a section on “submissions.” Every publisher asks for different specifics, so make sure you check their submission pages and follow it to the T. Don’t try to be clever, just let your work speak for itself.

And, it goes without saying… be respectful. Don’t try to pitch your book to a publisher at a Con. They get that all the time, and you’re just going to be one more face they’ll forget. Don’t try to get other comics creators to read your pitch (most of the time they can’t for legal reasons). Don’t email the publisher every day to see if they liked your pitch. If they like it, they’ll respond. If they didn’t, they may not. Just work hard, be respectful, and put your best foot forward.

C. Plan B.

Publish it yourself. This is not something I have a lot of experience with, but you have a few options – I) Become your own publishing company. Find a printer (there are some amazingly cheap ones online) or print it yourself down at your local Kinko’s. Put up a website, and market the hell out of your product. Go to your local comic shops, see if they’ll carry your books on consignment. Send free copies to comics reviewers online and comics podcasts. Try and get as many people as possible to take a look at your book and review it. Reviewers love getting free books, and you’ll love the publicity it gets you. II) Publish your book on the web. This area is still a little hazy… You really have to commit to updating your web comic regularly and really work on building a loyal audience. You’ll see no money up front for this, but it could work out in the long run. Maybe offer a “pay what you want” paypal account on your site where people can donate what they feel your work is worth… if they want.

I hope this helps any aspiring writers as they move forward with their dream projects. Please comment below if you have anything to add. Now, go create.

[UPDATE - For more on pitching, check out my write up on Chris Schweizer's "Pitching a Graphic Novel" panel at HeroesCon.]

• A Writer’s Advice for Comic Book Artists

I’m not an artist. As a kid I wanted to be, but either a) didn’t have the talent for it or b) didn’t put the time needed to hone my craft. Most likely, it was both. So, I have no advice on how to be a better artist.

However, in searching for someone to collaborate with for Strongsville, I probably looked at the artwork of a hundred different artists of varrying levels of talent. I’m not an expert judge of artistry or anything… I just know what I wanted for this project, so that’s what I looked for.

In looking at these artists, I ran into certain key things that might be beneficial for an up and coming artist:

1) Go to school.

I’m not an advocate of college. I know that sounds weird, but I’m a graphic designer and I’m a writer. I haven’t gone to college for either of these things, yet I’ve found a good bit of success in both. I’m able to make a living what I’m doing. And I think too much emphasis is put on school these days.

However, overwhelmingly, the best artists I ran across all went to college for their art. I’m not sure if this is from the teaching or if it’s just from the fact that you are immersed in that world every single day for 4 years…

There are schools that offer sequential art degrees such as Savannah College of Art & Design and there are technical schools which offer sequential programs such as Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. Do your research, find what fits best for you and take the leap.

As far as what to do when you have to tell your parents that you’re going to be a comic book artist instead of a doctor? Can’t help you there.

2) Learn to Market Yourself.

A) Create an online portfolio. You can create your own web page for this, create a blog, or host it on Deviantart. But it’s a must. No one is going to hire you if they can’t see your work. Also, with your work in front of other people, it forces you to be better… you can get instant feedback.

B) Post your best, most recent work. I ran across so many portfolios of crappy work only later to realize that the artist posting the work was fantastic, but they had stuff up from 3 years ago on their portfolio. First impressions are everything.

C) Make sure that it has your contact info: email and/or phone number, so that people can get in touch with you. It was frustrating to find a great artist and have no way to get in touch with them.

D) Don’t be afraid to show your personality in your portfolio pages. Put up a bio. Tell people about yourselves. I know that in looking for an artist, I was looking not just for someone capable skill-wise, but for a personality that would be fun to work with. Your personality can be a big selling point.

• Comic Book Marketing Pt. 2

I recently sat down to have a conversation with Kevin Mellon. Kevin is the artist on Thirteen Steps (written by Phil Hester and Chuck Saterlee), Gearhead, and the upcoming Cupid (both written by Dennis Hopeless.) He is an amazing talent and has a deep passion for the industry. I talked with him about his experiences marketing his independent books:

Hudson: In discussing comics marketing with you, you’ve talked about the importance of hyping your book by “sending a pdf preview of your book to every creator and publisher you know.” Can you talk a bit about your experience with this?

Kevin: It’s something that we did a little of with GEARHEAD but are going to really test out on CUPID (working title). With GH, we put all four issues up as pdf’s on a “secret” site that we could send links to retailers and industry pro’s, and people who emailed us about not being able to get the book at their local comic shop.

 

With Cupid we plan on sending out the first chapter to anyone and everyone that wants it. We plan on printing up ashcans to send to anyone that wants a physical copy of the first chapter, and we plan on making sure that both pdf and printed copy have in very bold plain print how they can get ahold of us and the full book.

If you have confidence that the material is good, there’s no reason to hide it. You don’t have to give away the farm, but letting them taste the eggs and the milk is the best way to get them to buy the chickens and the cows. ;)

With Cupid, is the “first chapter” the entire first issue?

Cupid will come out as an OGN, so we’re going to provide the first 25 pgs of a 144 pg OGN for free online. It’s akin to studios putting out the first 8 or 10 minutes of a film online or in theatres.

Is it possible to provide a full issue up front online and still boost sales? I believe Boom! Studios had some success with this recently.

The success for Boom was news headlines and a shitload of downloads that might translate into some sales in the direct market. i also am curious to see how well this does for them.

Again, it very much comes from the “if you think it’s good, don’t hide it” school of thought. If it’s good, and worth it, the people that truly want it will pay for it. People are more…. ethical than we give them credit for.

As we’ve seen in music with Radiohead…

A lot of people in comics, more amateurs, are thinking that the Radiohead example is a good example of how to conduct business in the future. They tend to forget that Radiohead is an established band that has already sold millions of albums worldwide. That sort of success for a straight to download album will not and does not translate to lesser bands, as evidenced by the “Niggy Tardust” album by Saul Williams. Despite it being produced by Trent Reznor.

How this applies to comics is, you could probably still sell a hundred thousand copies of New Avengers and still put the issue out for free online at the same time. it’s going to sell what it sells, no matter what.

But for a company like Boom… they already had guaranteed orders for *I think* 6-7 thousand copies, so they didn’t lose any money putting the book out for free online. Retailers had already paid for the product. Which is why they were less than thrilled by boom’s decision to do what they did. Ultimately I think that the advertising in the form of articles about it did exactly what boom thought it would do and helped the book gain an audience that it wouldn’t normally have had and helped sell through at the shop level because of people who normally wouldn’t have looked it in the eye to pick it up just cause it had some buzz.

What is the benefit of sending the preview out to creators?

The more people you have singing your praises, the better. If we can get someone like Jason Aaron, or Tony Moore to recommend us/our book(s) in a public forum, then we have the opportunity to reach their audience, which is not currently available to us.

Phil Hester did the intro to the GH trade, and I fully plan on hyping that up when we promote it being out. There are a few people who will buy it for that reason alone, and even more that will at least give it a look based on that. Plus feedback from people up the food chain is never a bad thing.

It also helps if they’re familiar with your work when you meet them at conventions. If you walk up cold at a con, then you’re just another fan. if you walk up and they have a frame of reference for you/your work… then that’s an easy introduction and common ground because they’ve been in your shoes.

I plan on getting as many “pull quotes” from as many creators as i can. the more backing of the people in the industry you can get, the better chance you have of people taking chances on unknown creators like us.

I’ve been shot down a few times when asking creators, both in screenwriting and comics, to take a look at my stuff because if the work isn’t published, there’s a liability for them if they look at it. Do you only send out the promotional materials for your book once you have a publisher?

Yeah. Pros are afraid of looking at unsolicited material just like publisher’s are. They don’t want to be accused of stealing your idea should they develop something similar, or be developing something similar.

Once picked up by a publisher, who is it most important to market to at that point?

A) Fellow creators.
B) The small portion of the audience that reads diamond’s previews catalogue.
C) Most important of all, retailers.

Go to a convention some time, and find a retailer. Then take him around to all the artists and publishers booths and make sure that he mentions that he’s a retailer at some point. You will never, in any other situation, see grown men throw themselves at another human being that is not a naked woman so shamelessly.

Retailers are the ones that pay for your books to be on their shelves, so it’s them you have to sell to the most. Consumers assume they are the ones paying you for your books, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Retailers choose what and how much of a product they want to carry, and then pay for that product to be on their shelves. If your retailer never orders certain indy books, it would be possible for you to never know they existed in the first place.

How do you contact retailers? Send an email to every store you can find an address for? Snail mail a hard copy to a list? Or just market to ones you already have a relationship with?

YES. All of those things. Make new relationships, firm up existing ones.

There are online lists of retailers, and there is a message board that is “just” for retailers. But i think anyone can join, you just have to go through an approval process. I have seen the site and have friends who are on it, i just haven’t joined it.

Is the comic market so small that there aren’t necessarily “target audiences.” Is it just “the comic audience” or do target niche audiences exist?

The comics audience is just like any audience. They have the fact that they like comics in common, but sometimes not much else. And, like regular print novels, and television, and music and movies, comics are full of sub-genres of books and the fans that will read only that type of book.

You don’t market a straight to trade black and white book about relationships to a person that mainly buys monthly single issue capes and tights fare. If you do, you better have a good selling point geared specifically toward that individual after finding out what they like beyond the big pecs and tits rags.

How do you reach those niches?

You reach them by looking for them, and they for you.

It’s the band/music analogy again. If you like a band, you tell others. The band wants people to like them so they promote to people that like the same genre of music that they play. It either grows or falters from there.

Comics are like anything, the best over all way to reach new audiences is word of mouth and the absolute best way is by making good product that you make as widely available as possible (see first answer on pdfs). That alone will do you more than yelling at anyone that might listen.

How are podcasts and internet review sites changing how you market independent comics?

That is how you market independent comics. That and talking to retailers and creators and fans online and at conventions.

How does marketing differ for periodical books vs. TPB’s vs. online comics?

Periodicals: the best marketing you can have on a monthly book is to be monthly and get past your first year of publishing. Mini’s are hard, the sales attrition from the first issue to the 3rd, 4th issues is so high that unless the book did over 5000 copies on the first issue, there’s a chance the fourth issue will not break even, let alone make money.

TPB: Trades are such that you have to market for the long haul as well, but a different long haul. You have to convince both consumers and retailers that your book is not only worth 12 to 20 dollars in fell swoop, but that it’s worth them paying that much to have it sit on their shelves for a possibly lengthy period of time.

Online: Be regular, and find a niche that you can exploit. Anyone can do an online comic about their shitty job, but doing an online comic about your shitty job from the point of view of a trashcan? That’s different. Like any medium, any art form, have a voice that is yours and unique. Be regular. Be on time. Be consistent. Internet users who read comics are just like monthly singles buyers who go to comic shops. They check on their favourite reads constantly, and await the next installment eagerly. The only way to satisfy that is to satisfy that need for regular consistency.

You can check out Kevin’s work and blog at www.kevinmellon.com.

• Comic Book Marketing Pt. 1

Comics Radar Podcast recently posted a great interview with Brian Hibbs who runs the comic store Comix Experience. Brian also writes the Tilting at Windmills column for Newsarama.

CLICK HERE to listen to the interview.

It’s a must listen for anyone who is a comics creator or publisher who is looking for ways to get ahead in marketing comics. Hibbs discusses the ways that comic book retailers look at ordering comics.

First, a bit about how comics are ordered:

Whether you like it or not, comic book stores are the life-blood of the comics industry. Without them, it doesn’t exist. And there is no major chain of comic book store. Each store has it’s own manager/owner who orders basically whatever books he likes or thinks will sell.

For current monthly comics, the only place you can order them is through Diamond Comic Distributors. Diamond provides a catalog a few months in advance for retailers to order from.

Hibbs says “Thousands of comics come out every month. If you spend more than 30 seconds considering it, you’ll never get your ordering done.” So, how can you best take advantage of those 30 seconds and convince those retailers with the power to make or break you to order your comic?

Here are some points from the interview for those of you, who like myself, are new creators facing the challenge of marketing an independently published book:

1) Pre-ordering is a must.

Even though retailers have control over the books they order, they certainly pay attention to their audience. A big factor in ordering new books is whether or not their existing customer base is pre-ordering the books. That is, a customer can come in and say “hey, I heard about this book, I’d like to pre-order it to make sure I have a copy when it comes out.” The retailer then takes down the order and probably will add more to it if the buzz is big.
If a store has 100 subscribers and 10 people pre-order a book, Hibbs says he might order 40 or 50 copies.

Therefore, your target market should be two-fold: comics retailers and comics readers. And those two are closely tied. Why would you just rely on the Diamond catalog (more on this later) to push your book, when pre-orders guarantee a large order from retailers? If you are marketing a book, all your energy needs to be going towards getting those pre-orders.

So, how do you get readers to pre-order books? Great question. I’m just getting started in this industry, so I certainly don’t have all the answers. But with my experience in marketing it’s about two things: A) word-of-mouth and B) ease of ordering.

Once Strongsville finds a publisher, I plan on taking advantage of pre-ordering by implementing these ideas in the following ways:

Word-of-Mouth: One thing that is great about comics is the fiercely loyal community. And everyone is a critic. So, get your work out there. Post 5-page previews everywhere you can. Let the buzz build. Join online communities, and don’t just pimp your book, but immerse yourself into them and make friends. You’re not just selling a project, you’re selling yourself. No one is going to buy a comic from a salesman, but they will buy it from a friend.

Ease of Ordering: Create a website where customers can print out pre-order forms with all the information that a retailer needs to order. Provide a space where customers can email their retailers to pre-order the book as well. Make it easy for customers to “tell a friend” and recommend the book to others. Provide a link to all of this wherever the preview is posted.

Based on this interview, you cannot afford to miss out on the opportunity provided by pre-ordering.

2) Your work is what sells your comic.

“The single best thing a small press publisher can do is to send me a copy of the book.” says Hibbs. If it’s good, retailers will order it. If it sucks, well, then you better get back to the drawing board. Outside of pre-established characters or creators, the thing that is going to get books sold is quality.

Hibbs says that he prefers to read a hard copy of the book as opposed to a PDF. So, the thought is, if you think you have a quality comic and you want the work to speak for itself, then just send a copy to every retailer. However, this could get very expensive.

A couple of solutions:

A) Target your ideal retailer. Now here is where it gets fuzzy. I have no idea how to do this. I’m sure if you googled for more than ten minutes, you could find a list of all the retailers in the U.S. I would imagine it’d be possible to find the stores that sell the most books. The more indie books a store orders, the better for an indie creator. These are the stores you should target. If you can only afford to send out 100 books, target the stores that best fit your book. For Strongsville, I hope to target stores that sell to a high young adult and female demographic (probably hard to find).

B) Maybe you can’t afford to send out full books to 3000+ retailers, but you could afford to print that many postcards (which are super-cheap at any number of online printing companies). Showcase the quality of your artwork, with a great intriguing tagline or pitch and provide a website where the retailer can check out an entire issue online. Maybe even follow up with a phone call. Anything you can do to make it easy, personal, and higher quality.

When asked if a full-page ad in the Diamond catalog could help, Hibbs responds that if the work sucks, then it will certainly hurt it. If the work is great, but it’s art by a guest cover artist and doesn’t feature any work from the actual book, then it does nothing. But if it showcases the strong work of the book, then it certainly will help.

If you’ve got a quality project, it will rise to the top. However, every little bit of extra work you put in can only help. Get your book in front of readers. Chase after those pre-orders. Get your book in front or retailers. Make them aware of the quality of your book, make it easy to order, and sell yourself as a personality.

Thanks to Comics Radar for the great interview.

• Saving the comic book Industry.

Back in the early 90′s, the best-selling comic book was selling in the millions. Today, it runs about 150,000. Why the drop-off? Well the early 90′s were part of the “speculation market,” where companies would print comics with 10 different covers and collector’s would buy 10 of each cover thinking it would be worth something eventually. But it turned out that they weren’t worth much of anything and the bottom dropped out.

Now, comic books today seem to have it together. They are written and drawn a thousand times better than they were then. There are more independent comics infiltrating the market place. There are some amazing books being put out right now.

So, how do we get more people reading these great stories in comic books? I think a lot of the problem lies with the industry itself.

The comic book industry is very unique. The way it works is basically monthly comic books are sold almost exclusively at Direct Market Stores aka Comic Book Stores. Nearly all the monthly comic books are ordered through one distribution company called Diamond.

The Big Two comic book companies, Marvel & DC, keep these book stores alive as they create the vast majority of monthly comic books.

Comic books are also collected every 6 or so issues into Trade Paperbacks (TPB) or created originally in long-form books called Graphic Novels. Some of the terminology switches all around, but this is how I think of it, so this is how I’m referring to it. TPBs & Graphic Novels are also available at most major bookstores such as BN or Borders.

You can compare it to Television. If you wanna watch the Office, you can watch it weekly on NBC or purchase the DVD at the end of the year. NBC is the only place you can watch the Office weekly. The Comic Book Store is the only place you can read comics weekly. But you can still buy the Office DVDs at Wal-Mart. And you can still buy TPBs at Borders.

But, if no one watched the Office weekly, then it would never be released on DVD. In the same way, if no one read the monthly comics, they would never be released in TPB format. So, the Comic Book Stores are, in many ways, the life-blood of the comic market. Without them, the industry would be much more limited, as it’s more difficult for writer’s and artists to take off a year to create a Graphic Novel. With the monthly comics, it creates a source of revenue to keep them going.

Now, the problem is that a lot of times people are turned off to Comic Book Stores. Many of the stereotypes unfortunately turn out to be true. The snooty “comic-book guy” behind the counter. The disorganized floor. The fact that they are hard to find.

So, are there some ways to improve the Comic Book Store to better bring in new customers? Here are my suggestions:

A) Starbucks-ing Comics

As far as I know, there are no franchised comic bookstores. A guy may own one or two, but for the most part, they are individually owned and operated (funny that they all seem to look like though…)

What if someone had some capital and they took the initiative to start a comic book store franchise? As a franchise, they could negotiate a deal with Diamond for more of a discount since they would be ordering more books. Or better yet, Diamond should start their own stores, offering books at a massive discount to get people in the door.

More than just price though, a franchised store could set themselves up as non-’comic book guy’ friendly. Where an average Joe (and especially average Jane) could walk into the store, be greeted by the friendly, knowledgeable, and hip staff who ask them if they need help finding anything. The staff could ask what other media they are into… “What’s your favorite movie?” Based on their answer, they find them the book that best suits them.

Maybe they have a Barne’s & Noble-style open policy, where the books aren’t bagged, but someone can come in and sit and read a comic if they want without the staff hounding them.

Basically we need stores that are all over the country where a normal person wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen in them.

B) Selling Out to Corporate America

As I mentioned before, BN & Borders both have sections for Graphic Novels & TPBs, but their monthly comic sections is VERY limited. What if these stores created a section for monthly comics that carried everything from the hottest Marvel book, to the most out-there indie.

Many of these stores, from what I understand, order through a variety of distribution companies, so by starting a good monthly comics section, they most certainly would rise up some competition to (near monopoly) Diamond, thereby dropping prices.

Not only that, but these are stores that are already accepted. If someone is walking through looking for the latest Stephen King novel and runs across his Dark Tower series put out by Marvel, then they might pick it up. Whereas, this King fan would never be caught dead inside a comic book store.

C) 50 Years in the Future

Digital comics are coming our way, just not very soon. One day, you’ll be able to get online, order a comic book, be able to download it immediately, copy it to your “digital book” device, and read it right there. This will, of course, change the way people receive and read their comics.

The problem is, right now, no one wants to read a comic on their computer screen. There is nothing that can replace the touch and smell and sight of reading a new printed comic.

But one day, as technology grows, we’ll have devices that will take the place of books and no one will be complaining. Comic books could very well herald this technology in, as I would assume, pictures with words will look better on these things than just words.

I, for one, will hang onto the physical books as long as possible. But, if one day, it would be this easy to receive comic books, it is possible that the industry could grow enormously as we take out any obstacle one might face of buying a comic, whether that be embarrassment or just not being able to find a place.

I do think that something needs to change in order for this industry to grow. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.