Marketing your comics

This has been on my mind lately. How do you get comic book store owners to order your comic books? It's a very small industry, and the way distributors are set up, these stores take a tremendous risk each and every month when they order, because there are no guarantees that customers will walk into your store to buy their inventory. This is how most of the comic book stores collapsed in the 1990s, after the speculation boom, because they ordered way too much, lost money, and had to close down.

And let it be known, I believe you are selling your products to the comic book store owners, not so much the fans or customers. Sure, those guys are the ones that collect your book, or idolize you in those rare cases when you probably don't deserve it at all just because you are "good" at art, but the ones that actually purchase your comics are the few and far between comic book store proprietors. They are the ones shouldering most of the risk.

So that leads to the question, "Why should I give you some of my precious magazine rack space, when I could put Wolverine, Batman, or Spider-Man there instead?"

That is an excellent question.

Going back to the aforementioned risk, as you likely know, the big two in this industry are Marvel and DC Comics. Their comics are almost guaranteed sellers. Some are better sellers than others, but more or less, if a store owner is conservative in their purchasing and does their research, by all rights they should sell all of their Marvel of DC comics, without much of a problem. Then throw in the other small publishers: Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Boom, upcoming Valiant, Archie, Slave Labor, etc etc. The store owner, I imagine, pretty much divides what little space he has remaining on his shelves, and gives it to those guys. And, again, some sell better than others.

And then, the REALLY small publishers, well, where do they fit in? Well, some stores likely don't even sell those kinds of book at all, because there is no money in them. Why would a store give you the time of day, if they can order Spawn and sell 15 copies of that, opposed to your little corner of the universe comic book??

It's a tough industry to be in. There is very little room for distributing your work, outside of online maybe. But, if you want your book to be visable, you need to be in a store, a brick and morter honest to goodness comic book store.

So, how do you do that?

I think you have to introduce yourself as personally as possible to these store owners, perhaps threw a mailer; it's easy enough to get a list of all the comic book stores. Then, you have to prove that you are marketing your comic properly, getting the word out, so there will be people willing to spend money on it. Get your name out there, get your work out there, and the store will take a shot on you. In a perfect world, each month your orders improve, however slightly, but, really, one should feel lucky to only LOSE 10% of your readership, especially after the first issue. Like I said, tough industry.

Wish us luck. Part of the Work-for-Hire contract with my publisher is that I get 15% royalty checks based on comic book sales. I think it works out to around .06 cents per issue, based on the offset printer we found (cheaper the printing, more money you profit - cha cha cha). So, it is in my best interest to help market and promote the work. I'm looking forward to it.

Plus, I want to do this for a while, so the more money my publisher makes, the more he'll be willing to stick around another month and publish more comics :)