Cover Matters 2

If you want to earn the favor of someone, you have to speak their language. You have to present to them what they expect of you, whether they be your parents, your friends, a lover, or an employer. This is a crucial part of the marketing mix. To be able to connect to what your audience is looking for is a foot in the door towards making a sale.

So far, in the comics industry, you know a comic book when you see one. The covers are pretty standard, pretty traditional in execution. There's a whole culture surrounding it. Despite the innovations we've seen over the past decade, the overall sensibility remains the same. And this sensibility has been successful in drawing the comic book crowd in.

However, it's possible that these covers reinforce the stigma surrounding the medium. If we're looking to attract a non-comics reading crowd to our work, we need to speak their language. Our closest point of reference is the bookstore.

With that, the graphic novel covers shown above aren't real. I cooked them up as an experiment. (Trademarks belonging to Marvel.)

If, the moment you first laid eyes on these make-believe covers, you've been hit by at least squint-level curiosity, then what does this say about the power of a cover to get the attention of a passerby?

Granted, the Scarlet Witch and the X-Men are somehow familiar to comics fans, but what these covers seek to do is to rip these characters out of context and present them in a different light--one that doesn't scream superhero. To the comics person, these covers may seem baffling. There's no image of any character on the covers. There's no dynamic pose, no speed lines, nothing to suggest a superhero story.

But I'll go back to what I said in the first installment of Cover Matters. The cover is a promise, and the promise can be as fundamental as red shoes. To some of you, the Scarlet Witch cover can be mistaken for a piece of "chick lit." Think "Devil Wears Prada" or "Shopaholic," in a genre that I'd suppose could inspire an interesting superhero-drama story involving Wanda Maximoff.

Wanda: "You don't understand how I feel! You're incapable of feeling anything!"
Vision: [attempting to compute]

The X-Men cover moves the mutant superhero story well into the sci-fi realm. This cover can may as well fit in the science fiction section of a bookstore. The story can contain the usual flashiness of an X-Men tale, but the cover envelops the story in a non-superhero context. For these two covers, the only thing that gives them away is the tag "A Graphic Novel." There's no deception involved.

So will these covers really attract a non-comics reading audience? I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that if you want your graphic novel to reach a new audience, you need to think out of the box. And a good place to start is finding out what your target audience is looking for in a book cover.

Another Source of Stories 2

Educational institutions are always looking for innovative ways to impart information to students, and I think you know what I'm getting at.

A graphic novel or a comics series geared towards supplementing classroom instruction is another offbeat way to break in, because you're primary objective isn't only to help teachers, but also to flex some writing muscles to come up with something engaging and entertaining.

The television series "Numb3ers" uses math as a central element in its plots, and it has somehow clicked with an audience. Moreso with that monolith CSI, which has become synonymous to any kind of investigation. "Hey, Martha broke up with her boyfriend but she ain't telling why. Let's do some CSI on it!" It has become a particular favorite among criminology students, as much as "Boston Legal," "Law and Order" and countless other law dramas have satisfied many a law student's appetites.

Following are some subjects/courses where you can possibly spin a story that can use real world information in your storytelling. The breadth of these subjects almost cries out for a comics series, but you can focus on specific topics within these subjects for a one-shot graphic novel.

A. History
B. Psychology
C. Law
D. Medicine
E. Philosophy
F. Genetics
G. Anthopology
H. Archaeology

The clincher here is research--it has to be thorough. And you as a writer would have to be insightful enough to make something of the facts you've researched. The last thing you'd want to do is replicate a textbook. The story is still the star, and your research should only make it shine brighter.

Your research should also include checking out the lesson plans of teachers and professors, so that you don't find yourself drowning in information you might not be able to use. Choose that part of a lesson plan that you as a writer find interesting, then rattle your brain into making it into an engaging story.

Another obstacle is getting a good word in from an authority. It's a good reason to go back to school and catch up with your former teachers. They might even be willing to help you out in locating research material, particularly the obscure ones. Take note, however, that while your prerogative is creating a good story, the teacher's prerogative is information. The finished product has to be legit enough. So you have to find a good middle ground between what you want and what the teacher is looking for.

When you're done with your plot summary, take the teacher out to lunch so you couold go over the material before to pound a script out. If you've done a good job, you can ask your teacher to refer a few colleagues you can cross-check with, as well as add to your customer network.

Your book marketing will benefit a lot from whatever positive feedback you get from the teachers you've worked with. Be sure to acknowledge them in your book, because "consultant" is a great addition to their resume.

Cover Matters

Before I start, here's something you can do. When you've pinpointed that special something your graphic novel has to offer, as well as a possible potential audience, head for the bookstore and dive into the fiction books section.

Find books that more or less match your graphic novel, and pick out the covers you like, but ignoring those books that have big-name authors. Relative unknowns or debuting novelists are your targets. Read the description on the back cover, then return those books that don't appeal to you that much.

The remaining books you have can serve as your template for the kind of cover your graphic novel will have.

For the aspiring graphic novelist who's contemplating on a cover design, there's one overall principle to designing an effective cover:

A book cover is a promise.

And that's the most fundamental idea to keep in mind when you design your graphic novel cover. This is why we pick up books. We see the cover and the images, or colors, or titles appeal to us in ways more than other covers. These appealing covers make us curious, giving us enough reason to pick them off the shelf. Saying, "It spoke to me," applies strongly here.

We look at the back cover, and read what the book is about. The description offers a premise, more often with a simple description of the lead character. These descriptions contain a form of magic--the words tickle and entice, intrigue and mystify. They're telling you subliminally, "Have we got the story you want to read! Buy me! Buy me!"

Front cover and back cover work together to form the book's promise.

Book designers go over the book contents and talk to editors, searching for that one aspect of the story that will appeal to an intended audience. Romance novels succeed by displaying images fulfilling a women's deep fantasies, while horror novels love to use dark colors with generous servings of red or silver. Sometimes a cover will feature a mysterious object, or the facade of an ancient structure, or a landscape, all suggesting certain moods. Other covers make heavy use of a special typeface, the titles covering up most of the front cover, meant to stand out from a bookstore shelf.

Of course, the results of the above exercise shouldn't constrain you in exercising creative freedom. But do note that your cover is like the face of a person, and the expression of on that face tells the world what lies in the heart and soul.

Going to superheroes as an example. There was a time when comics readers complained about that trend of painted covers, featuring a character (more often female) in some superheroic or pseudo-erotic pose. While these images looked good they defeat the purpose of the cover. While the character is indeed in the book, the book itself is not painted. And a simple pose gives little hint to what's going to happen in the story. This strategy may have worked for fans, since they'd pick up a book no matter how the cover is rendered, but in principle it fails to attract newer readers who only have so much money to spend.

Some of the better graphic novel covers I've seen are Blankets, Maus, and 30 Days of Night. Each have their way of presenting their contents, and they make a promise that the stories keep. So when you're contemplating a cover, make several options. Because the so-called cool covers are pointless if they don't serve their purpose.

Finding Your Potential Audience 2

Before we proceed, two things...

First, the survey you send out as outlined in the previous post is meant for those who don't normally buy comics. This is important, because you'd want to find out if there are people outside of the comics buying set who might be interested in your story. Again, send out as many as you possibly can.

If you want to be more specific, here's an alternative. Check you main character. Since your main character is the one through whom your reader experiences your story, this character would be your template for possible survey respondents. If your story is about a woman in her 30s, send email to women between 26 and 40, with a few men thrown in there of around the same age range. If your story is about a young male superhero, go for the 14 to 24 male group, with some females included to widen the field.

Secondly, and this is a lengthy one, let's look at some figures:

Let's assume that you're situated in California.

According to the US Census Bureau, California has a population of 33.8 million as of the year 2000. For the same year, the population count of those from 20 to 34 years old is about 7.6 million. A lot of people. We've isolated the 20 to 34 year old bracket because we're assuming that it would be this age range who might be interested in your graphic novel offering. (Something a bit on the mature side, maybe a PG-rating).

It's safe to assume that by this time, the population numbers have gone up a bit.

Now, as of October 2007, the highest selling comic book issue through Diamond is New Avengers #35, with orders of over 111,000. Only. Normally, this doesn't translate to actual retail store sales. How much of these have gone to California? We don't know, but it's a safe bet that it's far, far less.

If the USA has a population of 303 million, California would have 11.15% of the US population. A loose assumption would be that the number of New Avengers #35 issues that reach California would be a little over 12,300 copies. Only. And that's already California, and note again that not all copies will reach the hands of buyers. What more a smaller state?

Why am I telling you this? For superhero books, the market is small, and the market is crowded.

For the aspiring superhero graphic novelist who wants to release a comic book, he needs to look beyond the superhero market and look for secondary markets. Markets that might be interested in what the creator has to offer but wouldn't normally pick up a comic book.

Hence the exercise of the previous post.

To tabulate the results of your survey, you would need a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel of OpenOffice Calc. If you don't know how to use these programs, pen and paper would do well, though the results would take longer to reach.

Focus on those who answered YES to the first question. Isolate their ages and their gender. Find a trend. What are the common ages? The common gender? If the results aren't clear cut, try and send out more email requests until you get a "data trend" or results that seem to point at a specific market.

When you're done with that, check the answers to the fourth question, and set aside those who answered more negatively. Focus on those who have more positive answers and see if the trend has changed. Again, this is why you ned a lot of respondents to your questionnaire. You'll have an easier time finding a trend.

The results of question number five will tell you if the respondents comprising your isolated results have the financial capacity to buy books on a semi-regular basis. The more books they've bought, the better the chances that they'll have room for your book.

Here comes the nice part. Check again the results of your isolated group for the first question. See what they liked about your story. Is there something common about their statements? Is there a general sentiment about what they liked? Bingo! Now you have information that can help you put together a press release with your story's unique selling point.

How about the results of questions six and seven? Find out the common websites they visit, or those sites you can assume would have high traffic. They can be venues where you can send a press release or post information about your book.

And the establishments? Well, since your potential market goes to those places, you think you can get some copies of your books in there? Or maybe free previews with an email address where readers can write you?

But before you send out press releases and visit commercial establishments, the last thing you should do is verify the information you've discovered. How? Find other people who match your isolated potential market. Get in touch with as many as you can and make a friendly request for them to read your story. You can include in your email some of the responses you've received from your original survey to possibly get them interested.

If you get at least 50% positive responses from this "verification stage," you may just have found your other market, as well as some leads on how to get your book to them.

Finding Your Potential Audience

Here's something you can do. Post the first few pages--10 to 12 would suffice--on your website, then send a nice email to your friends and relatives, preferably people of different ages, and a good mix of male and female. The more people you write, the better (go as high as humanly possible). Oh, and make sure you know their ages.

Ask them for thirty minutes of their time to read your work, stressing that you're doing this for your personal growth as a writer, then email you back. They don't have to do it right away, but you would appreciate it if they could spare some time over a weekend. In their return email, have them briefly and very honestly answer the following questions:

1) Is the story the kind that interests you? Yes or no.

2) If your answer to the first question is "yes," please specify that part of the story that interested you. If your answer to the first question is "no," please enumerate two or three stories that you've read and really liked.

3) Do you know someone who might be interested in a kind of story like this, like a friend or relative, preferably someone I haven't met yet? Yes or no.

4) Did it matter that the story was told in comics form? Yes or no, and why.

5) How many fiction books have you bought in the past six months?

6) Please name five commercial establishments--restaurants, stores, bars, etc.--that you frequently go to. Also, please name three special interest websites that you frequently visit.

7) In a newspaper or news website with lots of different sections, what sections do you more often read? Politics? Arts and Culture? Finance and Business? Entertainment? Fashion and Lifestyle? Sports? Motoring? The advice columns? The opinion pages? Something else? Please specify three.

This is a simple piece of market research. The results can give you an idea of the market segment who might be interested in your work. Do note a few things:

a. The people you know would most probably give you thirty minutes of their time. Plus, you'll most likely get serious answers when you tell your friends and relatives that you're doing this for "your personal growth as a writer," as opposed to "I wanna sell this!"

b. You're not going to ask them to read your comics, but your story. Arguably, the word "story" carries more weight than "comics," so there's less chance that there'll be the dreaded bias against the medium.

c. You'll be asking them if they know someone, a "referral," who might be interested in your story. Send a follow up email and ask if it's alright to ask if you could contact the referral. Once you have the contact information, send a new email with the same message and questions, except #3. You don't want to bother any more people.

d. Depending on the answers you get for #4, you'll more or less know if the person is open to reading comics as an alternative storytelling medium.

e. The answer for #5 can tell you if they're the kind of people who buy fiction books on a regular basis. The more books they buy means that they're the type who can go out of their way to get a book.

f. The answers for #6 will give you insights on the lifestyle and purchasing power of your respondents. This information is valuable because it can help you find other people who might be interested in checking out your work.

g. The answers for #7 gives a rundown of topics that your respondents are interested in.

What happens next? Tabulate. Isolate those who answered positively in the first five questions, and try to pin down what's common among them. Are they mostly male or female? Are they mostly single or coupled? Are they mostly teenagers, young adults, or mature adults? Do most of them frequent a specific set of establishments? Do most of them frequent a specific set of websites? This is why the more people you get answers from, the easier it gets to isolate a distinct "potential target market."

By the way, don't forget to thank everyone you send emails to, even if they tell you that they can't help you. After all, we need to be professional about these things.

Do you have an idea what to do with the information you've culled together? We'll go into that in my next post.

Character Development: Making Readers Care

Remember the time when New Superhero was given a personality flaw and some fanboys would suddenly rave, "Wow, great character development!"

Those in the know will tell you that character development is a process, a series of changes that a character goes through for better or worse, brought about by factors in the character's environment and interpreted by his values, experiences and morals.

Characters in a story have a "beginning status" at the start, and an "ending status" by the story's conclusion. One of the writer's responsibilities is to introduce events and situations that seek to alter or reinforce a character's beginning status. When the story ends, the resulting status becomes a thematic point of the whole process.

So if you decide to give a character claustrophobia, or a drinking problem, or an apathetic relationship with his supporting character wife, don't do so just to make him interesting. Make these qualities affect a major decision. Make them threaten his achieving ultimate success. Make them institute some change in the character's status.

When you begin to humanize a character, you initialize the link between the reader and your story. And maximizing character development can not only give your story a deeper level of complexity, but also a reason for your reader to care. When you get your readers to care, you give them a reason to stick around.

Character development is tricky, because you have to know your characters inside and out. How they think. How they view their situation. How they view the world around them. What makes them tick. What drives them forward. What holds them back. A well-rounded character acts like a normal human being who may not always be predictable, but will always have a reason for their actions.

For instance, a superhero who has a chronic case of claustrophobia would not likely rush into a cave to face a bad guy. If he does so, he may not be able to function well, thus threatening his team's victory. A superhero who has a major drinking problem might secretly be attending Alcoholics Anonymous, thus threatening his crimefighting career. A character with an apathetic relationship with his wife might be fooling around on the side with a woman who's a pawn of the main villain. In short, give your characters a reason to suffer, genuinely suffer. It's harsh I know, but why should a reader care if the good guy has it all easy?

To put matters another way, say you're a basketball fan and you idolize one particular player. You're excited everytime he's called into the court, and howl with delight when he makes a kick-ass dunk. To you, he's the god of basketball.

Then your friend tells you one day that your idol is going through a difficult divorce. The question is: would you actually Google it? Would you search for news about it? It's a divorce, not a basketball game, so why would some basketball fans want to know the nitty gritty of the settlement proceedings? Why would they talk about it?

One reason could be that fans want to know how the divorce might affect the player's game. They've begun to care about the player's performance. They want to see their hero emerge unscathed.

Here's an exercise. Write a personal letter, one that you don't intend to send to anyone, but write it as if you're the main character of your story. Pretend that the character is halfway through your story, and write down what he thinks and feels about the situation so far, the other characters, his objective, and the threats at hand. More importantly, write down why he thinks and feels the way he does.

When you're done with the letter, set it aside for a week, then take it out and read it. Does the letter convince you? Does it sound sincere? If this letter were written by someone else, would you care to know what happens next? Cross check the letter with your script and see if what the letter contains is consistent with how you presented the character in your story. You may be able to get fresh insights by doing so.

Why Magazines?

Now some of you may have raised eyebrows over my last blog post. Making graphic novels for women may not sit well with comics creators who, by observation, are mostly male. But I hope you've taken the time to think about the idea.

Based on Amazon's subscription bestseller list, women's magazines top the chart. These are actual dollar expenditures from people who are willing to shell out money.

Plus, women read more than men. In a study conducted this year by the Associated Press, "the typical woman reads nine books in a year, compared with only five for men. Women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography." (Read the full story about reading habits through this link.)

So there's your target market right there.

And what's the bonus in finding a great story in the pages in women's magazines? Well, when you've finished your graphic novel and your female friends like it, you already have potential venues for press releases--the same magazines from where you got your ideas. The same magazines with the high sales rates. The same magazines that women spend money to buy.

And because women read more, they'll most probably find your press release in their favorite mag.