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.

How To Get Shelf Space For Your Book

When I was a kid, I didn't really dream of becoming a graphic novelist. When I was in middle school, I sent fan art to Marvel, then strangely received a rejection letter in response. I was baffled--did they send rejection letters even to fans? Anyway, that was a long, long time ago during the era of rotary dial phones.

But now that my fate has taken an unexpected turn, I've devoted a good portion of my time to actually studying further how to create a story that's worth shelf space. In the past, I was working on simple instinct and logic, but the game has changed. I've invested in creative writing books from the bookstores and Amazon, and doing Web research just to crack the mystery open.

Why? Because for the medium to gain more ground, creators ought to do work a little harder to ensure that their works deserve the ground gained.

An interesting entry on Comics Worth Reading paints a picture that should serve as a wake-up call to a lot of independent creators. In the entry, Brian Hibbs of San Francisco shop Comix Experience defines one of two "dead weight" books, or those that waste precious shelf space.

"The first is independent books with no public awareness, no audience, no standout concept, no well-known creator. In short, books with no marketing and thus no sales, thrown out there on the “build it and they will come” theory."

There are comics shop owners who will, out of the goodness of their hearts, allow lesser known books on their shelves. But creators should realize that these owners are sacrificing a lot when they bring in an indie book. Shelf space is a retail establishment's source of income, and shops only have a limited amount of space. The prerogative of any shop owner is to move stock out of their shelves to earn money. The faster stocks move from the shelves to the hands of a customer, the more they earn.

So a creator should do their darndest to make sure their books fly. It's the most they can do to repay the graciousness of shop owners. (Come to think of it, comic shop owners should be more vigilant in screening indie books.)

What's the lesson here? When you have that big idea for your graphic novel, you should--MUST--think ahead about marketing. Writers send proposals to agents and publishing houses. Screenwriters send loglines and sequence treatments to producers. In these cases, writers and screenwriters would already know who the specific audience for their material would be, and how their stories would catch the audience's interest. They do this because they know there is only a limited number of books and films that can be produced within a calendar year, and competition is fierce.

As for comics and graphic novels, companies and creators are fighting over shelf space, and there's not a lot of that. Think about it, if you put together a solid program for marketing and present it to a comic shop owner, you'll have greater chances of earning the owner's favor. You may not sell a lot on the onset, but you're impressing upon a shop owner that you're looking after his welfare, too.

For more information about packaging your graphic novel for a specific market, you can look through my previous posts under product development.

Create Your Own Niche

Happy New Year! I hope 2007 proved to be a good one for all of you, and I wish that everything will turn out really bright this 2008!

One of the things you can begin doing as you build yourself as a graphic novelist is to identify your niche. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned how you can gain more mileage in promoting your book by zeroing in on a specific audience. When you create a romance graphic novel, you can direct your marketing efforts towards venues frequented by women. Same goes if your graphic novel is about a special interest, like gardening or the American Civil War.

As you go through your creative life, you'll notice that you focus on specific modes, aspects, hooks, styles, characters, or themes, and you'll discover the kinds of stories you're most comfortable creating. For instance, you might be the kind of creator who tends towards female leads who struggle against a patriarchal society. Or you feel more at home writing about teenage guys who deal with peer pressure and conformity. Or you often play with what-ifs involving "loss of innocence."

This doesn't mean that you aren't flexible. Your tendency towards certain characters or themes has largely to do with how much they have influenced your way of thinking and feeling, whether or not the experiences were your own. In my case, I find myself juggling thoughts on "relationships that could not be," and have noticed that my stories have plot elements that explore that idea. I can still be versatile with my stories despite this, since I can alter a lot of the other elements.

You can test this by looking through works of prose writers. The characters of Haruki Murakami have a similar vibe about them, mostly young sarariman trying to make sense of their mundane lives in bustling modern day Japan, with some weirdness or magical realism thrown in. Nicholas Sparks, on the other hand, seems to often explore the idea of love in absentia, the emptiness that it leaves, and the journey towards wholeness. Anne Rice has always been about eroticism, long before her vampire novels came out (let's not talk about her Jesus novel, though).

With movies directors, the same principle applies. You wouldn't tag Tim Burton with a dizzying CGI-laced action film any more that you'd tag Roland Emmerich with offbeat modernist fantasies.

And then there's you. What do you usually explore in your stories? What are the common elements? Specific personalities? Specific themes? A particular attack or style?

When you've isolated that, make it your "stamp." Let that help you grab your niche.

The advantage of having a niche market is that you become reliable to that market. When you hear the name Neil Gaiman, you know that "legal thriller" isn't the genre that comes to mind. If you're a fan of those stories, you'll most probably go to John Grisham's newest take on the subject. It's a marketing tool that helps solidify your position in the industry, for good or ill, and any new customers that fall under your niche will see you as the reliable source of material they're looking for. Granting, of course, that you've created and released enough material.

The disadvantage of a niche is that it seems very limiting. What if you want to try something else? Well, let's take a look again at John Grisham who, after a string of successful legal thrillers, took a risk with a baseball drama and even a Christmas comedy. The lesson here is: if you're good, you're good. You just need that niche as a stepping stone.

What you must consider, though, is that niches don't come in one size. Plus the fact that a very large niche will also have a lot of players competing for pieces of the pie. That's why it's recommended that when you discover your niche, do some research on works that may be similar to yours. Then determine where you're different, making sure that the difference is significant enough to be distinct.

For instance, the romance novel market is really huge. But there are authors who specialize in modern day cosmopolitan romances, gothic/horror romances, swords and sorcery romances, Civil War romances, and detective romances. This can get broken down further by age group--teenagers, young adult women, middle aged women, etc.

The bottom line is everyone has his or her place in the world. Focus on your place and be known for it, then see how far and wide you can go.

Collective Force

My previous post offered a proposal to writers that provides an opportunity to get their work published without having to suffer through getting attention from the top comics companies. I, for one, have submitted stuff to Marvel and DC, but I never heard from them. So I went about things on my own, and it's had its fine share of rewards. With the pillars of the comics industry shaken over the past few years with the entrance of manga and the surge of the reputation of the graphic novel, writers can take this as a heavenly sign that there is life beyond the system. A very tough life, but survivable when prepared.

Jog my memory for a bit, please. Years ago, a few comics writers came up with an imprint that seemed to be the writer-counterpart of Image's power roster of artists. That imprint didn't survive for very long. I'm not sure what happened, but my major uneducated guess is that they were still subjects to the demands of an audience with specific needs for "coolness." It's not that comics fans didn't want well-written and well-conceptualized stories. But, let's face it, coolness is a requisite barometer in the industry--cool action scene, cool dialog, cool costume, cool power, cool story, cool everything.

But if these writers had broken away from the system to produce stories that addressed audiences whose definition of a good story isn't restricted by a thermometer reading, they may have had a better success rate.

The commercial environment for the graphic novel has never been more open to possibilities, and writers can dive right into it while there aren't a lot of players. If you're a writer who wants to do, say, Harlequin-type romances in a comics format, you'll be better off writing a full length novel instead of banging the doors of Marvel or DC. The good news, however, is that there may be other writers who are like you.

Form a small group with your fellow writers and pursue your vision as a collective, with a primary objective being getting stuff published no matter what. Produce anthologies revolving around specific themes, and treat your finished product as a book. Packaged as a book, marketed as a book. In fact, you can even intersperse your comics stories with short prose, using a 70-30 page ratio in favor of comics. The best examples I can think of are the hard-bound horror anthologies published by Dark Horse.

If your group makes a horror anthology, sell it to horror fans. Try to get a good word in from the Horror Writers Association. Ditto for romance anthologies--I'd like to think that the Romance Writers of America would be open to looking through it, and there may be romance fans who'd like a few stories complemented by imagery.

The advantages of creating a collective are:

1) Sharing of resources. Some members may know more people. Some members may have a little more money. Some members may have more industry knowledge. Some members may have more solid writing experience. The sum is indeed stronger than the individual parts.
2) Sharing of workload. Because the collective is a team, tasks can be delegated.
3) Sharing of feedback. Because you're all writers, you can critique each other's works and help each other grow.
4) All-for-one promotion. During interviews, members can promote the collective's name, and even the works of other members. The members' websites are linked to each other, and the collective's website links to all members. If the members are from different states, promotional efforts can be simultaneously executed over a larger geographic area. If members are from the same state, promo efforts can be fast-tracked, with each member assigned to specific counties.
5) Impression of legitimacy. A solid group gives the impression that the members are serious about fulfilling their goals.
6) Future profitable activities. Conduct regular workshops. Produce how-to books. Not as individuals, though, but as a collective of talent. Everyone pitches in, and everyone gets a share of the profits.

The most difficult thing to manage in a collective of this sort is ego. The next is creative differences. Money and distribution of workload can also get in the the way. So the collective has to make sure it gets those issues out of the way before even going full throttle. Try one project first, and see how the members work together. When the project is done, do a post-production meeting to identify problems and possible future problems. In the end, it is the passion for the goal that should trump all difficulties.

Oh, and one more thing. When you come up with a name for your group, avoid--AVOID--those that seem to sound "cool." You're all grown-ups working outside the system, so while you have to go interesting, stimulating, or witty, you also have to go professional.

An Offbeat Way to Promote

For the past year, I've been hanging out almost every night in a small restaurant at the heart of a commercial district. There, I'd do some writing, doodling, and reading, just to get my senses settled after a hard day of work. It's come to the point that the waiters know the "usual," and I know them by name.

Do you have a favorite hang-out? A restaurant? A café? A place where a lot of people visit to hang out and talk? Have you reached a point where you've developed a semi-personal bond with this establishment? A place that's NOT a comics shop?

Why not ask for help via a quid pro quo?

When you're almost done with your graphic novel, try to set up an informal meeting with the manager or owner. The proposition is simple--you will create a short comics story that's set in that very hang-out. You will create a flyer that will be distributed to customers, and the flyer will direct them to a website featuring your short comics story. And, in that website, you provide a preview to the graphic novel you're actually finishing.

OR, if it's not too inconvenient for you--can you adjust a portion of your graphic novel that will feature the establishment as the location of one of your key scenes. Movies have been doing this for years, so it's not an impossibility for graphic novels.

If the shop manager is generous enough, he might even be willing to foot the bill in printing the short comics story to be given out for free in the shop. You can even ask if it's okay to sell your graphic novel there. When this happens, you've opened up a retailing possibility that's beyond the normal reach of the direct market.

Should success come to you with this little endeavor, you can try your luck with other establishments and see if they bite. Do you hang out in a bowling alley? Why not do a short comics story about bowling? Or a story about raising kids, to be placed in a day care center or a kiddie gym? You can even include a couple of "instructional" articles in your comics stories so there's information along with entertainment.

Go offbeat. The direct market is too limiting for the aspiring graphic novelist.

Another Chance For "Superheroes"

The television series "Heroes" succeeded not because it featured superpowered people. It made a major dent because it featured ordinary people who happened to have superhuman powers. It's a grand what-if involving disparate personalities, backgrounds and ethnicities, mostly tackling the question "what would these people do."

As we've seen in a previous post, the superhero comics market is small, but there's no reason why you can't create a graphic novel involving superpowered people, which is something like what manga has achieved, though in a different fashion. Still, the focus on human drama and pathos is what drives these stories forward, with some slam-bang action thrown in for some healthy dose of kinetic energy.

Because the characters have "costumes" you can normally buy in a department store and don't run around toting a codename, potential readers shift their focus to the heart of the story. This isn't a story involving capes and a big logo on a chestplate. This is about Joe who's wrestling with an extreme case of insecurity--his mind-reading powers pick up the thoughts of his parents, schoolmates, and the girl he wants to be with.

How about mousy medical student Sandra who discovers she's as strong as five powerlifters? Will she trade her quiet non-descript life for possible fame and fortune, or fulfill the dreams of her conservative and religious parents in Nebraska?

And that's where you hook a potential reader--a character who goes through what many people go through, only exaggerated or complicated by the inclusion of some kind of power. When Joe, who's become rather socially inept because of his insecurity, discovers that some of his classmates plan a dastardly deed against the school principal, what is he going to do? Or, to be more like recent headlines, picks up the thoughts of a reclusive classmate and uncovers homicidal thoughts involving a couple of guns and a dormitory?

Sandra, on the other hand, accidentally breaks the bones and kills her boyfriend. Her hometown is stunned by the incident, but no one believes Sandra to be capable of doing such harm. Will Sandra turn herself in? If she does, how can she explain how the accident occurred without her revealing her unusual strength?

Human drama. Human conflict. Throw a superpower in to add interest, but never make it a highlight. In stories like these, having superpowers can affect a character's decisions, but using them is rarely one of the options unless pressed against a wall.

Exercise: Write a short premise of a graphic novel involving a person with a superhuman ability. Make it two to three short paragraphs similar to a back-cover book description. However, you cannot use the word "superpower" or "superhuman" or any word that could suggest some kind of superheroism. This premise can also be used for your press releases.

Fundamental Rules In Promoting Your Comics

Say you've put together a formula for lemonade that would revolutionize the lemonade industry, and you're sure it'll hit big time. Surely you've got to promote your new discovery. Who will you approach first to take a swig of it?

A potential customer, of course.

It baffles me sometimes how comics creators would put together a comic and then start promoting it by telling other comics creators about it. It's like giving samples of your lemonade to other lemonade stands.

To promote your creation effectively via other comics creators, you need to personally approach a few and ask them for if your work is good enough for them to support. You need to isolate a special group of people who could vouch for you, as opposed to sending a blanket email to everyone in a mailing list and hoping that someone would bite.

What's more, sending a blanket email is tantamount to subjecting your work to general scrutiny, and there's a good chance that you'll receive either critique after critique from other creators you don't know from Adam, plus perhaps a consoling pat on the back, or no response at all, unless that's what you want.

The next avenue you need to take is to isolate that specific group of readers who might be interested in the subject of your work. If your superhero graphic novel is for kids, go ahead and send a press release to kids' publications or websites. Got one for the sports fanatics? Find your way into sports magazines and blogs.

What I did in the past was to prepare packages (or "press kits") that contained a short article about the book, information on where the book can be bought, and images of the cover and a few pages. The article mentioned who the book was written for (target market) and why the book is worth their time, or at least a tidbit that might stimulate audience interest. I also included a copy of the book.

When the packages were done, I researched the names of newspaper editors, particularly the lifestyle and entertainment sections. Then I physically delivered the labeled press kits to the newspaper offices.

What happened next? Over the next couple of weeks, my press release appeared in three newspapers, and one of them even had a review. Though sales weren't that high because only three stores had my book in stock (a distribution issue), I'd say my effort was worth it.

The aspiring comic creator can do the same, but digitally. Scour the web for sites that you believe might take interest in the subject matter of your book and hit the editors with a nice, formal email, expressing interest in sending a press release. See what happens. If you don't get responses, try other sites. Try blogs. Or post your press release in interest-specific message boards (if the terms of use allow such things). While you're at it, make an inquiry with printed magazines and community newspapers.

At this point, the aspiring comic creator would do well to try non-comics related venues for promotion. The medium has been getting increased popularity over the past few years. It's time to bank on it.

Have You Considered An Agent?

One day, I did something for kicks. I looked through an online database of literary agents and searched for those who represented graphic novels. I was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few of them in there.

So I chose one and, with zero expectations, made a call.

The agency was based in New York, and the receptionist put me through to the agent himself. He spoke in a low, apathetic voice and had that "get down to business I've got lots to do" tone.

I told him that I found his contact info through a website and that his profile indicated that he was willing to represent graphic novels. He said that, indeed, he was. So I asked him how I should go about submitting a query when his online profile didn't give submission specs for graphic novels.

He said that he could receive low resolution jpegs, but it would be better if I uploaded my stuff to a website so he could conveniently go over what I have to offer. I thanked him for his time before closing the call. Our conversation may have lasted less than a minute, but at least I was able to dip my toes into the prospect.

The good news is that you can attempt at getting an agent, granting of course that your work is good enough. There's a lot more to be discussed about dealing with agents, but the point is that this is another avenue comics creators can take.

There are plusses and minuses to getting an agent, but any publishing avenue will have plusses and minuses. But the biggest plus to me is the possibility of seeing my work in bookstores, on Amazon, in library catalogs--with no major expense on my part. The biggest minus, however, is that the book publishing world is a whole new creature altogether, and its innards can be a frustrating mess to the uninitiated.

In this case, you owe it to yourself to do research.

You can start with an introduction on eBookCrossroads and a few articles on Publishing Central. Maybe you'd want to consult a book on the subject.

Then go to AgentQuery, an online database of literary agents. On the left side of the home page, choose "graphic novels" from the dropdown menu labeled "Select a Fiction Genre" and click the "Quick Search" button. You'll find over 40 agencies in the results.

Identify Yourself

While I may not be an authority, I do have some experience in book publishing, marketing, public relations, graphic design, and writing. I've had a few comics projects out there, and while none of them are extremely popular, they've found their specific audiences.

And I think that's what comics creators at this point in time need--specific audiences. And, as much as possible, creators need to present themselves not as comic book creators, but as genre creators. Because, as much as we don't want to admit it, "comic book creators" are most probably identified as folks who ply spandex stories. (Historically, just how many comic book writers who have made the jump to fiction novels can boast tremendous success?)

To many, words are just words, but semantics can be a powerful thing. Let's look at these two statements:

"I created a science fiction comic book."

"I created a science fiction story in a graphic novel format."

In the former statement, the creator would be tagged "comic book creator." In the latter, the creator becomes a "science fiction storyteller" who uses the graphic novel format.

Big difference, that.

If you like to make comics, follow your genre and not your medium. You can even say that you create science fiction stories using the comics format. In this sense, you're not putting emphasis on "comics," the word that relegates the medium to kids' fare. Instead, you're identifying yourself as a creator of science fiction stories.

At least, down the line, the "comics creator" label won't be difficult to shed when you decide to write prose. To your audience, you're a storyteller, not a comic book guy.

After all, storytelling still rules, even in comics.