Comics marketing 101

How to get someone to care about your comic book

Editor’s Note: It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s New Comic Book Day and another edition of Amazing Journey!

The Amazing Journey column will touch on a comics-related topic, such as writing the first issue of a series, what it’s like to run a comic book store, working with artists, and how writing comics is different from writing prose.

Amazing Journey back issues

True believers unite (#1) | My comics origin story (#2) | Comic event series (#3) | The comics of Kickstarter (#4) | Single issues or trades? (#5) | From prose to comics (#6) | Adapting a celebrated fantasy series into a comic (#7) | Charting a career in comics (#8) | Comic book spoilers (#9) | Lessons from Kieron Gillen’s masterclass (#10)

When I’m not thinking about story, I’m thinking about how to market my story and find new readers. This presents a challenge in fiction, where you have to convince someone to buy something an impulse-level price item (most indie ebooks are between $3.99-$5.99) that you spent half-a-year or more writing, and also convince them to spend ten hours of their free time reading your work.

For comics, it’s a different calculus in several ways.

First, the time/cost equation is flipped, as most professional comic writers can write a script in a week or less, an individual comic can probably be read in a 15-minute sitting, and a single issue is priced the same as an indie ebook. So you have an impulse-level price, a quick reading time, but much higher production costs. That presents a challenge for an indie creator Kickstarting a comic, as it may be many months or even a year between issues, compared to the monthly cadence of a Big 2 book.

Second, comics is still a physical-heavy medium, and outside of Kickstarter, that means trying to get your comic into comic shops. This presents a whole new set of challenges, as you have to market your comic to comic shop owners and convince them to take a chance on an unknown book. Even assuming you catch the eye of a shop owner browsing the Previews catalog and they buy a couple of copies, your book is one of dozens of new comics coming out that week and one of hundreds competing for shelf space and for customer attention.

At the end of the day, unless you have a stunning eye-catching cover or the shop owner is hand-selling your book to everyone who comes into the store, you’re not likely to sell very many copies. And the problems only compound with the next issue, as most series have a 50% or more drop-off between issue 1 and issue 2.

But it’s not all doom-and-gloom. Compared to selling to bookstores (where the owners/employees might not be fans of your genre at all), comic shop owners and employees want to hear about new books of all kinds because they love the medium.¹ And because the time commitment for reading a single issue pales in comparison to reading a full-length novel, you have a much better shot at getting retailer attention from your comic than from your 450-page book. And my personal experience is that comic readers are more genre-agnostic, willing to try different stories that are outside of their usual lane.

Comics are also a visual medium, meaning that’s it’s easier to get retailers and readers excited about a new book by showing off the art (see further down below for an example).² John Hendrick of Big Bang Comics in Dublin had a great post on SKTCHD on marketing to comic shops with some great ideas in this regard.

While the above may sound negative, I view it as a new challenge and I’m excited to connect with comic readers (and comic shops when the time comes) as I launch my first comic series. Stay tuned for future Amazing Journey issues, where I’ll tackle comics marketing in further detail.

That brings me to the Question of the Week and your third chance to enter the June giveaway. The giveaway will be going on all month long. To enter, simply leave a comment with your answer to any of the Questions of the Week in June.

How do you hear about new comic books? Kickstarter? Talking to your local shop owner? Comics news sites? A gremlin who appears on your window at night?

As a reminder, we have two new prizes for this month’s giveaway, both from indie comics creator Curtis Clow. First, for U.S. residents only, you can win a copy of Clow’s Beastlands Volume 1.

Second, if you’re outside of the U.S., you can win a digital copy of issue #1 of Slightly Exaggerated (please indicate in your answer if you are ex-U.S.).

What I’m reading this week

Another break for the X-line, as we have only X-Force today (in which Benjamin Percy is cooking up a fun save-the-future story with Kid Omega), but there is plenty more waiting in the wings!

• Scarlet Witch Annual #1: Steve Orlando’s Scarlet Witch has been a compelling series, with gorgeous interiors from Sara Pichelli and amazing covers (and interiors for issue #5) from Russell Dauterman. Today we see the start of the Contest of Chaos, which will pit the Marvel universe’s heroes against each other over the coming months in a series of Annuals. I will go against my normal rule of events comprised of multiple issue #1s, and will be following the Contest along into the fall.

• Nightwing #105: Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo are back for another super-fun special issue, where the entire issue is drawn from Nightwing’s point-of-view.

• Ultimate Invasion #1: The Illuminati + The Maker + Jonathan Hickman + Bryan Hitch + Multiverse shenanigans = Instant Buy. The return of the 1610 (Ultimate) universe has been teased for several years in random pages of Donny Cates’ Venom run, so I was super-excited for the surprise announcement earlier in the spring that Hickman had another Marvel series in the works, in addition to G.O.D.S. dropping in September. Hickman’s New Avengers is one of my all-time favorite series, so I’m super-excited to see the Illuminati band getting back together once more.

• Avengers #2: I have been on a mission to finish Jason Aaron’s prior Avengers & Avengers Forever run so I can start this new series from Jed MacKay and not get behind. I’ve been reading them in five-issue chunks each day and am about to get to the final 10-issue Avengers Assemble story. So hopefully by issue 3, I will be all caught up!

• Incredible Hulk #1: Another series where I’m behind on the prior run. I was really enjoying Cates’ fun take on Hulk and Bruce Banner, but that’s all over (along with his Thor run), so we have Philip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein launching a more horror/monster-focused series today.

• Guardians of the Galaxy #3: This series has captured the fun of the team from the MCU and is super approachable for new readers. I’ve also been reading the 2008 Guardians title that followed Annihilation and it also dovetails well with the movies. You can read it on Marvel Unlimited or in the reprinted trade.

What are you picking up this week?

Backlist Pick-Up

Kelly Thompson

recently announced that she was teaming up again with Leonardo Romero for a new Birds of Prey series at DC!

I’m not usually a DC reader, but am a big fan of Thompson’s work and the art looks gorgeous, so I will definitely be picking this up in the fall. For now though, I’m checking out the duo’s work on the 2016 Hawkeye series, which also features gorgeous covers by Julian Totino Tedesco and colors by Jordie Bellaire:

One thing I love about Thompson’s work is her use of De Luca Effect style action panels, and apparently this book has them as well, as Thompson highlighted on her Substack yesterday:

You Expected This, Right?

1. This is not a knock on indie book store owners and employees at all, but just my observations.

2. You can have the wittiest or craziest paragraph from your book, but it will lose out to an amazing illustration 99 times out of 100 in terms of attention.