Business News

IDW's "parent company"—actually a holding company consisting of a travel brochure publisher and IDW—has become renamed IDW Media Holdings, and IDW's Ted Adams will...

A Kickstarter is a little like having a baby in only 31 days, You put all your efforts into the birth, but then what happens to the baby? Well now we'll get to see the kids grow up and go to school. Kickstarter is enabling creators to showcase more of what happens to projects after the initial funding ends with a new "Spotlight" feature. All creators with funded projects will now be able to manage the page to present a view of their work, with huge graphics, an inviting look, an attractive new timeline feature that can share the creator's story at a glance, and links that can go anywhere—so buy buttons and links to ongoing projects can be added.

This may well spoil things for people trying to flip variants on eBay, but it looks like Books A Million will let you order...

According to a news blast they just sent out, Hiveworks, a digital comics portal, had 12,000,000 users in January—alst year it had a total of 65,000,000, so it's on track for a lot of growth. But what kind of growth? According to their about page, "Hiveworks is a creator owned publisher and studio that helps webcomic and online media creators turn their creative endeavors into sustainable businesses. We serve as mentors and as a home for many comics."

And when I say must-read, I mean MUST READ, as it really lays out fundamental changes in how the industry is working for creator owned books.. A few days ago I noted how an old post on the economics of Jim Zubkavich on Skullkickers, his Image comics, had gotten a second life on Facebook with it's very low numbers on comics profits. In the comment, Zub promised an update, and he's delivered with an analysis of his new book, Wayward. As you can see from the above graph, it's a HUGE change, and it's all due to the rise of Image Comics:

The last time we talked about Books A Million and Diamond, I told you'd I'd been advised to keep an eye on Dark Horse...

DC isn't the only comics company moving office—IDW just announced a move to a former Navy barracks within the historic NTC in Liberty Station...

When I first got this email, I read it as "Ended their relationship, and I was like WHA--???!?!? But no no, the correct title is "IDW And Hasbro Celebrate 10 Years By Extending Their Relationship " which makes a ton of sense. Books like Transformers, GI Joe and My Little Pony have become mainstays for IDW and often damn good comics, like the epic TRANSFORMERS VS GI JOE that Tom Scioli and John Barber turned into a critical hit.

Brett Schenker is pressing onwards with his Facebook research into comics likers, who they are what they buy and what they do. While his gender based research continues to be a benchmark, this time out he has a lot of trends on education, employment and so on.

Since relaunching early last year, the new Heavy Metal has been relatively quiet, relaunching Hoax Hunters under their banner and pursuing their multi media plans mostly behind the scenes. However, a recent appearance at Wizard World Portland has revealed plans for locating the comics operations of the company in Portland, OR where they'll pursue a model that takes advantage of their well known branding:

Yesterday's announcement of Milestone 2.0 was broken in the Washington Post, but principles Reggie Hudlin and Denys Cowan did more extensive interviews talking about what they have planned in a few places. Talking with Albert Ching at CBR they noted "We're Not in the Nostalgia Business", which is a pretty good platform to build from. While the details are still sketchy, they confirmed that they have some projects in the works with DC, among other publishers, although there was a long legal tangle to unravel.

Last fall, we here at The Beat teamed up with the awesome folks at The Devastator to put together a survey for convention exhibitors. With all the controversy over who is spending and what cons are con games, it seemed like time to seriously upgrade this survey. And you responded, with more than 100 people taking the survey, giving results on the top cons and CAFs that revealed average sales and average amount of satisfaction with each show. In case you've never heard of them, The Devastator is a humor/comic magazine based in LA that features sharp satire and art by founders Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows as well as people from The Onion, the Daily Show, Adult Swim, Marvel and more. The result, as crunched by the Devastator's staff, has some eye-opening statistics. You can read the entire report right here, and see some of the Devastator team's own comments below, but here are a few of my own eye-openers: