Retailing & Marketing

The Comic Book Women, an advocacy group helping raise the profile of women working in comics, had a great showing at Emerald City Comic Con this year with several panels this year. This wasn’t a case of putting women on a panel and focusing on their gender perspective. It was about providing a group of talented women that could share their experience and provide insight into how to make it in the comic book industry—resulting in a panel for everyone. What secrets did they share on selling your comic book?

Ken Marcus, the man behind some of the funniest and/or most annoying Geico commercials of all times, gives some advice on how to market your indie comics gleaned from his years in advertising.

With less than 48 hours to go until the world shattering Rebirth event, to be held at 9:30 am PDT  on the Saturday of WonderCon (And livestreaming for audiences everywhere, DC is using a very unorthodox rollout...

Andy Runton of Owly fame was going about his own business on the internet when he saw this photo of the front of Legend Comics in Florence, SC. It's from Facebook and it isn't...

Comics Experience owner Brian Hibbs has done his annual service to the industry byanalyzing the yearly graphic novels sales charts as reported to Bookscan. This is information people normally pay thousands of dollars for so it is technically leaked info, but while it's there let's take advantage of it. As Hibbs points out, these numbers do not reflect comics shops, indie bookstores, book fair or libraries, to name but four huge outlets for GN sales. So they are not complete. However they are a metric , and one that's worth studying.

Yesterday Alex Zalben had a modest proposal on CBR called For Comics to Survive, They Must Align with Movies & TV and drew a lot of fire on comics twitter. The piece starts out pointing out how DC dropped the ball by not having a Supergirl comic to come out with the Supergirl TV show but unfolds it as a tarp to cover much of the Big Two publishing strategy:

Diamond's annual Retailer Summit will once again be held in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic Con this year. The summit takes place AUgust31/September 2 with the theme "Future Vision: Building the Comic Book Shop...

    Since last December, American has had  a new sweetheart and it's rebel fighter pilot Poe Dameron, as portrayed by swoony Oscar Isaac in Star Wars The Force Awakens. MEn, women and children are all abuzz about...

All we've seen of Rebirth is a big blue curtain, and there's a lot of anxiety about what's behind the curtain. You may recall the game show Let's Make a Deal where contestants had to pick the prize behind one of three curtains. Will Rebirth be a new car or a box of macaroni and cheese? The entire comics industry benefits from a strong DC Comics. A lack of customers who are eager to read the exploits of some of the medium's best known characters is a concerning thing to retailers and even other publishers, who know that the Big Two are the core of the existing business. I'm told even some at Marvel are worried about the effects of Rebirth. DC execs faced many tough questions at the ComicsPRO meting where it was announced, and skepticism and hope were felt in equal measure, sometimes by the same person.

The book is alive! Alive, I tell you! Bookstore sales rose in 2015 for the first time since 2007. It was only a modest 3.5% increase, but an increase is an increase, PW reports,...

The ComicsPRO meeting has wrapped up, but not without presenting its two Industry Appreciation awards. Marvel's svp of sales and marketing David Gabriel won one and MAD/EC founder Bill Gaines won the second....

One of these “strike while the iron is hot” deals. Or more accurately, strike when your brain feels like co-operating. Last night, DC took the stage at this year’s Comics Pro meeting to talk about...