Many people ask me, “Why don’t you do a podcast?” and I reply, “I do!” It’s called More to Come and it’s produced by Publishers Weekly. This week, I chat with Matt Hawkins, president and coo of Top Cow. Matt is more than just an inimitable Facebook poster (if you’ve read his stories about standing in line at the grocery store, you know what I mean.) He’s also an industry veteran who’s seen the highest highs and the lowest lows, and in this talk he dishes on the early days of Image and much more.
He also gives small publisher’s perspective on the recent discussion of page rates: basically these are low margins we’re talking about.
It’s something I’m sympathetic to even though it makes things rougher for all of us. It’s a big problem for the entire industry and it will take a group effort to change the status quo.
As a sidebar, here are links to the free #1 issues of a bunch of books Hawkins talks about in the podcast:
Tales of Honor Bred to Kill #1
Top Cow has always been very aggressive about free samples of #1s; it’s a tried and true method to get more eyeballs.
Disclaimer: As you can see if you look around, Top Cow is an advertiser for The Beat, however no promotional considerations were made for this post.
