To Market, To Market

 

Okay, then. Every other week.

Seriously, time got away from me last week, what with doctor visits interrupting an assignment with a tight deadline and an unforeseen resurgence of my video game addiction. Fortunately this week timing is better; I’ve got the tests/surgery Friday, then the weekend to recover before the next two assignments come in. In between all this I’ve been squeezing in the second draft rewrite of the former side project, which is now the main project. I need another longhand project. Pens and notebooks don’t come with distractions like games and stuff on YouTube.

Oh, and if you’re ever scheduled for day surgery, in which they send you home after you wake up, make damn sure you’ve got a friend or family member to take you home because if you’re still recovering from anesthesia, nobody else wants anything to do with you. Not Uber, not any social service. Nobody wants to be responsible if you have a reaction to the anesthesia on the ride home. The hospital won’t keep you overnight because insurance won’t cover it. I was lucky in that my neighbor next door was willing to transport me. She’s had run-ins with insurance coverage and understands exactly what I’m going through. After this I’ll have to make an effort to clean up my yard, which I pretty much let go this summer due to work and excessive heat, so they don’t have to look at it any more. It’s the least I can do.

* * * *

On to the blog. Writing the book, or books, or series, or anything is only half the battle. Even if you skip agent hunting and traditional publishing and upload the file to Amazon yourself, you still need to market the damn thing. You can’t just release it into the wild and hope enough people buy it to earn you pocket money. That doesn’t work. I tried that once and the poor thing sank without a trace. In six-seven years I doubt if it’s sold even a dozen copies, even after I lowered the price. If I’m going to earn money from this I’ll have to up my game. Writing better books would help, too.

Marketing is part of the reason I’m attempting regular blog posting. I’m not on any other social media, so I’m starting at a disadvantage. A channel on YouTube would help. Pity I’m an introvert. And not photogenic. And don’t have a very good speaking voice. And have no idea what my content would be. I’ve heard writers used to make Facebook pages specifically to hawk their wares, but does anyone even use Facebook any more? This blog is pretty much it. I may need to resort to clickbait entries to try to entice more readers. Maybe it’s time to dust off my theory about the History Channel’s show Ancient Aliens…

Or I can maybe earn some interest by learning from, and riding the coattails of, a highly successful marketer. I mentioned Eric July and his newest endeavor, Rippaverse Comics, a couple of entries ago. His first graphic novel (and related merchandise) netted him $3.7 million in sales. Issue #2 brought in $2.3 million. First issues tend to sell better because of collector interest, but those issue #2 numbers are nothing to sneeze at. He’s got two more books coming out within the next four months, with sales campaigns soon to be scheduled. Anticipation is already riding high, and wagers being laid on how fast the customers can crash the servers, and how long the system will be down. (Demand for Issue #2 knocked the site offline almost immediately; access was touch-and-go on Day 1, and Day 2 they were down for 20 hours. They brought in new hamsters to run on the treadmills, and after that things settled down.)

Clearly this man knows how to market. How did he do it? What did he do?

First off, Eric July is no newbie. He’s a musician. He and his band have been performing and selling recordings since he was a teen. He started a channel in the early days of YouTube and built a following. He’s been doing commentary on politics, music and comic books for years. His disappointment in the current state of the comic book industry, Marvel and DC’s output in particular, prompted him to start his own company and produce his own line of graphic novels. He kept his viewers apprised of his progress, and waited until he actually had a finished product on the shelves and ready to go before he opened for business. All of this was heavily advertised on his website, through live streams (his own and guesting on others’ channels) and video posts on YouTube and other outlets. Yes, visibility counts.

So does showmanship. July’s a performer, no doubt about that. He’s animated, enthusiastic, engaged. He’s fun to watch. He believes in what he’s doing and he gets others to believe in it too. And it’s working, to the tune of roughly $6 million in total sales so far.

This being the internet, he’s naturally attracted a veritable cult of detractors who are jealous of his phenomenal success, or trying to get attention by attacking him, or just have nothing better to do. He’s even turned their vitriol to his advantage.  Check out this marketing maneuver:

During the campaign for Issue #2, a few of these haters got hold of Issue #1 and posted it in its entirety on the Web so people could read it for free. This is known as “pirating” and violates the terms of service of most legit outlets. It also costs creative folks a lot of money. Mr. July had the pirated copies taken down. His detractors immediately claimed he “couldn’t take criticism.”

Not long after, the ad posted at the top of this entry appeared. For roughly a week, Isom #1 was offered for sale for the discounted price of $12 (original price: $35). A percentage of the proceeds was donated to a charity that provides comic books to children in hospitals. Promo code to cash in on this offer was “Pirate.” Nothing else needed to be said. We all knew what he was referring to.

That’s more than just a marketing ploy. That’s style. That’s how you promote your goods even in the face of adversity. That was a win on several levels. There’s much about business to be learned from this man, and you’d better believe I’m taking notes.

First, though, I’d better make sure I’ve got a quality product. While I’m at it, I need to come up with ways to establish more of a presence on the internet. Too bad I’ve always been anti-social, including anti-social media. That’s something else that’s going to have to change. Back to work…

Your Tax Dollars at Work

This incident happened a while ago, back around January. I’m just now getting around to posting the story. Yes, I still have serious issues with procrastination and work avoidance. I’m working on it.

Anyway. I’ve been a fan of comic books since I learned to read, although I don’t buy any on a regular basis any more. I got older, my tastes changed, comics changed, comics got more and more expensive and I needed the money for groceries. I still keep up with what’s going on with Marvel and DC, and I’ve seen most of the movies from both companies. (On DVD from the library. Movies got too expensive years ago. Not to mention crappy.) Avengers: Endgame seemed like a good stopping point: it was everything the comics I grew up with used to be but aren’t any more. The last movie I saw in a theater was Spider-Man: No Way Home, and that was mostly for the nostalgia factor; Tobey Maguire will always be my movie Spider-Man. The first comic book I’ve bought in years is the topic of this blog.

For the non-fans, a quick catch-up: Marvel and DC aren’t the only two companies, just the biggest. These days Marvel (Spider-Man; the X-Men) is owned by Disney, while Time/Warner owns DC (Batman and Superman). Then we have Image, Dark Horse, IDW and a bunch of other smaller companies floating around the edges. Plus there are independent creators who use crowdfunding platforms like Indigogo to bankroll their publishing efforts. All of these involve physical print endeavors. There may be other creators whose work is solely available on the internet, but I’m not familiar with them.

And now we’ve got Eric July.

Like me and a lot of other long-time fans, July had stopped buying books from the Big Two because he wasn’t happy with the direction the companies had taken and the disrespect he felt was being shown his childhood heroes. So he decided to make his own comics. Except he didn’t stop at just that. Instead of going the crowdfunding route, he chose to eliminate all the middlemen and start his own comic book company, creating, writing, printing and distributing graphic novels starring his own creations in his own shared universe. He hired an artist, put the book together, created some merchandise (shirts and posters), promoted all this on his YouTube channel and, in July 2022, opened up shop with a 70+-day sales campaign. The comic was a 90-some page graphic novel on quality paper, priced at $35. July’s stated campaign goal was $100,000 in sales.

By the end of the campaign, he had earned $3.7 million. That’s million with a capital M, folks. Not bad for his first-ever comic book.

There’s more to his story—his second issue’s sales campaign is currently ongoing, and a lot of folks in the industry and on YouTube and Twitter are not at all pleased by his success. But that’s not what this story’s about. This is just the background. We now return to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

I wasn’t part of the initial campaign. I came in when the mudslinging started. It made for entertaining viewing on July’s YouTube channel. I looked into his website and decided $35 was too much for my wallet at that point in time. However, my finances picked up after Christmas, so for my January birthday I decided to treat myself and support a fellow writer and former mainstream comics fan by buying a copy of his book.

This is where I ran afoul of the US Postal Service.

I had no trouble placing my order and paying for my purchase. Mr. July had no trouble accepting my money and shipping me my book. They even sent me an email letting me know the order had been filled, with a tracking number so I could follow its journey. (The new company is in Texas, while I’m in Pennsylvania.) I had fun checking in once or twice a day to see how things were going. Anticipation soared when I saw the book had arrived at the Lancaster distribution center and would probably be delivered at my house the following day.

Here’s where the system broke down.

The next morning I logged on and clicked the tracking info. The book was still in Lancaster. Then it was en route to Ephrata. Then it was in Ephrata. Then communication stopped. There was no information; the book had disappeared. Oh wait, there it was. For reasons known only to the postal gods, my package, which had made it all the way from Texas and safely arrived at the Ephrata Post Office, which is maybe a mile from where I live, had inexplicably been rerouted and delivered to the Christiana Post Office on the other side of the county. Uh, whut?

 Time to take personal action. Armed with my tracking number, I drove over to the PO and asked them what happened. They didn’t know. They had no explanation. The best they could give me was that the package had somehow been mislabeled and sent to Christiana by mistake. How did it get mislabeled? Shrugs all around. It must have had the right label on it to start with or it wouldn’t have been sent to Ephrata. So the mislabeling had to have happened at the Ephrata Post Office. Why and by whom? Again, no concrete answers. It was probably a machine because we all know government employees never make mistakes. All they could do was have it sent back to the Lancaster distribution center and start over. All I could do was go home and wait.

Well, they did get it sorted out by that evening, as I saw on the tracking info. It was returned to the Ephrata PO by morning and I finally got it by noon. The book was in good shape. Nice quality product. The story and art wasn’t bad. Better than I’ve seen from a lot of offers out of the Big Two lately. If Mr. July can keep this up, he’s got a winner on his hands. Can’t say the same for the Post Office.

This may wind up becoming a continued story. Like I said, July’s currently running his second campaign for issue #2. This time I ordered early. He’s going to start shipping orders out at the end of this month, via UPS. UPS has announced it’s going on strike at the start of August. Here we go again. Well, I’ve still got all my old comic books stashed in the closet. At least I’ll have something to read.