What started as another Civil War-centric thread on the Engine quickly transformed into a discussion between creators, retailers and others on how to best promote books. Brian Wood, Matt Fraction, Jim Crocker and Brian Hibbs all contribute, but the heart of things may be this discussion between Warren Ellis and Tom Spurgeon, which starts with the following from Ellis:

[L]ook at this. Creators paying hundreds of dollars — in some cases, dollars they haven’t yet earned out — to put into the hands of retailers promotional materials that in any other industry you would reasonably expect the major companies to deal with.

Spurgeon:

You’re right, that is pretty amazing…?

Are the companies partners for you guys when you do stuff like this or is this all solo work?

Do they provide you information if you ask for it, for instance? I know Diamond is still protecting information like it’s 1986, but is that true of the publishers as well?

Ellis:

Some companies have been known to actively instruct against it, in some instances.

But think about it. DC puts out some 200 products every month, and I think their PR team is maybe three people deep. What does that lead to?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Comic Books, Creators, Industry, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.