SLG interview at Newsarama Blog, Fanta responds to Ellison, ramblings on the industry from the sleep-deprived

The Beat picks up on an interview everyone else seems to have missed… a chat with SLG head slave driver Dan Vado at Newsarama Blog where he dispells the myth of the goth comic market, sees through the inane disingenuousness of viral marketing, and gives those internet forum jockeys who say graphic novels will solve everything a heavy dose of reality check.  (The higher risk of the bookstore market is a point I’ve been driving across whenever I can.  Really, I hate to be rude, but those people who shout the death of pamphlets from every cliff they can climb, curses the DM for every failure, and think their books will do gangbusters as long as it has a spine need to shut the hell up.  Spines don’t make the book… the content makes the book.)

An excellent read for prospective publishers and creators everywhere.  This guy publishes Evan Dorkin’s Dork, and that’s all the credentials he needs.

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If you’ve been following the spat between Harlan Ellison and Fantagraphics, Journalista has made public Fantagraphic’s official response to the original complaint from Ellison.  Even from a cursory glance, one thing is quite evident… unlike Ellison’s complaint, this document reads like it was written by actual, competent lawyers.

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You know, the exclusive deal with Viz, the SLG interview, plus Eric Reynold’s eye-opening post on Fantagraphics’ sales percentages has got me in a ponderous mood… in discussions about the performance of independents in the direct market (or lack thereof,) two camps of thought usually emerge; retailers will say that it’s the publisher’s job to create buzz and drive readers to stores, and that the indy’s failure to market books properly is what’s costing themselves sales.  Publishers on the other hand will point the finger at indifferent retailers and a system designed to benefit only the big two.  (Of course, this excludes all the smart, cool, forward-thinking, progressive retailers who choose to stock Icarus Publishing comics and graphic novels.  Eh heh heh heh…)

The bias of each camp is obvious, and the answer is probably somewhere in the middle… but the position Fantagraphics and SLG find themselves in would seem to nudge the argument slightly in favor of publishers.  The success of the big manga companies in bookstores can well be attributed to a bunch of outside factors such as deeper pockets, television exposure, and so on.  But you can’t make the same claim with publishers like FBI, SLG, and Drawn and Quarterly.  They have seen their non-DM sales increase, while comic book store sales remained flat, and I see absolutely no sign that they’re doing anything significantly different in the bookstore market than they do in the DM.

When a publisher advertises a book, the goal is to drive readers to stores… but new readers seem to be choosing bookstores over LCS.  And this is assuming that the publisher has a real advertising budget at all.  Is the key really as simple as having books readily on hand, in front of the eyes and minds of readers, rather than relying on pre-orders?  Is advertising to the DM falling on deaf ears?  This may explain why Viz chose to push their Bleach manga at chains, while ignoring the DM.

The other possible conclusion may be that these publishers’ books are simply better-suited to bookstore readers.  But that ought to be a worrisome answer… it means the DM isn’t attracting, and never will attract, real “mainstream” book readers in any significant way, other than what the “one true genre” can muster.  That’s going to be problematic if sales tilt more to graphic novels, which chains will be able to keep in stock, and get better discounts on because of their bulk buying power.

This might have read like a lot of LCS bashing, but it’s not.  We’re biased… we’re all for the DM.  But there appears to be a serious disconnect between, how should we say, what the generals at the headquarters are saying and what the soldiers are reporting on the battlefront.  No one can just dismiss indies as “books that don’t have an audience” anymore.  Something here doesn’t add up, and we need to figure out what it is.

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According to Reuters, Japanese copyright holders have finally become fed up with all of their shows being posted on Youtube and asked them to remove nearly 30,000 clips.  That’s like half of the funny video clips they play on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.