The Comics How To… Vol. 2 Chapter 05. Production: Marketing

Lance Lucero

6 years ago

Now that BOB: NON-UNION PSYCHIC #0 TRUE TALENT was complete, it was time to figure out how to get the book out to the world. Producing the book was a pleasurable task, but marketing a product in modern times really sucks in my opinion. You have to deal with all of the social media crap. Hey, if you like that kind of thing, congratulations, but I“m not a fan of all things Internet. Call me old school. But, it“s a necessary evil in modern day society. You do what you got to do, right?

As I mentioned before, a website was being built to help promote BOB #0 while it was being produced. In general, the website belongs to Warehouse 9 Productions, Ltd.Â Â The W9 site is designed to grow with all things produced by the company.

BOB #0 was the main focus at the time. After the BOB #0 was produced, we started to use art from the book for the site. I recommend re-purposing art as much as you can; it will save you a lot of time and money in the future. I didn“t want the site to be just a landing page for the book, which would“ve worked just fine; I wanted the site to have a bit more flair and information. I wanted the book to look like it was a gigantic production, which it was. A great landing page was created that gave many informative options ”” book synopsis, character descriptions, environment descriptions, creator profiles, store page, reviews page, media page, etc. I wanted the site to be a bonus experience in addition to the book. Fans really liked that.

I went the extra mile with promoting the book by creating a comic book trailer. At the time, the few comic book trailers that existed were nothing more than just showing pages of the book and where to buy it. Being a film guy, I wanted the BOB #0 trailer to be cinematic, which the book already is. I wanted to have a touch of animation in the trailer, which was made easy by the art created by Francisco, and I wanted to move within the panels without dialogue bubbles. I wanted transitions that I could use to bombard the viewer with the BOB: NON-UNION PSYCHIC logo and really cool original music. I wanted the trailer to be a comic book spectacle. It worked out really well; people really responded well to it.

Okay, we have a really cool indie book, a neat little website, and a cool trailer. How do we get comic book fans to tune into all of this”¦?Â Â First off, I had to come up with a strategy about how to get the book out to the world. After discussing this with Adam, we realized it would be best to release the book through W9 in a digital format. Let“s test the waters to see if anyone is even interested in our professional hairstylist, renegade psychic.

Adam and I hunkered down and created a preview pitch that we emailed to over 100 comic book sites. The response was not overwhelming, but we were able to secure quite a few very positive reviews from sites that had a decent audience. The next step I took was building an email list, so that I could inform all those interested in what BOB was up to. It was a small list of people we knew, but the word started to slowly spread and the list started to grow.

Eventually I had to pull the trigger and release this indie book. I set a date and designed a soft launch strategy. I premiered the trailer, which was a big factor in marketing the book, showcased positive reviews, offered a discount the week it was released, and gave away a free logo and poster when the book was purchased online at our store (the poster is still offered if you buy from our site). Overall, the response to BOB: NON-UNION PSYCHIC #0 TRUE TALENT was decent. It was not a big splash in any way, but it was a ripple that people noticed.

As time progressed, we accumulated more positive reviews, podcast interviews, and the support of indie platforms such as ComixCentral, who honored the book with a Comic of the Week award and Best Comedy of the year (2017) award. We are critically acclaimed and award winning comic book creators! Not bad for a tiny company trying to make it big in the world, right?

I“d say the entire process, from adapting the script to the launch of the finished book, took about one year. It was a very enjoyable experience. I“m truly honored to work with the BOB: NON-UNION PSYCHIC team. We are creating quality books at an indie level that I am proud of.

So what“s next? We keep it going, that“s what“s next!