I just got through skyping with a friend of mines and we were talking about Marketing in comics. The friend I was speaking with was Howard Wong a writer who works as a freelancer and put out After the Cape from Image Comics, has just been part of a successful kickstarter campaign with True Patriot and has been nominated for a Shuster award. So our situation is a bit odd because everyone who knows anything about comics knows that a huge part of marketing is the convention circuit but I live in Hawaii and he lives in China. So, we need other means to market our books. On-line of course is invaluable- twitter and facebook is a no brainer but after that it gets a bit fuzzy for me. Obviously you want to hit up CBR and Newsarama but the problem with those are you're in direct competition with the big boys Marvel and DC who lets face it they're going to win the attention battle. I mean I do it myself, I'll see something done by someone I may know personally but the whole time I read the article I can't wait to see what the big two have cooking- even if it's not that exciting. Marvel and DC are at the top of the food chain. Then you'll have the next tier of publishers like Dark Horse and Image, and then I think maybe IDW, Boom! and well I'm not sure how the order goes in terms of what's popular. So to me it's a battle of attention. People know what they want and it's hard to break them off of their habits. Marketing, it just isn't my thing.

Now having said that. I would like to offer what I think may potentially be a good idea. What about an agent that does the marketing for you? This is just me speaking off the top of my head so it may be the dumbest thing ever or maybe not. But how I imagine it is a person who lives in the U.S. Not Hawaii or Alaska- the lower 48 who's already doing conventions and he gets a cut off of everything sold, a percentage, something honest but gives him the initiative to sell more. The more he sells the more he makes. Think about it, there are those guys who believe and want to be a part of the community but never figure out how, I just figured it out for them. Now of course there are other issues at hand like him running off with all the profits not paying me or the other creators. And then you'd also have to add in more expenses on his end of things- hotel, lodging and whatever else but that's a different topic altogether. I think having some friends in this department would be great for the business.

What do you guys think? Brilliant? Dumb? Meh? ALready done before?

It would be great to get some feedback on this if indeed I do have people who read my journals.