I took this from what he says as advice towards creative individuals of any bent. I hope some of you find it interesting. Click the link at the bottom for the entire interview with Mark Waid. For those not familiar with Mark Waid, he's a highly successful comic writer who's worked for all three of the major houses and has his own online publishing house at Thrillbent.
More and more, the way it’s going to work is that with your creative role, no matter what endeavor it is that you’re pursuing, trying to market it yourself through a major mega-corporation, whether it’s Sony or Warner Bros. and find distribution like that, I think that’s a dying way of doing things. It forces you out of your personal place, it forces you, by nature, to be more commercial and it forces you to sand the edges off your work. Whereas, and I say this knowing it’s a lot of work, I think what today and tomorrow brings us is the chance to connect more with your audience. It’s less important for you to gamble that Sony and Warner Bros. can help you find an audience of a billion people. It’s a safer bet to say that if you can find 15,000 or 20,000 people who like what you do and are willing to support you at a fair market price for what you give them, nobody gets rich that way but everybody gets paid. And you put yourself in a much better position because you can do what you do and the things that only you can do and you don’t have to worry about serving corporate masters. Digital gives you that opportunity. It’s the democratization of comics. At this point, all you’re losing is sweat equity if you do online comics. You don’t have to pay printers, you don’t have to cough up big money, you just have to get out there and put it up online and it will find an audience. If it’s good, then people will gravitate toward you. You’ll have to do your own marketing and pushing and stuff and I’m not trying to tell you, “If you build it, they will come,” but at the same time, building it is the most important part of the equation, and in my experience, do it right and you’ll find an audience.
I just hope some of you find this as interesting as I did.
Edit: Here's the link for the full interview on Hero Complex.
Comments
Where?
Can we find the interview? I looked at his blog, but...
Janice
Oops!
Somehow I killed the link. Lemme fix that.
~And so it goes...
If you build it...
That you build it is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition that they come.
Such is mathematical logic.
Anam Chara
Well...
I post things like this in the hopes of starting some discussions. C'est la vie.
~And so it goes...
new business
With the big publishing companies asking authors to do more and more of their own marketing, and the growth of self-publishing, there is a need for people just to be marketers for books. I always thought that is what you were getting by going to a mainstream publisher, but apparently now a days that is not the case. Many of them want to know your marketing plan when you submit a book.
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek