Scott King

Bill: Alright I want to welcome everyone.

Gary: This should be called the ‘hung-over panel.” It’s a miracle people are here.

Brett: I know. I was surprised that there were so many people. I thought there would be five.

Bill: Gary, what do you think characterized the current momentum in comic publishers and compare it to anything you’ve experienced before now.

Gary: Probably there is an overall excitement in the publishing field for comics. For the first time the New York conglomerates are jumping on the bandwagon because they think there is money to be made in comics. Little do they know. They see things like Chris Ware, Maus, or whatever and they think that they can duplicate that. This is a boom period and I guess we can get into whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent but the big change is the interest of graphic novels at the huge conglomerates.

Brett: They are throwing money out right and left. The major publishers are doing this and the younger cartoonist generation are like “It’s all money.” So they are coming into this business thinking its profitable. Meanwhile they come to Top Shelf and expect us to just hand out $50,000 advances.

Bill: Most of the stuff you are doing Dan is not going specifically to comic book stores, right?

Dan: Well I publish artist and books with rock bands so I have this slightly sort of different position. In some sense I’m in the same situation as these guys but I also sell to museums, festivals, and gallery shows. Sorta like other outlets that are different from just book stores and comic book stores. I do find that that the small specialty stores only order a few name books but they move a lot of copies of those books.

Brett: The small number of botiequ stores do move a lot of books.

Dan: Yes, a lot.

Bill: Have you seen your book around a lot, Lauren.

Lauren: Initially yes. Ummmm, but I’m being published through Young Readers and the reason is because the comics were originally online. I’ve don the underground comic and I’ve gotten a Xeric grant. So I come from this indie place, but for this book it got distribution at Barnes and Noble because Holtz owns Young Readers and they messed up and put it all in the children section. Then months later they got it sorted out and they changed it to the teen magna section, so its been a crazy start.

Gary: That would be a great marking point. To keep moving it from categories like that.

Lauren: So now they are working out the kinks with me.

Dan: They will be ready for their next author.

Lauren: Yeah they will. And I don’t know if its their fault or B&N’s fault. The publisher also forgot to put it in Diamond. I mean it first came out in May and it took till September before the comic shops could get it.

Brett: How did it do with Diamond?

Lauren: That’s another thing. You call your editor and ask for numbers and they send an email out and that email goes to another person and to an other person and eventually it just gets lost or you get a real response months later when it doesn’t mater anymore. That’s one of the things you lose when working with a big publisher as opposed to somewhere like Fantagraphics or Top Shelf. I think right now sales are around 10,000 and we are almost through our first print run, but it’s been a bumpy ride.

Bill: I want to compare and contrast with what Gary and Fantagraphics is doing with distribution verses Top Shelf. It seems to me that Fantagraphics is getting more into the book stores and the comic book stores are almost marginal for you.

Gary: They aren’t marginal. Diamond is 95 percent of the comic book stores but it is less than 50 percent of our distribution. I would say it’s probably 60/40. The thing that really changed that was Norton, one of the last independent publishing houses in NYC, have been distributing our stuff for four and a half years. They do a tremendous job of getting us out to the book buyers and getting attention. Then to be frank, “Peanuts” is great because once they order a bunch from us they then start paying attention to the rest of our catalogue… wait, what was the question?

Bill: Are you talking about volume or quantity? Are you talking about comics exclusively through the direct market or graphic novels?

Gary: The comic books are pretty meaningless in terms of volumes. They are only sold in the comic market and are a small portion of our business.

Bill: Does Top Shelf have a bookstore distributor?

Brett: We do. We do Diamond Distribution because they are out there pimping to buyers and all the chains. I’m not sure how they pick their stores but we definitely pick and chose what titles should go out to the mainstream world. I think there are a lot of cartoonist who come to us thinking they can get into the major chains, but really 1 to 3 books a year are all we take to the book stores. Even though the graphic novel section is huge compared to ten years ago, its really 80 percent magna, 15 percent marvel and DC and 5 percent of all the smaller guys. So we push our A list books in the book store market because we know that there are certain B-books that just wont sell 50,000 copes no matter how hard you try. And you have to be careful too because if you take a b-list book to the market and then get 10,000 or 8,000 returns it hurts.

Gary: that’s a killer profit turned to a loss. I  know.

Brett: So you have to pick and chose what you send to the chains.

Gary: Its more like B&N picks and chooses what they want.

Brett: Right, but we know what book has a chance of doing well and what won’t. I mean “Lost Girls” we knew going in it was going to be big.

Gary: Its painful sometimes because you have a great book by a great author and you know it just won’t sell well.

Brett: I look forward to the day that the graphic novel section is tripled from what it is now.

Dan: How often do you guys publish a book and not right away knew if it will break even or be a loss?

Gary: The majority of time.

Brett: Yeah. That’s really how it is. Are you (To Dan) doing distribution through Diamond?

Bill: Can you tell this story?

Dan: Yeah. They turned down my initial books like “Paper Route” and basically everything else.

Bill: As we know, Diamond has a near hold on the comic book shops as the only distributor and it has been cracking down more and more on new publishers. So they now have this new thing where if you are rejected you get a form letter.

Dan: So I’m working with artist who have been shown in various collections. I should have pushed that harder and demonstrated that these are famous artist in galleries across the world. But I get a letter from Diamond and it has these boxes with checks next to some of them and written in the boxes are things like “Insufficient packing material” or “Artist needs to work on story telling skills.” I shit you not. These people who distribute Image or Marvel told me my artist need to work on their story telling skills. So I got this letter and I was like: WOAH I’m fucked.   …so I went on to send it to Heidi MacDonald and some other people and eventually got the whole thing reversed.

Gary: You just had to hit them upside the head. To them it was a business desion. Comic shops want super heroes they don’t want art.

Brett:  I think most owners don’t’ know what good comics are. Out of the 3,000 or 3,500 comic book stores there are only 200 stores that buy Top Shelf books. But those 200 stores buy thousands of dollars worth of our books.

Dan: Even if I could get two of my books into a hundred stores that would be great, I mean there are some people that go to comic book stores and aren’t culturally retarded.

Gary: Yeah sure.

Dan: Even Lauren goes to comic book stores.

Lauren: It is true.

Gary: You may be lucky to sell 400 copies in those story and all 400 will be sold by only 30 stores.

Bill: One thing that struck me Brett is that you’ve had this massive massive success with “Lost Girls.” It’s a best selling graphic novel and it doesn’t have super heroes fighting. How has that done in the direct market verses book stores?

Brett: It’s not even been close. Our breakout book was “Blankets” and “Lost Girls” is having a similar pattern. I think right now “Blankets” has sold 65,000 and is in its 6^th print run, but of that maybe 10,000 have been sold to the direct market. With “Lost Girls” our initial print run was officially sold out on the day the book was released and of 10,000 copies, 2,000 went to comic book stores. We really pimped the books to the comic book shops but, I don’t know. They just weren’t interested.

Gary: The majority of comic shops as a whole sell wall to wall Marvel and DC.

Brett: It’s sad but most store owners are like the “Simpson’s” guy.

Gary: That’s not changed in 10 or 15 years. If you remember, Diamond used to have trade shows and they were these horrible affairs where you would rent a booth and all these comic retailers would roll by. Most would just walk by my booth without even looking but then some--- you know that look a dog gives you when you snap your finger and it tilts its head confused--- I would get that look from retailers.

[Note: An audience member then interrupted the panel. He was a store owner and gave this long spiel about how it is true and how the majority of owners are pathetic and only order Super-Hero comics. It took Bill a few minutes to get the guy to be quiet.]

Bill: Brett, I see you at a lot of shows. Does going to a lot of conventions and festivals help you all out?

Brett: We really do go to a lot of places. We do 15 to 20 shows a year and convention sales are about a third of our gross income. I don’t mean to be dissing any shows, but there are some that just aren’t for us. Like the Mid-Ohio is great for people there but its not great for our books. We go to places like SPX or other places that have an indie focus.

Dan: I just started publishing four years ago and I’m finding that shows are ok but concerts give me a boost. I have a book about a band and every time they go on tour I have a bunch of books move or I see a spike in online sales. I’m thinking about sending all out books on tour with bands.

Brett: Really? At a music show?

Dan: Yeah. They give a big boost that places like B&N or a comic show don’t give me.

Bill: Any questions from the audience?

Brett: The largest order for “Lost Girls” was Powell’s.

Gary: yeah.

Dan: Oh that’s a great store.

Bill: People use Powell’s online and a lot of them don’t even know it’s a brick and mortar place.

Gary: I want to correct something. There has been talk about the market flourishing and I wanted to point out that we aren’t. It’s not a flourish. It’s just that we are stable for the first time since 1988.

Bill: Yeah but you are publishing more books than ever before. To me that looks like growth.

Gary: We are publishing more books, about five more per season but that’s not a huge quantum leap for publishing.

Brett: I think what you are looking at is the success. We have these break out hits that seem to lightly float up everything else, but with that big hit I’m going to pay royalties, credit card debt, bank loans and I think that’s what Gary is trying to say.

Gary: I mean the 90’s were a train wreck and I think we are just stabling from that.

Brett: Read the 30^th anniversary of the comics Journal. That’s a great issue.

Gary: Hilarious antidotes.

Lauren: Its awesome signing a deal with a publisher, but when I signed mine they wanted to do a two year or three year deal with multiple books. If you look back “Maus” took ten years to write and I wonder to myself how many books can I make of quality if a master piece takes ten years. I also wonder how long this will last or if I can even produce that many books in a short period of time. But at the same time, what if this is my only chance to really make it and I don’t go for it? But it all comes down to publishers trying to turn you into a brand name, like the Baby Sitter Club books and because of that I decided not to take the deal.

[The panel then broke into a session of each person talking about upcoming projects. I couldn’t keep up with everything, partly because everyone was spouting out names that I didn’t recognize. The one thing of note was that Brett kept saying “Oh really? Sweet!” when hearing what the other publishers were doing.]