by David Doub
As I’ve been promoting my book, I’ve been running against some traditional thinking that I can’t seem to fully appreciate as being correct. I could be pissing in the wind going against this, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.
Apparently you’re suppose to build buzz or generate interest for your “product”, in my case a Graphic Novel, before you actually have it available for sale. I’ve had several sources tell me that you’re supposed to get review material out at least 2 to 3 months before release. Now my theory is that this line of thought comes back from the older days of print publication and doesn’t fully take the internet into account.
It used to be with your typical source of promotion was print, be in magazines are what have you. It takes time to get a print magazine done and then distributed so if you gave a magazine your graphic novel to review ahead of time, by the time the magazine gets out with the review for your comic in it, it’s around the same time as the comic actually does come out.
Also there’s another thought to “buzz” where you’re generating anticipation for something, so that by the time it actually does come out, people will be swept up in the “buzz” of it be more inclined to get. There’s a couple of downsizes to that though. For one, you need to already have a good reputation of making something that people want to be able to bank on that reputation and make buzz out of that. Like when Apple released the iPhone people already knew about their MP3 players and computers so they could guess this would be another product they would like. If I announced the DavidPhone, what is going to make people care about that? The other major downside is eventually people are going to get tired of the hype. You keep promising the “Greatest thing ever” eventually people are going to get tired of hearing promises and what to see results. Also there seems to be a downswing with “cool” where if something is termed “cool” then mainstream will catch on, and if the majority likes it, it can never be that “cool”.
Now what does that have to do with comics and mine in particular? Well for me I trying to promote a graphic novel based around vampires, two hot items in pop culture right now. Yes they’re popular and I can use that popularity to draw interest into my book, but that also means that a lot of other people have jumped on the band wagon and I have to work just that much hard to get noticed out of the crowd.
The internet processes information and hype a lot faster than we’re used to, so if I spend 3 months to generate interest or buzz for my graphic novel, people will have either forgotten or their a whole new crop of stuff on the internet to distract them. So what I have to do is try my best to translate interest to sales as quickly as possible. My theory is that the book can stand well enough on its own, if people actually check it out. That’s one of the reasons I’m set up with Print on Demand setup through a distributor. Interested in the book? Go to Amazon and buy it. Review is willing to review it, ship it straight from the POD company. Need some copies for stores or conventions, straight ship from the POD again. Instant gratification.
Now that’s not saying I’m not building “buzz” but I like to think I’m building in on something more substantial, the content of the Graphic Novel. Over the summer and into the fall while I’m promoting my book online, at shows and stores, the second volume of Dusk is being completed. So the idea is that once I’ve done all this promotion work and people come back and say “I want more” I have more to give them in the form of Dusk Volume 2. Mind you I haven’t gotten to that point yet so it’s still all a work theory. I’ll keep you updated to let you know if my plan is working or if I am truly pissing in the wind.
David Doub was a IT professional in the Dallas-Forth Worth area for the past decade, but after several turns in his life he’s going back to his first love, comics. Come read David’s journey has he tries to make it as a writer and creator in the comic industry. The only companion with him on this journey is his cat Jordon, who happens to like the taste of paper. 
Merin on 
