- I know nothing about marketing comic books.
- I have no budget.
- Nobody has ever heard of me or my comic book.
Know Nothing: So Give
Like I said, I know nothing about marketing comic books. But I do know that everyone appreciates something valuable, something fun and entertaining.Just printing up an ad or a flyer and trying to get people excited about that seemed to run counter to that idea, though. Whatever we did, we wanted it to be something that people would actually appreciate getting. Something they might take home, read a couple of times and share with their friends.
So we didn't know anything about marketing comic books, but that seemed like a winner of an idea.
No Budget: Work With What We Have
Anime North is clearly our target market, but we were super-tight on two resources: money and time. Every second Dave (the artist) spends doing a "special Anime North thing" is another second our backers don't get their books, and we've taken up plenty of time already.But we do have some great material already on the website and otherwise kicking around -- the stories I've written about the girls, and of course the eight-page prologue we did last year while raising our funding. The latter seemed like it could hold some real potential.
"New Girl" has been available online for just about a year now, but only people who have been to the site will have seen it. What if we did a print run of that?
Sure, anyone can read it online, but a nice print version is always welcome, and it made for a cute little self-contained comic book. We didn't put any real advertising in it. Anyone keen to learn more, we figured, could find REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS easily enough.
I felt particularly vindicated when the very first person to look through it exclaimed, "I'm so glad there's not a big ad in the middle of this!"
Nobody Knows Me: I Know Some People
A free comic book for anyone who wanted it, no strings attached, seemed like a solid offering. But how to get it into people's hands? We didn't know anybody at the show.But I've got friends. So I asked everyone I knew if THEY knew anyone who would be working at a table at the show. And it turned out, a few did. One of my co-workers was even working a table at the show himself. Man, I'll tell you, learning to ask my friends for help has been one of the most life-changing lessons ever.
So we got ourselves passes to Anime North and schlepped in a few hundred copies of New Girl, and they got handed out with every purchase at a couple of big tables there. Right into the waiting hands of the very people we're hoping will buy this book.
So What?
Without any knowledge of marketing, with a minimal budget and just by exploring our network, we were able to get about two hundred copies handed out over the course of the weekend, which means (if each one got passed to at least one other person) we reached around 400 people -- people who maybe had never heard of REFORM SCHOOL NINJA GIRLS before, but who we know are interested in non-mainstream, Japan-themed comics.Not bad for a couple of guys who don't know anything about marketing comic books.