"Holding Out The Cap..."

By Tony Lee

I hate begging.

Never been one for accepting charity, me. It’s a pride thing. I might be at my lowest ebb, but I’ll still fight tooth and nail against borrowing money from someone. I just don’t like having to ask.

And it’s the same in all aspects of life. When I was twenty, twenty one years of age, I used to be a Covent Garden street performer. Did the Edinburgh Festival and everything, you know. I did a street theatre show called the “Scarlet Blade” . It won awards. But, at the end of each show, even though I’d effectively performed for my audience, I’d still feel bad about asking for money.

And of course, there were always the performers’ standards when asking – “Hey kids, if your mommy doesn’t give you a pound to put in the nice performer’s hat – it means they don’t love you”, or “If you liked this show, give me a pound. If you didn’t, write what was wrong with it on the back of a five, or ten pound note…”

And of course my favourite – “A pound is less than a cup of coffee here. If you can’t afford to give a pound, the chances are you need it more than I do.”

And of course they worked. People came forwards and money was put into the hat. It might not be a pound, it might be a handful of change, sometimes even a note, but they would come forwards.

And sixteen years later, I’m still doing it. But the game has changed and the product has altered – now, I’m begging, pleading people to buy and stock Hope Falls.

And this is a two pronged attack. You see, the guy on the street, middle of September? Doesn’t really give a toss about Hope Falls at the moment. The reason? Well, it’s quite simple. He wants to buy it, sure – but it’s not out for pretty much two months. Why should he care about it? He’ll care about it a week before it hits the shelves. He’ll care about it when he walks into his local comic store and sees it there waiting for him.

He’ll care when he discovers that he missed the first issue.

No, the begging and the pleading? It’s mainly so the retailers see it. That the stores order it. The reader? Well unless they’re pre-ordering for their pull box, they’re unlikely to even have it hitting their radar at the moment. I mean, let’s face it. It comes out a month before Christmas, and to make them really care about it right now is similar to making someone buy all their Christmas presents next month.

Yes. I know there are people out there, lost and scary people who do buy their presents in October, but if we all shut our eyes and pretend really hard, they’ll go away.

So I need to make the stores buy my comic. But the only weapon I have to hand is this month’s PREVIEWS, and there are thousands of other books out there in direct competition to mine. Three or four of them might even be better. So I have to find new weapons. And then the begging starts again.

The average creator has about three or four avenues of attack. Firstly is through the readers. Yes, I know we’ve said many won’t pre-order, but if we can get some people pre-ordering, the shops will have to take notice as they take the orders. This might build awareness.

Secondly, we can contact the stores direct. Now, this is harder than it sounds as there are thousands of stores in the US alone, and they get ten, twenty emails every day from people begging them to stock their comic. So, you have to make sure you have a little more in your corner. Make yourself an email list of people to contact, contact them all individually and ask if you can send them emails – if they say yes, they’re more likely to read your emails as they’ve become invested in it. Make sure there’s a PDF of the comic somewhere online, so you can link them to it. Make them read it. Make them a fan of it. Then they’ll do your selling for you. But to get to this point, you have to contact them. Personally? A phone call always seems to do the trick. Speak to the person who makes the orders. Explain about the book. Give them the link to the PDF. And hopefully they’ll order.

But again, I’m back to that point at the end of a show. I can feel it as I speak to them. I want to start my ‘give me a pound’ lines. Because I’m begging for their acceptance, I’m begging them to like me enough to look at my comic. And then to like it enough to order it.

But beware, expect your ego to be crushed. I phoned about a hundred retailers last week, across the U.S, and of them ten knew my name. twenty more didn’t know me, but stocked a book I’d written. Over half didn’t know who Markosia were. Of the hundred, only three knew of Hope Falls before I called. But, after I phoned, pretty much every one promised to at least have a look. Which is a start, but I’m one man and I can’t spend six hours a day phoning another continent at the best of times.

Of course, there are other ways. Third on the list is to get your publisher to do this. Many top level publishers have PR teams who’ll make sure shops have what they need to stock and sell your comic, from shelftalkers to posters. They’ll pick the best quotes from reviews and they’ll make you sound like the next big thing.

Which, funnily enough, I am. Such a shock, I know, but I thought I should mention it.

But never rely solely on your publisher to do this, as you must remember that you’re one of several books they have out this month, and they have to do this with every book. David Lloyd of V For Vendetta fame was talking to me at last May’s Bristol Comic Convention about sales for his incredibly excellent Dark Horse book Kickback. (Which, if you haven’t bought it already, go right now and order it.) He decided to phone a few shops up and see how the sales were going, only to discover that many stores didn’t even know the book was out. Dark House had done PR and advertising, they just hadn’t done enough.

I’ve always been of the mind that if you’ve written or drawn a book, no matter whether it’s work for hire or creator owned, DC Comics or Bob’s Basement, you should be proud enough of your work to, if required, talk about it yourself. Do the interviews, get the PR out. After all, even the most cynical of branding experts will tell you that any interview that pushes your name only goes to make editors know who you are. Hell, I’m talking about this in my column. I’m as bad as the rest of them.

But you’re still begging. You’re just being smarter about hiding the fact that you are.

I have a facebook now dedicated to Hope Falls. I have over a hundred and sixty people on it. They tell their friends. But in the end I’m still begging people to read my book.

But one thing I haven’t said, is why should you read my book? What’s better about this than, say JSA or World War Hulk? The honest answer is harder to find. I wrote it. It’s my baby. Of course I’m going to say it’s the best thing I’ve written. Which, by the way, at the time it was. Possibly still is. Of course I’m going to say that Dan Boultwood is incredible, and has done a stunning job. Well, he has. He’s had so much good press from this, it’s unbelievable. ATR did a piece on our next project, Shotgun Samurai last week and the following day we had three big name publishers contact us, asking to see it. Do you know how rare it is to even get one to do that? It’s not the story – it was the art. Dan’s art. His variant cover for Hope Falls #3 has already had enough response that we’ve made it into a T Shirt at http://www.cafepress.com/hopefalls Go buy it. Go on. It’s pretty. And of course it advertises us.

But our comic could be printed on gold with the blood of Christ itself, but I’d still have to tell you about it. And in doing so, convince you to order it, to buy it, to like it. And then when #2 comes out I’ll be trying to beg you to back order it, if you forgot. And then I’ll try to convince you to buy the collected trade.

And then I’ll start begging you to buy my next current project. Because we’re always shilling, always pimping, always begging.

It’s the nature of the beast, if you really care.