Want to know what a typical day at TwoMorrows is like? Well, nothing’s terribly typical around here (just the wide variety of people we get at our drive-thru window keeps things interesting), but check out production assistant Chris Irving’s (slightly belated) interview on Comicbloc about the Blue Beetle Companion, and other TwoMorrows stuff, here.

Just got back last night from Book Expo in New York. To say this trade show was different from a comic book convention would be a major understatement. All the attendees were adult, professional, extremely well-dressed (glad I thought ahead and brought some decent clothes to wear!), and really, really sedate. No wide-eyed fanboys running up to the booth, telling me how awesome they thought our publications were. (Okay, there were a couple, but they were generally other exhibitors, and equally nattily attired.) Everywhere I looked, people were sipping wine, sitting at small tables conducting meetings, and actually reading books. Despite the very large crowds, it wasn’t hard to talk over the noise like it is at, say, Comicon International.

This was a trade show, not a con. There wasn’t any actual selling; we just displayed our wares to the book buyers, librarians, and educators who attended the three-day event (it was actually longer than three days, but the exhibits were only open from Friday-Sunday).

Our circulation director Bob Brodsky got there early to get our booth set-up (I had a family commitment that kept me from getting there until after it started), and he certainly did his part to keep me from getting lost in Manhattan. Ditto for George Khoury, who took me on a mini-tour of the city, so I could get my first actual visit to both Midtown Comics and Jim Hanley’s Universe, despite years of doing business with them both. (Every comics store in the country should look to these two as examples of the right way to do comics retailing.) And Write Now’s Danny Fingeroth was around to liven things up during the slow moments.
The general vibe over where we were was very positive toward graphic novels and comics. The attendees seemed to be really interested in what we and other publishers had to offer, even if they weren’t totally “up” on what every item was. The acceptance seems to be there, and I’m confident we’ll see the comics medium make even greater inroads into the mainstream in years to come.

Diamond did a fine job of coordinating everything (we sublet part of Diamond’s colossal chunk of exhibit space for our TwoMorrows stuff), and making sure all our stuff was there. The reps from Diamond Book Distributors are top-notch, true professionals, and they coordinated meetings for us with various reps from the “outside world”. Our “how-to” books seemed to be of particular interest to the buyers for the Nati. Association of College Bookstores, and a lot of librarians picked up our color catalog, expressing interest in stocking their shelves with our kinds of books.

It was particular fun talking to John Gallagher of “Buzzboy” and Jimmy Gownley of “Amelia Rules”, who were set up right across the aisle from us at the KIDS LOVE COMICS booth; they’re two very generous guys who offered me some much needed advice when I was deciding if and what to produce for Free Comic Book Day this past year. Support their books, folks!

And I can’t say enough about New York City. Other than the heat, it was a great stay. Everyone there is really friendly, polite, and helpful; most can apparently spot a subway-challenged tourist from a distance, and several people stepped up to help keep me from ending up on the wrong train.

All in all, it was a very successful event (we’ll know just how successful in the months to come, as some of this legwork hopefully starts to pay off in sales increases). Next up is the American Library Association conference in Washington DC at the end of June.

Yeah, not many posts of late, ’cause we’re slammed with deadlines. The Image Comics book took a lot of extra TLC to get it 100% perfect (well, okay, 99.9%). I’m heading out tomorrow AM for Book Expo in New Yawk City, where, with the help of trusty companion Bob Brodsky, I’ll be hawking the TwoMorrows goodness to the legions of librarians and book buyers who descend on that gathering every year. So I’ll be out of contact for a couple of days, but back here next week for more shenanigans. Have a great weekend, and if you’re at Book Expo, stop by booth #2788 and say howdy!

Couple of updates on where you can hear more from the TwoMorrows gang:

Bob McLeod, editor of Rough Stuff, was just interviewed at the Comic Book Bin here.

Chris Irving, who just got back from handling our booth at the Motor City Comicon, was interviewed for the SuperNot podcast.

Check ’em out!

Who knew? We’d only asked John Romita to do 3 Punisher sketches for the Ultra-Limited Edition of his upcoming TwoMorrows book, and 4 Aunt May sketches. Since the Punishers sold out, we’ve been hit with several requests for more Punishers. So John R. has decided (since no one’s reserved any Aunt Mays yet), to do 7 Punisher sketches, and NO Aunt Mays.

So if you really, really wanted a Punisher version, order now!

As I type, erstwhile production assistant Christopher Irving is in Detroit (Novi, actually) Michigan, manning our booth at the Motor City Comicon. If you’re there, stop by and say hi. Chris is nursing a bad case of tendonitis, so be really careful handing him all those big stacks of TwoMorrows books you’re buying, ‘kay?

Write Now! editor Danny Fingeroth will be on MSNBC tomorrow (Thursday) at 10:30 am eastern time, and possibly repeated also at noon and 3:00 pm. The topic will be this sexy new “Mary Jane washing Spider-Man costume” statue that everybody’s been talking about. Check it out!

Hoo-boy, things move quickly on the Internet, in ways you don’t imagine until you see it for yourself. Apparently, due to declining circulation at The Comics Journal (due largely to their decision to stop selling it through bookstore chains—a voluntary move made because it wasn’t selling that well there), rising postage rates, and our decision to offer digital editions of our upcoming mags, the whole world thinks comics magazines (at least the print editions) are doomed to extinction.

While I can’t speak for Fantagraphics, our magazine sales have been steady for the last two years (following a slight drop during the Recession, which, in many cases, are readers we mostly didn’t get back when the economy recovered). All our recent activity and ideas are my way of trying to reach new readers.

Part of the hubbub was because the Comic Foundry magazine was submitted to Diamond for consideration to be carried in their Previews catalog, and Diamond rejected it, apparently largely because it was in black-&-white instead of full-color. Editor Tim Leong is quite peeved that Diamond carries all our (mostly) B&W stuff, but rejected his. I dunno; maybe if we were trying to launch a Jack Kirby Collector or Back Issue mag today, it might have the same problems. But we do have the advantage of a long, successful track record with Diamond on our mags (13 years and counting), plus some healthy sales on our books as well. Plus, our stuff is geared largely toward non-recent comics; if we were to ever attempt something to compete for Wizard‘s market share, it’d simply have to be in color to have a shot at success, whereas B&W does great when we’re presenting images of original ink and pencil pages which so dominate our mags.
While our mags are mostly black-and-white, with color sections on occasion, DRAW! always has a sizeable color section. However, other than working through some small regional distributors, we’ve not attempted large-scale bookstore/newsstand distribution since the days when we were publishing Comic Book Artist magazine. Our mags are niche; we know it, and we’re doing just fine in the direct market. We also have a healthy subscription base.

So our B&W format is working great. But yes, these new postal rates are likely to kill a lot of our direct orders from overseas readers. (And we’re working on ways overseas readers can get our print editions cheaper than ordering straight from us; hopefully a little creative thinking and networking will work out a solution to this postage problem.)
My goal is to increase sales in both the Direct Market, and through subscriptions. The sizeable amount of money we put into our recent mass mailing to 1500 comics shops was part of our attempt to reach out to the Direct Market. And our upcoming digital editions are an attempt to reach people that can’t find our mags in comics shops.

It all works together. Frankly, I wish Diamond didn’t force us to stick our magazines in the “Magazine” section of Previews, and then our Books in the “Comics” section. It’s hard enough to find us in Previews; now people have to look in both places. But that’s their policy, so we’re stuck with it. Until an alternative to Diamond comes along, there’s sadly not much any of us can do about it.

I spent the last two days doing nothing but poring through the US Postal Rate Changes that took place yesterday. After having to take our webstore offline for a few hours today, I’ve finally got all our prices updated.

US and Canadian back issue and subscription prices stayed basically the same (and with the addition of free downloads of our upcoming digital editions, they’re an even better deal than before) However, we saw big postage jumps for Surface and Airmail (which are now officially called International First Class Mail and International Priority Mail, but we won’t be changing the wording on our site for a few weeks). I’m really, really sorry about this, overseas readers. I know that these rate increases will eventually mean fewer overseas orders, but there’s not anything we can do about the rate increases.

However, with our upcoming digital editions, overseas readers will be able to download our mags for a fraction of what the print editions cost. And we’re also looking into some other options that will hopefully make things more affordable for our overseas fans. I’m determined to find ways to get costs down for our non-US readers, and I’ll keep you all posted here as we find ways to make that happen.

We just sold out of the Gwen Stacey and Spidey Headshot versions of our Ultra-Limited Editions of John Romita… And All That Jazz.  And we also just sold out of the Thing version of the Ultra-Limited Edition of Brush Strokes With Greatness: The Life & Art of Joe Sinnott. These 52-copy editions each have a custom pencil drawing by Romita or Sinnott, and you can choose from the list of available characters that are left. But other sketch versions are going fast, so get ’em while you can!