I don’t even know where to start.
It began, I suppose, when I had the bright idea to resurrect the long-dormant superhero universe I’d begun all those years ago. I put the word out and put the band back together. We started a new magazine. “I, Hero.” You may have heard me mention it if you’ve spoken to me for more than five seconds in a row.
It was supposed to be a print-on-demand thing. Someone would order a copy, we’d tell the POD printer, and they’d print and ship one copy. Except it didn’t go down like that. They were quoting us a four-week turnaround time every time we wanted to order something. That’s not “print-on-demand.” That’s “print-when-we-feel-like-it.” And I didn’t take kindly to that. No, sir. So I got together with my partner and we bought the printing equipment so that we could do it ourselves, forgetting that the whole point of wanting to go the POD route was to avoid an enormous outlay of cash up front.
Oops.
But just like that we were in the thick of it, and we couldn’t count on that one little magazine to justify the expense of the printing, cutting and binding equipment. If we were going to be publishers, we’d have to be in for a penny, in for a pound. So I started with the usual suspects. I went to the folks whom I knew could deliver. In a matter of months we’ve signed almost ten new writers to New Babel Books, accounting for more than a dozen new titles to be put out this year.
In the midst of all this, my video production business has never been so busy. I’m working around the clock, taking everything that comes my way, and figuring I’ll get a nap in sometime in 2086. But hey, when you’re a freelancer, these are the problems you want. It’s always a game of feast or famine and I know this won’t last forever. Hopefully New Babel Books will keep us flush when the pendulum swings the other way.
Oh, and about iHero… We’ll be making a pretty significant change in the way we deliver our content this year. We committed to do “I, Hero” as a six-issue limited series and we’ll honor that commitment. After that, New Babel Books will begin to put out full-length novels in the iHero Universe. We’ll put out anthologies, too, but the bottom line is that we’re done swimming upstream.
It’s a little crazy that someone who spent so many years in marketing and advertising failed to see how badly I’d handicapped myself with our chosen format.
Tell people you run a superhero magazine and every single one of them will call it a comic book. Which it ain’t. Try to explain that you publish a sci-fi/fantasy magazine with a very specific focus (superheroes) and you’ll get blank stares. Tell them you run a literary magazine that has prose stories in a superhero setting with spot illustrations and they still don’t get it. It’s only when they see the thing that it clicks. And let me be the first to tell you how many times we went around the block on the size of the magazine. We were caught in an endless logic loop.
“Let’s make it the size of a comic book so it can go on the same racks as comic books.”
“But then people will think we’re a comic book.”
“Okay, so make it a standard magazine size and put it in bookstores next to literary magazines.”
“But our core audience is likely to be fans of superheroes.”
“And they read comics.”
“Right. So let’s make it the size of a comic book.”
“But then people will think we are a comic book.”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
In the end, what really decided the issue was simple math. Twice as many people do searches online for “superhero novels” as opposed to “superhero fiction” or “superhero magazine.” Why not give people what they’re already looking for instead of trying to make our gorilla act like an elephant?
The other consideration was competition. In the comic book market, Marvel and DC Comics have a stranglehold on 70% of the market share. The next biggest player has 5%. iHero Entertainment, with our one little (very special) non-comic superhero magazine would always be struggling to capture a fraction of one percent of the pie. But superhero novels? Almost nobody is doing it. Fewer still are doing it well. It’s a market we can dominate.
And… and…
Geez, look at the time. Nearly 6AM as I type this and I should have gone to bed hours ago. I really just wanted to poke my head in and give a quick update.
LINGO aired its last episode. My work in the film industry has taken a backseat while I build the new Tower. My girlfriend and our dog moved to a new city.
Nothing went the way it should these past few years. Does it ever?
Change. Change is the only constant.
Stay tuned.
Current Mood: busy
bouncy
Subscribe to LINGO in iTunes now!
