Now I have three issues of Tabloia completely finished, including covers, letters pages, and title pages. I have pin-ups to cover the first four issues, from some of my favorite artists. I have begun the process of self-publishing. Wheels are in motion and I cannot stop them.
I had picked up a very helpful submissions packet from Diamond Comic Distributors, and it said that they only accept about a third of all proposals asking for distribution. They recommended for my initial submission that I submit two or three issues, so that they can get a better feel for the overall quality of the book, and for the direction the book is going to go. Also, it shows commitment on my part, and it gives me, a new publisher, some lead time for the issues that will come out afterwards. I wrote up a cover letter, listing Dick Ayers doing partial inks, and all the pin-ups artists I had lined up. I sent them full copies of the first three issues. I also told them I planned on doing some advertising to try and get some interest.
It took a few weeks after I submitted all this, and then I received a personal phone call, where they told me they had accepted me for distribution, and I would be listed in the next catalogue. That was a nice feeling, knowing the books would be coming out. We set up an account on the phone, and I had to send in all these forms and information for credit. My first comic would be in stores June, just in time for San Diego’s big convention. My business partner, Wayne Jones, and I put together a cover image and description of the first issue, which would be listed in Diamond’s Previews catalogue.
I knew I wanted to do some promotion, and went through all the various possibilities that Diamond had to offer. I decided two of them sounded like good ideas. I decided to run an ad in the catalog that my issue would appear in. I also decided to print mini-posters (11″x14″) of the ad, and to have Diamond send them out to the top six hundred shops that buy indie comics.
I had been impressed when I heard Diamond had something like four thousand accounts with stores. Then I thought about it, and talked with people about it, and we decided, that’s probably not shops that buy comics every week. We suspected that’s basically how many shops have ever bought something from Diamond, and who they have on their record books. All the rest of Diamond’s clientele either buy the toys and statues and t-shirts and other comics-related merchandise, or else they only sell X- and Bat- and Spider-books.
While getting ready to self-publish, I’d spoken with a few self-publishers. A very few. But the advice I’d gotten was that, in their experience, advertising money is basically never worth the cost. They all said, you pay for that advertising money, and then that money is gone. I listened to this advice, but I didn’t really hear it, and here’s why. I assumed, since I had some pretty cool big names who had done pin-ups from me, that if comics fans only found out about all the great pin-ups in my books, they would buy the book. I looked at my pin-ups as my advertising. People would say, “Oh, I love Mike Allred,” and that would at least convince them to flip through the issue. And from there, I naively assumed, when people saw my work, they would enjoy it. They would enjoy it so much, I naively assumed, that then they would continue picking up every issue I do after that, because they would become so taken by and impressed with my work.
So I decided, if I ran a full page color ad in Diamond’s Previews, that would give people the chance to see all these great artists who would be doing pin-ups of my book, and then they would pick up a few copies for their store. And then they would get my poster, and they would put that up in their store window or at their counter, and then their clients would see it and say, “Wow, that sure looks good. I can’t wait to check that out.” I naively assumed that there should be at least a thousand Mike Allred, Thomas Yeates, and Gene Colan fans out there (because that’s whose pin-ups would be in issue one). I hoped I would sell even more, but kind of stupidly assumed I should get 1000 at least. And once the book came out, everyone would love it, and they would tell all their friends, and all their friends would want to pick up copies, and everyone would keep buying the following issues, and before you know it, I’d have a successful comic on my hands!
The reason I hoped for a thousand sales is that, one of Diamond’s requirements for continued distribution is that you make enough sales that they can justify continuing to try and sell your book through their catalog. If you don’t, it’s honestly kind of a waste of everyone’s time to keep trying. The store can’t sell the book, so they don’t buy it. The distributor isn’t making enough money, and they could be using the space they list your book on someone else. And you the publisher certainly aren’t making the money. So it’s quite practical. I figured out, based on the amount of money Diamond expected, and based on my first issue’s cover price, that a thousand issues is what I needed to sell to be safe with my new distributor. And why shouldn’t I be able to make a minimum like that?
When the orders came in, I was disappointed to see they were at 613. Considerably under a thousand. Now I had to decide how many comics to print. Here’s how printers work. If you buy a thousand 32-page books, it was about $1300 (including shipping). But if you buy 2000, it’s only $1500. If you buy three thousand, it’s only $1600. So the more you buy, the less each book costs you, per unit. The reason for this is that the printer’s set-up is what costs so much money. Paper and ink cost nothing. So if you think you can sell a lot of books, over time, it’s definitely worth it to go with that extra.
The problem is, you have to remember, a thousand extra books is a hell of a lot. That will take up a hell of a lot of space, and you have to keep them from getting banged up or moldy or ruined in other ways until you manage to sell them. And if you don’t ever sell that extra thousand, then you’re out two hundred bucks more than you could have been. Then you also have all the pain-in-the-ass grief of storing them all those years you didn’t sell them, and eventually having to make the painful decision of how you’re going to wind up dumping or destroying them all afterwards.
So when I told my business partner, Wayne, about the numbers, he thought I should be proud of that, and he thought I should print a thousand.
But since I was still hopeful the book would catch on, I for some reason decided not to print two thousand, but to print three thousand books! What in the holy hell I was thinking I don’t know. I had too much faith. I assumed more people would hear about the pin-ups, and realize they wanted the book if they only heard about it, and sales would be like a snowball down a cliff, and the word would spread, for three thousand issues.
I would say it took me until the third issue’s order numbers to come in, before I had to admit just how terribly wrong I was about my hope for everything.