[...] 1998 series of that name — but now we know it was because of the company’s short-lived girl-focused imprint. Now that that’s gone by the wayside, Grant is relaunching her title from Ardden [...]

[...] then, the line was formed out of jealousy. Shelly Bond, the editor behind the imprint, said she “pitched this line as [...]

[...] DC Aims At Teenage Girls – Johanna Draper Carlson from Comics Worth Reading announces DC’s new Minx line with a couple of updates (from Comics Worth Reading) [...]

[...] In honor of the late Chick Checks, let’s count female creators: The complete 2007 Minx lineup was announced yesterday. Two are by male writer/artists. Two are by separate male writers and artists. One is by a male writer with two male artists. One is cowritten by a male and his daughter and illustrated by a male. One is by a female writer and male artist. (I’ve talked about the new imprint previously here and here.) [...]

I’m just getting a little frustrated with everyone taking DC’s word that they are trying to reach out to girls at face value, and mostly critiquing their decisions in that light. As if they’re going about a good thing in simply the wrong way, rather than going about something that is more inevitable at this point that anything else, and are consequently approaching it with the attitude of “how can we catch on this bandwagon the fastest?

In other words, I don’t think DC is thinking about long term at all. If they were, they would be trying to do what they claim to be doing: reaching out to readers new not just to them, but to the medium. Both Graphix and Tokyopop, for comparison, are already going after kids in the primary grades.

In short:

Only 18 percent of boys the age group 10-14 polled regarded reading as an elementary skill (sic!) and only 12 percent read more than one book a year (outside school assignments)

Over 60 (!) percent of the girls at the same age group regarded reading an elementary skill, and more than 52 percent polled read more than a book per month outside school assignments. Over 37 percent read more than THREE books outside school assignments per given month.

Okay, let us briefly forget about the fact that this may very well mean that the majority of men in the next couple of generations will have the debating skills of a Neanderthal (which is a nice valley… about 12 km away from where I was born) and a range of usable words below 2,000…

…from a BUSINESS perspective, and I mean LONG-TERM business perspective, people in publishing who don’t target girls now will become obsolete in 20 to 30 years time (or highly priced nice products, which is a development that can already be seen in the superhero realm, where the average reader now is what? 30?)

I understand Mickle’s point as well, but there are other packagers out there who are not as tainted as Alloy (yes, I know, it’s first and foremost a moral thing for me… and I would also be the one who supports a TV show called “Nations”, but also, I still think there will not be one mainstream article from a newspaper or magazine NOT owned by TW that doesn’t bring that connection in the second paragraph, unless they are bought journos or bad journos — both of which there is an abundance out there right now)

Considering the countless times I’ve had boys and their parents flat out tell me that certain titles won’t work because (gasp!) they can’t read a book where even half the main characters are female! I’m always skeptical of anyone using HP/JK Rowling as proof that gender doesn’t play a role in kid’s reading choices. Lots of people point out that JK Rowling likely wouldn’t have been as successful if Harry had been a girl – or even if Rowling had used her full name and not just her initials. (As it is, as kids get older, the fan base shifts from more boys to more girls.)

From my experience, it’s worse than that. It’s important not only that Harry is a boy, but that Ron is there to balance out Hermione – as is Draco, and the majority of named characters for the first few books, despite the supposition that there is gender parity at Hogwarts. While Harry Potter would have still done well if the main characters hadn’t been mostly boys, I don’t think it would have done as well. Lyle’s got it right – girls are taught to be less picky than boys.

However, (in my experience) there is a subset of girls who prefer “girlie books” – as the parents call them – and such girls are likely to be turned off by DC, but at the same time interested in anything put out by the company that publishes The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and yes, The Gossip Girls.

Yeah, The Gossip Girls are really bad – but they’re insanely popular as well. And they are popular with the exact opposite crowd from the kinds of kids who usually read DC. So, while I would have picked someone else, DC’s decision makes sense – when you consider it in light of their goal: to make money off of an audience that they don’t understand the first thing about.

Thomas, I don’t think that’s the point about women writing male characters as much as that female audiences are typically expected to find ways to relate to male characters in mainstream entertainment (part of the “women will watch with their boyfriend but men won’t watch with their girlfriend” view that many Hollywood execs dumbly hold) so writing male characters comes a little easier for women than for men writing female characters — men have been asked less often to empathise with a female character.

Though, to go with your mention of JK Rawlings, the most progressive female characters on the younger readers’ Best Seller lists, is a man (Daniel Handler AKA Lemony Snicket).

Your projections and number-crunching generally jibe with mine, so I think we’re in a general agreement with what, quantitatively, is to be expected from such marketing efforts. Of course, whether or not an individual marketer may consider such marketing efforts effective or cost-effective is a question only each individual marketer can answer.

And, of course, saying that “such-and-such marketing is bad becasue it’s not effective, not affordable, or not feasible” is different from saying that “such-and-such marketing is bad because the supplier of those marketing services has had (justifiable) bad press for business aspects different from the services being rendered.”

As for what possible better things DC “could have done” with that money, I fully expect that whatever marketing DC will do with Alloy will not be all the marketing they do for the Minx line. I would be surprised if pursuing POP display in key retailers isn’t figuring into their overall marketing plans. (I also recognize that, whatever tidbits they may share through the trade press, I’m not going to be privy to DC’s complete marketing plans for the Minx, nor should I be.)

We did extensive research on both, especially email blasts. Now, let us consider we did MASS MARKET mags, not niche marketing, which changes the rules a little bit, but not by much. An email blast directed at 150,000 POTENTIALS generated an interest of approximately .02 percent. Later studies we have done had the interest rate pretty much consistently between .02 and .05 percent.

It is neglible.

Adverts, in general, are more difficult to gauge with regards to their efficiency, but we used statistical formulas developed with the Institute of Media Research/Journalistik at Dortmund to come up with pretty good rules of thumb. An advert targeted at potentials elevates an interest in approximately 7.2 percent of those reading it. Quantitve studies we did showed that of those 7.2 percent about 13 percent were willing to try out the new product. That means about 0,94 (exactly 0,936) percent of the original targeted sample.

Talking of the number you gave here, I’ll use it for a sec, okay, that equals LESS than 9,000 potential book sales from that strategy, IF the advert actually displays a BOOK and is not a BRAND ad for the LINE.

To be perfectly honest, the BEST thing DC could have done with that money is to BUY a LOT of DISPLAYS and have them up in prominent places at Borders, WaldenDaltons and such, because that’s where the choice will be made to BUY or put it back on the shelf.

However, with such a limited initial line-up, that is not an easy option to take. Professionally speaking, they would have to come out with a LOT more books IMMEDIATELY to launch as a LINE and not go under in the masses of other books, primarily Manga.

Sorry for this rather technical post.

[...] For contrast in attitudes incomparison to DC launching graphic novels for teen girls, ICv2 today interviews Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley, who when asked about the female audience for comics responds with a whole lot of double-talk: Our category’s gotten bigger, but the only genre where we have sophisticated genre development is our superhero action adventure stuff. So looking at the growth in the bookstore business, we can see between the sales of manga and what we’re doing, there’s interest. The bookstore business wants to support that, but we need to get more genres into the category to help drive that growth engine and at the same time, get new readers because of their dedication to that property already. [...]

Good writing is research. A lot of research. Empathy. A lot of empathy. Schizophrenia might help too.

ZACK!, by the by, used to be a military expression from way back, when it was actually ZACK! ZACK! that your drill sarge yelled at you when you were too slow. It is not unsimilar to the infamous Hollywood use of German Nazi slang “SCHNELL! SCHNELL (DU SCHWEIN(E)HUND”

In the 70s, however, it had become a purely civvy term in Germany, but still something that denoted you had some kind of “power” over another person, to make them DO things. Since children in general (again, we are talking 1972) didn’t have that power, but wanted to be able to say something like that in public, it was a perfect title for a youth comic mag that — content-wise — was rather similar to the French/Belgian SPIROU.

Fair enough. But I still think that the marketing services Alloy can offer would indeed be potentially useful, regardless of the fact that press coverage of those services will likely mention the Opal Mehta controversy. (Or, going back, the accusations of securities fraud that more-Wall-Street-minded persons than I reported on years ago.)

To put it another way and drawing from some additional details reported by Publishers Weekly, there’ll be a 2-page advertorial in the Alloy-owned Delia’s mail order catalog (shipped to approx. 900,000 young women); Alloy will generate e-mail blasts to consumers via its various websites; it will distribute book covers featuring Minx titles to students and directly to schools.

Do I know if those sorts of marketing initiatives will be successful? Honestly, I don’t know. But I’m comfortable in guessing that many of those hundreds of thousands of tweenage girls and young women who will be touched by such marketing will not decide whatever they decide about the Minx line based on Alloy’s past problems. Sure some will. But many won’t realize it’s the same company, or won’t care.

In the interests of disclosure: I work for a book publisher’s marketing department (not any of the ones involved in DC Comics, however.) I know that many of my peers in marketing have enlisted Alloy to help market certain projects (not the kind that get written up in the New York Times, clearly…), and though I’ve not yet done so myself, I would and will do so happily when the right project and the right scope comes along. If that be poison, I guess I’m taking it…

I love the name ZACK! by the way. It’s fun to yell.

That company is PR poison.

You’ll never get ANY mainstream coverage that doesn’t include Alloy = oh, yes, it is that company that “helped” forge the Opal book.

[...] More on Minx Today’s hot story:Reaction to the news about DC’s Minx line. [...]

From the description of the Minx line thus far, it sounds like DC is handling the creative end–that DC is creating the content. If that’s the case, and Alloy isn’t involved in the content of these Minx books, then (despite the much-reported problems involving Alloy’s packaging of the Opal Metha book) that may ameliorate some concerns somewhat.

Of course, if you don’t like what you’re calling the “Li’l Whore” book phenomenon–which I’d argue extends so pervasively through the market so as not to be attributable to Alloy or indeed to any one publisher–then that’s a bit of a different matter…