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

Thank you Thomas for saying was I was trying to say – only ten billion times better. And good point about the “stars” aspect of marketing opportunities missed by having pretty much no female creators.

Now, if I were working in that TW building, first thing I’d have done after deciding one would want to launch a line like that, I’d walk those few blocks to the MTV Networks building and holler at Gabrielle Howard of The N.

Oh, hell yes. Special Degrassi webisodes anyone?

“Manny, why are you reading that junk? Feeling nostalgic for third grade – what with graduation fast approaching and all?”

“Right, like Snake’s going to let you get out of homework just because he’s nice enough to let you bunk with me. More like ground you and make you do extra credit.

(apologies to Ms. Hernandez for any unintended insult resulting from making her the feature of this special Degrassi webisode.

Just to re-nitpick here, but it seems pretty likely that Alloy’s packaging division isn’t involved with Minx, just its marketing/media services division.

Of course, if one feels that the lapses of one division of a company should discourage one from working with other divisions of that company, that’s understandable. But it’s also understandable why people might not feel that way. After all, the fact that an imprint of HarperCollins just endured a public humiliation over the O.J. Simpson book probably won’t overmuch affect Tokyopop’s co-publishing and distribution deal with other parts of the HarperCollins company…

Thomas: I feel like I’m getting a quick course in marketing! Thanks!

Now, let us briefly think about whether I could do this with Mike Carey or Andi Watson. No, I couldn’t. Not because they are bad writers, quite the contrary. But let’s just say I put Mike Carey in a chair and be interviewed, here are the questions he couldn’t possible answer: How did it feel to grow up as girl in x circumstances and with y talent? How much of your personal experience went into the book? What is your advice to a teen girl out there, facing z challenge who wants to do what you do?

He’s a very good writer, but I cannot use him in the public arena. His books will have to succeed or fail on their own merit, and that in an extremely over-crowded market.

Now, just because she is so vocal (and we have butted heads at least once in a discussion) about things, Lea Hernandez could answer all of those questions with ease, she would come across as authentic and credible when talking about the problems being a girl (and then woman), and I have a person my potentials can IDENTIFY with, not just with her writing, but also with her personality.

Somebody like her, I can turn into a star.

The same with other, new female creators, be they already known or be they on things like DeviantArt. I can use them (yeah, sounds dirty, I know) in ways that will give my product an advantage over all the other products that are already established, for a line of comic books targeted at teen girls from the second-biggest publisher of comic books COMBINED with the potential of grooming female stars for the media arena, that is PR gold.

That is a valid point. The question is how willing the higher-ups at TW will be for how long. Or in other words: how long it will take to recoup the losses (and there will be losses for a while, it’s the nature of the beast).

However, I do think that IF they fail, it won’t be because the books weren’t very good. If one looks at other failed lines at DC, they gave the market “Transmetropolitan” (Helix) as well as “Road to Perdition” and “A History of Violence”, both of which were rather successful as films later. I don’t doubt for a moment that the books will be at least adequate, if not good or even great.

(except that the one-line for “Clubbing” still bugs me. My apologies to Andi Watson for that. Perhaps the Paris Hilton phenomenon has finally gotten to me…)

I try to argue as much from the basis of logic and experience as I can, for there is one thing that I DO know: personal taste means nothing on the market. I know that pisses a lot of editors (and MDs and CEOs) off, but it’s true. I’ve launched a kid’s magazine in Germany a few years back, called “Kids Zone”. Lot of work, lot of marketing money thrown at it (think millions). I did the positioning and the design on it. From a personal point of view, the design was horrid. Lots of little box-outs, big screaming headlines, it was chaos on the page — but it was based on the experiences with lots of kiddie focus panels, and IT WORKED. That is all the reason to do it this way, and it was very, very successful on the market. Whenever you do something that is targeting the biggest possible market, leave your feelings out of it.

Counterpoint: I was involved with the German launch of Business 2.0 at its height in the US, and the company thought “Hey, this is a license to print money” during the dot.com bubble. My MD loved the thing. If possible, he would have had sex with it. And on surface, it looked like a no-brainer. The US version sold over 200K and what was more important, it was HUGE. There were issues with 300 pages out there, 200 of which were highly paid ads.

And, did I mention that my MD had a constant mental hard-on about the thing? Oh, I did? Okay.

So there we were, with a budget that was in the mid-double digit millions per year, buying a high profile name as the EIC, getting big-budget editors and spending more millions on a big marketing campaign as we were ramping up for the launch.

And that was the moment I got a target and audience analysis of the US mag on my desk. Nobody in the higher-ups had bothered to read all the way through it (as the summary stated: audience is highly affluent, works in the dot.com industry, can you smell the money?).

I, however, read the entire thing, front to back. And I knew we were in trouble. Big trouble. For what the summary didn’t tell was that about 90 percent of all the US mag sales came from ONE location: Silicon Valley. 80 percent of all ad revenue came from the same location: Silicon Valley.

In short, the B 2.0 audience was buying it AND placing the ads in it in order to show the OTHER companies in Silicon Valley that they were bigger, smarter and — most importantly — had more money than the other guy.

It showed clearly that B 2.0 wasn’t the next evolutionary step in business magazines, it was a glorified trade paper that was irrelevant to anybody in the mass market.

Needless to say, I went to the MD and said that Germany didn’t have an internet business hub like Silicon Valley and that a “positive, glamourising” editorial positioning of the people in the dot.com business would not fly with the potential target audience in this country. I did some statistical analysis and came up with a potential sale per issue of about 8,000 copies per month, just based on the potentials that were available. Not a number that justified the money that had already been thrown out of the window. It didn’t matter. The MD, with the backing of the UK main house, had already banked the entire existence of the company on that launch. And I was told to shut up.

I did more than that. I quit. The numbers came in, and they were abysmal. For four months, less than 9,000 copies per issue. The company went down just as I had predicted.

Analysis is what makes things work, not personal taste, not wishful thinking, not anything else.

Now, if one takes a look at the YA market in the US and DC’s entering into it, one has to come to the conclusion that the rules of the game are very different. This is not the DM, where it is relatively easy to a)predict numbers and b) minimize exposure to risk.

Also, DC is just a little fish in the sea there, competing with much bigger fish and people who have been at this game for a much longer period of time. So yes, while I personally dislike it (a lot) that they are teaming up with Alloy, it IS understandable from a business point of view. I personally would have recommended another packager, for the simple reason that there might be the potential of a PR disaster, considering the shady reputation that Alloy has. And I would want to minimize my risks, especially since other people can do just as effecient a job as Alloy.

The other thing I would have recommended, and again, sorry ladies, not because I am such a fervent believer in woman’s right or because that is a topic dear to my heart, I would have tried to get an all-female line-up.

I apologise if that sounds cold-hearted, but I am simply going with the analysis, and having an all-female line-up would have given me an advantage in the publicity arena, something that I could have pimped like crazy: From women for women, hooray! Get me Oprah on the phone, get me Lea Hernandez, get me Clio Chang, get me Queenie Chan, get me Rivkah, get me Colleen Doran, get me Tintin Pantoja, let’s put them all on the couch and talk about how to create a positive change, not just for an audience, but for an entire industry!

And as opposed to the Opal girl, all THESE women don’t just belong to the potential audience, they all know how to WRITE themselves. Hell, from a marketing POV, I couldn’t ask for more. They’re AUTHENTIC and I have an immediate mental link between the writers and my potentials.

Do I think women can write better books for women? No. I think that every writer is different, male or female, it doesn’t matter as long as the product (and it IS a product) that comes out clicks with the audience.

But the free PR of such a move would have been something I cannot buy, not with 250k, not with a lot more. Yes, when it comes to business, I am a cold-hearted bastard.

So, those are the issues where I think DC has gone wrong. Not enough analysis, too much gut feeling and personal taste.

By the by, I wasn’t offended. For all you knew, I could have been Dilbert27@aintitcool.com, right? (for those not privy to the joke, watch Studio 60).

I resent the word “wailing.” and this isn’t even my blog. That’s an ill-considered word.

I think I can say the same for the American comics industry in general. While everyone there is still wailing over the fact that women can’t seem to get the breaks in comics, in countries like the Philippines, it’s OLD news. Just a rough estimate, but there is a 2:3 ratio of women working in comics locally to men. In fact, one of their most popular titles, Mango Jam is staffed and have create teams that are competely women. When all of the comics by that company have long been cancelled, Mango Jam is still going strong. But of course, since this is the Philippines, not the US, it doesn’t count.

I’m certainly not doubting your years of experience; my apologies if I came off that way. I’m just saying that lots of publishers successfully publish lots of books directed at lots of different readers with marketing budgets far less than that which Minx has announced.

That success may not be “mass market” depending on what your particular definition of “mass market” is, but it’s not impossible to think that Minx can claim a chunk of market share from the existing pool of YA readers (be they comics readers or not.)

Anyway, my only real point is that if there are plenty of publishers that can successfully publish lines of books without the benefit of a $250,000 marketing budget, there’s no immediate reason to be so cynical as to assume or conclude that Minx will be unsuccessful with a $250,000 marketing budget.

Of course, it all depends on what the publisher’s definition of “success” is, and that’s not likely to be anything any of us out here in internet land will be able to determine.

Again, apologies for any offense that may have been inferred from my earlier post; there was none intended.

For what it’s worth, “mass market” is one of those phrases that gets tossed around a lot but which may mean different things to different people. In many ways, this exercise isn’t about DC entering some mysterious “mass market” as it is about getting exposed to other parts of the traditional book market in which DC has already entered.

Yes, $250K isn’t a terribly huge amount compared to the marketing budget of, say, a major motion picture or a major music label release. But looking at the world of mainstream book publishing (which seems appropriate since these are, well, books) it may be worth recognizing that there are plenty of publishers who successfully publish plenty of books–plenty of lines of books, even–backed with marketing budgets much smaller that $250K.

Will $250,000 buy everything? Of course not. But, spent right, it’ll buy a lot more than a lot of other books get. It ain’t an amount to sneeze at. If the figure is anywhere close to accurate, it represents a bigger expenditure than any comics publisher–that many publishers of any category!–would commit to. And while a healthy dose of realistic skepticism is always in order, to presume that this announced marketing budget is instrinsically insufficient, or is sure to be spent unwisely, crosses the border toward absurd cynicism.

But Lisa, if it isn’t done by the Big Two, it simply doesn’t exist! Weren’t you listening? :)

As for Miss Hamilton’s rep stating those things, oh well, that’s his job. That’s why nobody should listen to anything a publicist has to say (for they don’t say anything that doesn’t take away storage in your braint better utilised by storing other information)

And the whole bunch of the New Girls Club:

They liked Manga, they do Manga. And there, they have a much bigger chance with the audience.

Yeah, me neither. I was irritated by Ms. Hamilton’s rep (agent? manager?) who felt the need to proclaim that the AB books would sudddenly bring women everywhere into comics. Thanks a heap, Einstein, but we’re already here. That followed the assumption that once we weomon have those books, that that will be all it takes to create gender balance.

I’m tired of the implication that ALL women have their noses pressed to the window of comcis and are just waiting for that one unifying champion to come and make the way safe for us to come in. After which, we will all bow down in thanks to these outsiders who came to our rescue. Then we will all braid each other’s hair.

For my part, I’ve never said that there need to be more women in comics. Step away from the glare of the Big Two and there are a LOT of women making and reading comics. What kind of selective vision/hearing is making that so damned difficult to understand?

Wow. It seems I really did have the words after all.

I asked my wife, a library branch manager with extensive training in readers’ advisory and an expert on the “chick lit” genre, if she’d consider reading a “chick lit” book written by a man. The answer was blunt: probably not.

If DC had any sense, they would have marketed these as young-adult books instead of girl-targeted YA books. It’s a bit difficult to say a line’s aimed at girls where the pool seems to be mostly boys-only.

By the way, why doesn’t James Meely’s comments surprise me? It’s how many people think. So few women creators in “mainstream” (aka superhero) comics MUST equal “wimmen have no talent”, right? Right? Ugh. Puke.