Oh Joy, Sex Toy Launches Oni’s New Erotic Comic Line
Oni Press has announced that they will be launching a new imprint, Limerence Press, to publish “erotic and sex education comics … focused on positive, diverse, and approachable stories that reflect a wide variety of emotional and intimate experiences.”
The first publication from Limerence will be the three volumes of Erika Moen’s Oh Joy Sex Toy. The first two books collecting this webcomic were previously Kickstarted.
The Kickstarter for volume 3 launched yesterday and is already well past fully funded. Limerence will be printing those books with a Kickstarter-unique cover. Books for comic shops, bookstores, and specialty shops will have a different cover. The first two volumes of Oh Joy Sex Toy will be in stores October 5 at $29.99 each. Volume 3 will be out November 9.
There was a discussion on Twitter yesterday about how important more traditional distribution, as Oni/Limerence can provide, can be to reaching more readers, particularly in other countries. Buying books through a local comic shop is still easier, and without postage prices, more economical, for some.
It’s interesting to discuss what each party gets out of the deal. At an outside glance, a publisher picking up a Kickstarter success gets a known quantity to resell, while the creator gets a break on printing costs and wider distribution.
The imprint is helmed by Managing Editor Ari Yarwood, who said, “As a queer lady, I’m invested in publishing erotica and sex education comics that reflect the wonderful spectrum of human sexuality.” Limerence, it turns out, means “the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person” or as Yarwood puts it, “that giddiness of falling head over heels for someone.”
Nicely, she also acknowledged others who have demonstrated a market for this kind of comic material: “We owe a debt of gratitude to C. Spike Trotman and the webcomic creators who are already publishing awesome sexy comics for paving the road ahead, and I hope that Limerence Press will add another venue and voice for erotica and sex education comics with the quality that Oni Press is known for.”
6:13 pm
Depending on Oni’s deal with Diamond, It might get them into the regular Diamond catalogue and not the Adult catalogue. My understanding is the latter catalogue is digital only and basically gets ignored by most retailers. It’s likely where Erika Moen’s and Spike’s work would have been placed had they tried bringing the books to Diamond themselves.