It sounds like you guys are off to a good start. You definitely want to try to recoup as much of the printing costs as possible, but I’d also recommend setting aside, say, fifty copies of the book to mail out to retailers, creators, and publishers. Make a list of some influential retailers, creators that you admire, publishers you want to work for, and get your book into their hands.

Make follow up calls to the retailers (the SPX site has a list of indie friendly stores) and ask if they’ll carry your book. Even if you only get five to ten responses out of the fifty, I’d count that as a success. This is such a small industry that we’re part of. When you start building relationships and getting your name out there to the right people, it really goes a long way.

A completed, self-published comic book is a damn good business card. Use the grassroots approach and set your bar high — think big. It’s always best to chat with people face-to-face, but you can cover some major ground via mail, phone, and the Internet. Hell, you could hit the top 20 American retailers in no time at all. And after that it’s just doing some research and picking some other popular shops that are influential destinations in the industry.

Take an extra look at comic book hot spots like Portland, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, etc. I’m not sure where you live, but don’t get too bummed out if it’s not exactly a bastion of comic book culture. There’s people out there who love indie comics, and will gladly support your book, you just have to find them.

I’ll be shooting you an e-mail to buy my copy of Red Flags.

We did get Quimby’s in Chicago to take our erotica book on consignment so that was a minor success. Also looking into trying to sell some through Independent Propaganda’s online store.

Our local efforts have produced almost nothing. We work at a local newspaper publisher and put out our press release in a couple local papers and put the book in two local shops and have sold only a handful- I’ve really been let down how few friends and family have seemed interested in the books since many of them don’t read comic books but I thought they’d at least support us (the ones that have I will certainly remember). Then again, neither of these shops has a huge indy comics customer base so I wasn’t expecting much. My partner Jim still hasn’t gotten our Pay Pal link up yet so I haven’t been doing too much trying to get people to the site. When the site first went up Jim hit all the message boards and we got lots of hits but we didn’t really have too much to give them so I can’t say how much it paid off though I’m sure it helped build an awareness. At the show we had custom shirts and bags with our logo and had a few people ask us about our company- we probably looked a lot more professional than we are- either that or we looked like chumps and people were secretly goofing on us ; )

Like I said, we planned in the beginning to give it away as a showcase of our work to companies but since we still have quite a few copies left over (our run was 500 and we probably still have over 400 on hand- we were originally just going to do 250 but for another $20 we figured why not get the 500 and improve our chances of paying for the run) we are just now turning to trying to sell them. We are planning on hitting the Motor City show next month. We also made a mjor mistake in underpricing the book- we had discussed it a lot and didn’t think people would pay more for such a slim book but I’m really finding that for most people the difference between $1 and $2 is not much- the ones that would even consider buying such a book aren’t scared off and I saw similar books going for $3 and $4 at the show.

As I said, we learned a LOT and will apply those to our next venture- we’ve been discussing doing some web exclusive stuff to get better, build an audience and save money on printing until we know we can sell out our next print run. If you have any tips, feel free to pass them along. I’ve been following comics a long time and planning on doing them but it’s like watching somebody swim and then getting thrown in the pool- it looks a lot easier than it is.

Congratulations on the new comic. Yeah, you pretty much have to be prepared to lose money when starting out, especially self-publishing single issues.

How was Wizard World Chicago for you guys? What are you doing in terms of marketing? How are you guys reaching out to retailers? I would love to hear a bit about your strategy. What are you doing to get Red Flags out there?

Nobody in Thousand Oaks stocks anything.

Send me an e-mail and I’ll make sure you get a copy.

Matt does Meltdown in Eagle Rock have it?

I want to know if the reviewer has taste under all the bloaded writing.

xoxo

Alexis.