DC Conspiracy[dots pattern]

5.22.2006

The Book Expo America...

...was very interesting. I got two free passes and took Matt Dembicki. We got there early, 9AM, and got to walk the floor several times and talk to some of the folks we set out to talk to. I plan on doing this show next year with POSTCARDS (or at least have some form of representation at the show) so I wanted to check it out and see what's what. It was an eye-opener.

There was a graphic novel pavilion. With the exception of NBM and DC Comics, I really didn't know any of the publishers who were set up there. Fantagraphics, D&Q, Tokyo Pop, Viz — they were all as far away from the GN pavilion as you can get. They looked like a couple of companies who've been there before and understood the importance of presentation — they had their books nicely displayed and catalogs to take home. Tokyo Pop had chairs and tables, something a lot of the book publishers had (some of them even had couches) so retailers, wholesalers, etc could sit down and chat a bit. They felt comfortable.

DC had chairs, tables and a signing booth. It looked great — nice and spacious and a decent representation of their graphic novels, from manga to Vertigo books. They had a pretty heavy BKV push with all of their promotional banners and their promotional catalog featured LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN V3 on the cover. I found that interesting, with all the drama between Moore & DC and the guarantee that no more Moore books will ever be published there, they're still touting the guy as their big draw. But after LOEG, then what? It just seems like a very short term plan to me. But with a book expo once a year, why the hell not, I guess.

I got a free IDENTITY CRISIS hardcover and HUSH V1 from the DC booth. Two books that I've never read. I don't think owning them will change that much, however. I was hanging around for the planned BKV signing but he was either late or canceled.

I was really disappointed with NBM's booth. They were displaying several books and I knew none of them. The covers didn't even grab me at all.

The other GN Pavilion presenters — I don't know, they just look like they were at a comic show. It was kind of sad. They didn't seem to be on the level that was needed for what was solely a marketing show. Not a lot of freebees, no one really signing, no novel presentation of gimmicks. We're making comics, you know — have some fucking fun.

The Diamond Booth area was much nicer. Dark Horse had a great little set-up (and really cool free lanyards) and IDW was giving away some neat books — all Steve Niles books, though, which I found weird because I thought IDW was putting the majority of their effort into Transformers. I guess Transformers is for the direct market crowd, Niles is for the book market.

Image Comics — I LOVE Image comics, don't get me wrong. But, damn — they didn't have their name on their booth. Unless I completely missed it but Matt (and a couple of the people I talked to afterwards) got FREE BOOKS from Image and didn't even realize Image was there. It's a marketing show. You're not allowed to sell books. It's expensive. The only reason you'd be there is so retailers leave and say to themselves, "Hey — I gotta get me some Image Comics."

Nothing.

I picked up a free copy of STAGGER LEE (we were allowed to choose between STAGGER LEE, GODLAND V1 and I forget the third book). They also gave me free WANTED, CITY OF HEROES and FRESHMEN floppies.

Marvel comics had some space in the Diamond Pavilion and no-one was manning their booth. Their freebees consisted of the Black Panther/Storm wedding comic, Moon Knight #1, the second trade of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and the X-Men/Runaways FCBD floppy. They had some King and Civil War promotional items lying around but I didn't grab any. For a book expo I found it weird that they were unloading floppies. I guess they serve as a teaser for the eventual trade. But Moon Knight is only on issue two, are book retailers' memories better than comic retailers' memories? Or is it just that the only thing any retailer needs to remember is, "buy Marvel."

I got a ton of free manga from all of the publishers represented there — about ten books total. I also picked up these PEANUTS books that Cider Mills Press is putting out. They're these little digest sized feel-good books, one is called HAPPINESS IS A WARM PUPPY and another is HOME IS ON TOP OF A DOG HOUSE — I got four of those, total. Fun little books.

The best book I grabbed (on initial inspection, I haven't read anything yet) was CORPSE BRIDE: AN INVITATION TO THE WEDDING. It's a gorgeous CORPSE BRIDE art/production book offered by New Market Press. Retails for twenty bucks and will make for a fantastic coffee table book, even has a foreword by Tim Burton. This will likely be the first book I read through, as soon as I post this entry.

Everything else I picked up was regular 'ole prose novels. Totaling my loot I came home with over three-hundred dollars of free books, a couple of them signed by the authors. I really think the book publishers who've been around for a while had it down — a lot of the comic guys were still learning. I found it interesting that folks like D&Q and Fantagraphics found it better to separate themselves than to hang out in the rookie leagues and I think their experience with the show is obvious, I was very impressed.

I'm going to try and follow their model with POSTCARDS next year. At first I was worried about having only one book but considering some of the set-ups I saw, I don't think that's an issue.

Better to have one book and present it well than several books and present them badly.

Jason at 10:00 AM  |  link to this   

3 Comments

My top three pickups:

-Kevin Huizenga's upcoming "Curses" from D&Q
-Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding
-The children's book "The Mice of Bistrot des Sept Freres" by Marie Letourneau

Blogger Dembicki at 5/23/2006 10:56 PM   

great writeup Jason... You really seemed to glean a lot of information from the booth setup and the presentation. Good Job!

Oh, and if you feel like lending that Hush book, I'd love to read it. I'm a closet Batman fan, and have been curious to read that Jim Lee book.

Blogger Jacob at 5/24/2006 6:39 AM   

Excellent summary of BEA, Jason! You hit spot on the mark a couple of the same points I made about Marvel's BEA booth in my blog.

I've been doing BEA for (yikes!) 20 years now, so it's interesting to read about it from another POV.

A couple comments:

Presses like Fantagraphics, D+Q, and Tokyopop aren't located in the GN pavilion because they are distributed to the book trade by larger trade presses (Norton, FSG, and HarperCollins, respectively). You'll find presses that are distributed by other presses usually under the banner of their distributors--it's generally a better booth space with more traffic. (Truth in disclosure: I work for Norton, so Fanta--and Newmarket, which you mentioned--were included inside our booth).

And yes, I believe you're spot on the money when you talk about focusing on one book or a small number of books over a large quantity at BEA. Since the thrust of the show is mostly to focus upon books coming out between September and December 2006, it can dilute your "message" to overload a booth visitor with too much backlist. There's a fine balance between looking like you don't have any books and having too many, and a targeted, well-thought out approach focusing on one or a couple dozen books is usually better than trying to focus on one hundred.

See you next year in the Javitz Center for BEA 2007!

Blogger Bully at 5/24/2006 9:26 AM   

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