Selling the Graphic Novel

A quick hit about putting largely unknown content into people's hands

101: The Graphic Novel vs. The Collected Edition

101 is a series about foundations - both in comics, and my engagement with the medium.

Today’s topic comes from the super fancy chat function that exists on the Substack app. I wanted to test that bit of functionality, and asked folks if they had anything specific they wanted me to cover over the next few weeks, and it pulled up some very interesting topics. Today, we’re going to tackle on from one of my favourite comic book writers.

---

Ryan K. Lindsay: What are your thoughts on selling graphic novels, and not collected editions? Do you push for week one? Or just always have a few in stock and play the slow and long game?

First and foremost: thank you so much for these questions, and this prompt. I’m going to kick things off with a bit of a clarification for folks who might not be familiar with the terms at play here.

Within the larger book market, the term graphic novel is often used to describe any and all forms of comics that exist in a square-bound format. That said, in comics shops and the direct market, we tend to differentiate between collected editions and graphic novels.

Collected editions cover any and all content that has seen print in another format, such as print single issues, or digital release. A graphic novel is an offering of brand new content, making its debut in the square-bound format.¹

The distinction between the two requires some different sales tactics as a retailer. With a collected edition, you (usually) have access to the contents that make up the final product. With a graphic novel, that’s not always the case.

Unless the publisher offers a significant chunk of the graphic novel for a retailer to read, sales tend to go on “vibes only”. Vibes can range from something like Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips putting out their latest, to Joe Somebody just trying their best with a new thing. Obviously, an established team is going to garner a lot more interest with very little effort put forward on their part. Joy Somebody is going to have to do a lot more legwork.

Now, the vibes essentially dictate how I’ll approach the sale of a graphic novel. For nearly every release, week one is a very important thing. It is when all parts of the business are working their hardest to get the book into people’s hands - from publisher, to distributor, to creator(s), to retailer. I won’t lie and say that the bulk of sales effort doesn’t happen right at the jump for most projects because the machine craves instant gratification.

That said, a book’s longevity lives and dies on the why of it all. Hell, any comic in any format lives and dies on the why of it all.

The why is something unique. It is a communication to the retailer and the audience about a specific flavour and intent. It is a statement done by the work, and the creators that tells me why the book exists.

To talk about what I mean, I’m going to use one of my favourite Ryan K. Lindsay projects as an example: Beautiful Canvas.

While this is not a graphic novel in the terms we’ve defined (as it originated in single issues), it is a project that has a radiantly functional why. The story runs in the Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips lane, with a heavy noir influence - but just like their projects, it diverges from the core concept of noir in very interesting ways. For one, while Brubaket/Phillips work tends to run fairly heteronormative (a trapping of the style and era of storytelling that speaks to them), Beautiful Canvas is anything but. Queer noir in and of itself would function as a hell of a why, but this series also builds in some surreal elements, along with a classic Lone Wolf and Cub baseline.

Beautiful Canvas isn’t a book for everyone, but it is specific enough to be a tool in a retailer’s arsenal of awesome shit. It satisfies the needs of an audience that loves the noir flavour, but wants to break out of the gender binary of it all. There aren’t many books that offer this, which makes it tailor made to be someone’s new favourite thing. That makes this the kind of book that doesn’t just get the first week push, but an extended one over time.

The fact is, there isn’t a single fit for collected editions or graphic novels, but my best advice for anyone trying to have their story connect with an audience is this:

1. Figure out the why of your book, whether that comes from a place of art, or a place of commerce. The artistic thing that lives in you is just as good a selling point as something a bit more commercial - but don’t let one subsume another if you truly want to get your ideas out into the world.

2. Ensure that retailers have access to some, if not all of what you’re putting out into the world, if you’re aiming to sell a graphic novel. Don’t be precious about what might leak or how. At the end of the day, that doesn’t matter. A book’s illegal downloads mean nothing in the face of the product remaining a mystery. Get the book in front of eyes. If you have a solid enough why, the rest has the potential to carry itself much farther than that first week of sales.

3. If the book doesn’t have a compelling why, initial sales are all a retailer has the time for. These days, there’s so much good product out there, that good isn’t enough to survive. Quality alone doesn’t cut it. That sounds harsh, but it is true. Something either has to be great, and sell itself, or a creator needs to have a sharp enough communication of the why of the project to move it forward. To that end, I’m always trying to dig and find any resources I can before I place my final orders for a book. Any little morsel helps. If I find something that satisfies the answer to why in an interesting way, I tend to start with a solid handful on hand week one, and combine it with a sales strategy going forward. However, if the answer to why isn’t compelling, that’s a book I plan to sell out of as soon as possible, using the engine that’s already in place move the book.

I hope that satisfies your question. That’s it for me today, but if you’d like some more awesome content here on Substack, Ryan K. Lindsay offers some rad stuff on the regular, and I highly recommend subscribing.

That’s it for me until Wednesday.

Talk with you soon.

-B.

1. It’s also important to note that, when selling comics, all of these terms should mean absolutely nothing. If someone is using the “wrong term”, correcting them is not an additive experience. Connecting them with the content that they want (or didn’t know they wanted) is the only goal, and being a pedant will just get in the way of that.