Originally Posted by
Ascended
Isn't "Superman Smashes the Klan" going to be distributed beyond the direct market too?
I'm with JAK; the way forward is the general audience. As Robanker put it, the well's been poisoned (great way to put it man!) for the direct market.
The "how" of that....I've spent way too much time considering alternatives to the direct market......and I think what might work is OGN's, designed around "seasons" released/advertised in digital and print, with heavy emphasis on social media WoM marketing and clever physical product placement with retailers (and Scholastic cannot be undersold if the product is aimed at kids; Scholastic is big). And not just for Clark, but for the industry in general. Clark has a few semi-unique obstacles here, largely due to audience bias and expectations that don't encourage quality narratives, but.....too specific for this conversation.
Floppies are too slow for modern markets. We binge things now. So you forget floppies and you run a OGN every six months with a fully story. You structure it like a television season so it's easy to follow along (you start with season 1, then read season 2, duh!) and it's a narrative structure audiences are comfortable and familiar with.
Print is.....in a weird place. It's not dying as quickly as it was, its even making a kind of comeback, but it's shifting into a different kind of "niche" style market while still retaining a fair amount of broadband appeal. So you dress the OGN's up with nice covers, some "behind the scenes" extras (just like a blu-ray would have), maybe an interview or two, etc. It'll raise the price a little but the higher production value will balance the supply-demand curve, and you drop a few cheaper copies without the extras or the super-nice cover for extra coverage (just like with DvD, blu-ray, blu-ray 4K, etc, options).
You release the book digitally, for reasons that should be obvious, and you put a lot of effort and attention on that. Make it available from Amazon, the DC home site, every possible online retailer middle-man you can find, to ensure you get the widest possible exposure. You're breaking into new markets and kinda-sorta building something brand new; you don't worry about maximizing profit by cutting out middle-men at this point, you want those guys taking their cut because it's expanding your product awareness and building your customer base. Once you've got people hooked on your product, that's when you cut out the middle-men and make consumers follow you.
Online WoM marketing is objectively the best strategy for all this, and you push the advertising hard, in every arena you advertise in. Any gamers remember when Overwatch was about to launch? Any site gamers might possibly go to online had Overwatch ads (including CBR). You need to be that omnipresent in your marketing. And if the movies and tv shows could take ten seconds out of their budget to name drop the DC app or comixology or something? That'd be great. Imagine how effective it would be if Steven Amell had been saying at the end of every episode for eight seasons "Thanks for watching! If you like the show, try the comics! Find them on the DC app!"
And the physical copies.....you have to sell them with complimentary products. Put a rack of "Superman: Season 1" OGN's next to the movies and video games in Target, or the kids' section if the OGN is aimed at a younger crowd (target audiences are something else that matters a ton and I think the direct market is f**king this up a lot, but that's another thread). The thing DC did with Wal-Mart last year, with the original content books? Great basic idea, but from what I know most stores put those comics with the Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon cards; most of the people who go to that aisle are already into geek culture; they made their decision about these characters already. You want to grab the casuals; you want the guy who loves the MCU but has never picked up a comic in his life to see your product while he's buying the Endgame blu-ray, because he'll never walk down the Magic and Pokemon aisle to see the OGN.
Gods, all this and so much more.....I could (and did) write a marketing strategy for this sorta thing that really impressed my professor, but that was thirty something pages long and....I just dont want to try and make anyone read all that!