New York State of Mind
Posted by Jorge | Filed under Conventions, The Work
So the NY Comic Con has come and gone… just got back and, while we didn’t have a booth setup this year, I’m back and charged up about where things are headed for Two Fisted Press and Kid Kong Entertainment in 2009.
I’m not going bother talking about the panels and screenings I sat in on. There’s already plenty of postings about that kind of thing out there. Instead, I’m going to keep it short and focus on the three things I learned while roaming the Jacob Javits floor:
THE ECONOMY CAN’T PUT A DENT IN THE NY COMIC CON - Seriously. The convention hall was shoulder to shoulder for almost the entire time I was there. Train load after train load of fanboys and fangirls were migrating westward on 34th.
MOST INDIE CREATORS DON’T KNOW HOW TO SELL THEIR BOOKS - This was more of an NY rediscovery than an actual learning moment. Nonetheless, I left stunned by the number of creators who couldn’t answer the simple question “What’s your book about?” in less than two or three sentences. I stayed quiet in most instances, nodded my head where I thought they wanted nodding, open my eyes wide when ten minutes later they got to their big twist and said “sounds cool” at the end. But I put their book down about halfway through their drawn out description and made my decision not to buy it 10 seconds after they started talking. Look, if your description is a long rambling bore how can you expect me to believe your book won’t be a long rambling bore too? Not saying that a creator’s inability to succinctly describe their story equals a bad comic. But I WILL say that a creator’s inability to succinctly describe their story equals poor convention sales.
BE GOOD TO OTHERS AND THEY WILL BE GOOD TO YOU – No. I’m not naive enough to believe that everyone will return kindness nor am I selfish enough to expect that kind of reciprocity but, dammit, sometimes it happens. Sometimes someone just gets your back or drops your name at just the right time because, well, you were cool to them. They like what you’re about, they like what you do and they want to see you do more of it. So you can imagine the smile on my face when former student and incredibly talented writer/blogger Lauren Davis linked me up with Ray Wert, writer for io9.com. Ray sat me down for an interview and picked my brain about all things comic-iPhony. Very cool. Lauren didn’t have to do that, ya know? She was doing her own thing, busy researching her own stories. So why? I don’t know… but being good to others doesn’t hurt.
I left NY juiced. I left NY with ideas. I left NY ready to come back to NY.
- Jorge
