D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Family: This past week has been a rough one with the death of my wife’s grandmother. My wife has been, understandably, a wreck at times–  She’s doing better now as we get back in the swing of day to day life here. It was nice to have her cousins in, whom we thought were 10 hours away, but found out were actually only six hours away, so we may be planning a road trip to North Carolina this summer. Many stories were exchanged of the level of douchebaggery that goes on in these death situations, or back when they were putting her grandparents in the assisted living home and the family was selling everything off to raise money— I won’t get into that, but it sure seems to me, that when all was said and done her grandparents had about half a million to retire on… but it’s all gone in only a matter of a few years– we wonder that certain things don’t add up, and in fact, I had heard there have been several trips to Las Vegas by the folks who became the legal decision makers… but I don’t want to make accusations… it’s just a curious fact. I have faith that if anything seedy was going on, EVER, that Karma works all that out. — I think I am preconditioned to only lean on what I see as the good in people, and not the little devils inside us all.

Work: Back at it hardcore today. I have a lot I wish to get done.  Scanning, lettering, penciling and some other stuff as well. I only have 2 weeks until I spend a few days at New York Comicon, so I want to get ahead. Busy April! — So, our special issue 4 that’s only 99 cents and available for preorder now– after that I’ve asked that our cover price on issue 5 be taken back down to 2.99 instead of 3.99 that we launched with. Our current head of publishing at Platinum, Sean O’Reilly, believes that the increase in cover price never really made a matter, and mostly that could be true, but I disagree after seeing our preorder numbers for the past 3 issues. They’ve been about half of what our miniseries numbers were, and I’ve seen mention of the 3.99 cover price on some blogs where people enjoyed our book, but were on the fence on ordering it because of the cover price. I know stores don’t mind, and some retailers will tell you that customers will spend the money regardless if they are going to buy your book, they’ll buy your book. but therein lies the problems here… we’re not Spider-Man or Superman or something people “know of” really. Blame that on a lot of things, but it boils down to pretty much little to no advertising in the comic industry about our book, outside the full page ad inside the Previews magazine… I know many retailers who simply won’t order new indy titles unless they are by a proven company or “name” in comic or a customer actually goes in and asks them to preorder. The way the market is for MOST shops, they simply don’t have the budget to take on new titles– This is why we push preordering so much to our online readers.— But again, that’s a very backward situation, I know. The direct market distribution system needs some sort of overhaul. I’m not the person to tackle that issue, but enough people agree, that’s for sure.

I’m very confident that when a shop DOES regularly pick up our book, they order again, but that might only be 500-600 shops out there doing that right now. We’re, on purpose, making a book that’s fun for people who love comics, and new people. It’s getting that message out that’s a bit hard. It’s mostly just word of mouth ad a previews listing— I’m meditating on how I can fix that from here without causing any waves or without putting too much of an extra workload on top of my work load.

I may do direct preorders from me. This would mean you’d be able to preorder anything we’d sell direct from me, and I’d tabulate the orders, go to MY local shop (Joy’s Japanimation)– put in a big order, that I would then wait for, and then pick up, and then ship out signed to every “direct reader”– This is my LAST choice, because it’s a lot of tedious work, but it can be done. It might have to be done.

The greatest thing we have going for us right now is the remarkable fact that we have more “readers” each day than Batman, Superman, Spider-Man. Those big companies haven’t put up “webcomics” the way webcomics really work and the way we’ve been doing it. That’s a big opportunity there on all sides of that equation, I think. Through the webcomic we’re reaching new people each day with a chance that we’ll hook a fan for life. That doesn’t really happen on comic book store shelves where things like “market saturation” come into play. Where one shop only has so many customers with so many dollars to spend…. there is no market saturation in webcomics. There could be someone coming across this little blog for the very first time and see a link to Hero By Night and curiosity has just given us a new reader for life.

Off to get coffee… then work.