The Promotion of Comics vs Novels

[JD]

I've noticed lately, with franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars, that comics seem to get a lot more promotion than the novels do, and I was just wondering if there was a reason for it. Do more people read the comics? Or is it just they come out more often so there are more of them to promote? Or is more about the companies and writers?
With Star Trek, I'm seeing tons of stuff for series like The Last Starship and Red Shirt even on more mainstream sites like IGN and I think even Entertainment Weekly, but I've haven't anything like that for Ring of Fire or Identity Theft. I was kind of surprised by this, because was under the impression that a lot more people read prose than read comics, so I would have expected the new prose novels to be a much bigger deal than the comics. Star Wars does do a little more promotion for their prose novels, but even they don't seem to do as much for them as they do for their comics.

 

[David Mack]

It's easier to promote things that come out more frequently and have pretty pictures.

 

[Christopher]

It's easier to promote things that come out more frequently and have pretty pictures.

Also, comics are trendy these days because of the dominance of superhero movies.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

As weird and messed up as comic book marketing is -- and yes, I am part of the problem -- there's a marketing and news ecosystem that supports the media coverage and gets it placed. In my experience, the publishers have marketing people who take an active role in promoting series launches and they make creators available for interviews. There's self-promotion on the part of the creators, of course, but from where I sit it seems that comics publishers are more involved in promoting their work than book publishers are.

 

[KRAD]

@Allyn Gibson is correct, but @JD you're also correct that prose books sell way more than comics do.....

 

[JD]

Thanks for the insights guys.

 

[tgiokdi]

IDW has gone into overdrive promoting their books in the last couple years because they lost a couple pretty big licenses (Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, etc) all while being delisted from the stock market and going back to being privately owned, so it's something of a make or break situation for them.

Combine that with S&S being sold to a private equity firm and it's a recipe for the comics being promoted more than the books.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I, for one, would love to see some prose LD novels.

 

[JD]

I think with the amounts of visual humor in it, it really translates better to comics than it would to prose.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

IDW has gone into overdrive promoting their books in the last couple years because they lost a couple pretty big licenses (Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, etc) all while being delisted from the stock market and going back to being privately owned, so it's something of a make or break situation for them.

I'm sure IDW's financial situation is a factor, and that's a function of being a license-heavy publisher, but I don't believe that IDW is doing anything differently in terms of marketing than any other comics publisher. They're aggressive, but not excessively so.

 

[The Gatekeeper]

I think with the amounts of visual humor in it, it really translates better to comics than it would to prose.

Agreed, though I did just get an idea in my head of Lower Decks novels with covers done in the style of Trek novels of the past, like TOS novels from the 80s or even TNG novels from the 90s which I think could be amusing.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Get creative. How about a drawing every page a la "Great Illustrated Classics" (but in the style of the show's drawings, of course)?

 

[JD]

Agreed, though I did just get an idea in my head of Lower Decks novels with covers done in the style of Trek novels of the past, like TOS novels from the 80s or even TNG novels from the 90s which I think could be amusing.

So do with the book covers what the season posters did with the TOS movie posters? I like that idea.

 

[David cgc]

So do with the book covers what the season posters did with the TOS movie posters? I like that idea.

Or the proto-SNW Short Treks with their '80s-style episode posters. Though the best one was fan-made.

 

[JD]

I've never seen those before, those are awesome!