Graphic Novel TK

2020 and 2021 have been a very strange time in publishing -- a time when the way that publishing a book works has changed rapidly and in unexpected ways. At the start of 2020, the expectation was the year would proceed as usual -- and then only months later, as covid spread, authors and publishers scrambled to adjust plans as everything that would've been in-person shut down. In this interview, we talked to Shannon Wright about her experience with publishing a book during covid. Shannon's...

So your book has been published! It is now in out in the world for everyone to read. And now . . . what happens? Do people mostly come to find your book organically? How do you make sure people are still reading your book in a year . . . and what can you do to make sure that they're still reading your book in five years? We talk to Julia Pohl-Miranda, Director of Marketing at renowned Canadian comics publisher Drawn and Quarterly, about the long-term view on publishing graphic novels....

Your publisher has called you to tell you that your book has a publication date! It's coming out! In the future! What . . . do you do in the meantime? You want everyone you know -- and also everyone you don't know -- to be the most excited and to buy your book when it appears in stores. How do you work with your publisher to make that happen? What does your publisher want you to do? What does your publisher want you NOT to do? Today we talk about all these questions with Jacq Cohen, the...

Publishers! If you've got one, they're involved in all the parts of making a book -- from negotiating a book deal to contracts, editing, design, marketing, publicity, sales, and all the bits where you work to get the book out to readers. How do you make sure that your relationship with your publisher goes well -- and that they're on the same page about what you want to happen with your book that you are? Today we talk to Dwayne McDuffie Award-winning comics creator Nilah Magruder about just...

Headlines! Radio segments! Feature pieces! Your comic might be in one of those spaces one day. But . . . how? Today we're talking to Petra Mayer, the editor at NPR Books, about consumer-facing media outlets. What do they do? How do you work with them? And how much are national media outlets interested in comics and graphic novels? For more about Petra, you can follow her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/petramatic) -- and NPR Books has a website (https://www.npr.org/books/) and a Twitter...

Conferences, conventions, and festivals! As a comics creator, should you go to them? What should you do there? What's the best way for you to work with all the very different public event spaces there are to promote and support your comics and your career? Today, we talk to the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Toronto Comics Art Festival, Christopher Butcher, about how conferences, conventions, and festivals work, and how best to plan to interact with them as an author. For more...

Social media! Authors are there, talking about themselves and their books, all the time. What goes into thinking about how to do that in a successful way and manageable way? That's what we explore in this episode of Graphic Novel TK. We're delighted to be discussing the ins and outs of having an online presence with Ngozi Ukazu, the author of webcomic sensation Check, Please! Want to learn more about Ngozi Ukazu? You can find her on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/ngoziu ) or on her website (...

We interrupt our regular arc of Graphic Novel TK posting to bring you a new feature: Graphic Novel TK Backmatter. Where Graphic Novel TK follows a book through its publication life from book deal to post-publication, Graphic Novel TK Backmatter focuses on specific topics in comics publishing. We'll be sporadically bringing you featured episodes on these special topics in the months to come. Some comics are short -- like mini-comics, contributions to anthologies, and some webcomics. And other...

On the last few episodes of Graphic Novel TK, we've been talking to booksellers, comic book sellers, teachers, and librarians about how they work with graphic novels in their spaces. But how do those industry professionals hear about graphic novels? How do they know what to buy, what to get excited about, or even what's coming soon? One of the first ways that an industry professional might hear about graphic novels is through a trade publication -- a publication that is specifically designed...

Comics can help young kids learn! But what about after those kids go to college? How are comics used in an academic space? Today we're delighted to talk to Professor Margaret Galvan, from the University of Florida, to explore college courses, academic research, and how comics and graphic novels enter into and interact with students and teachers in these classrooms. Want to know more about Margaret Galvan? You can find more about her and her academic work on her website, including some...

More and move all over America, comics are being used in schools -- in classes, in school libraries, in book reports and reading requirements. How are teachers working to bring comics into their classrooms? We talk to educator and graphic novelist Cathy G. Johnson about her work teaching comics to elementary, middle, and secondary school kids and teens in this episode. Want to know more about Cathy G. Johnson? You can find her on Twitter at @cathygjohn (https://twitter.com/cathygjohn) or at...

Libraries! They're in every town in the United States -- and many of them have comics and graphic novels in them. How did that state of affairs come to pass? And how do librarians support graphic novels, both with buying them and adding them to their collections, and with promoting them to their patrons? In this episode, we talk with Robin Brenner, Teen Librarian at the Public Library of Brookline -- and one of the first librarians to begin advocating for comics in libraries in the US --...

Distribution! What stores is your graphic novel in, and where is it displayed? Is it reaching the school and library market? Is it featured in museum stores and gift shops? Those questions are in part answered by what kind of graphic novel you've created, and what kind of critical acclaim it's receiving. But there's another major factor that goes into the mix, and that's distribution. Major publishers have their own distribution; smaller publishers will work with a larger distribution to...

One of the jobs most shrouded in mystery at a publisher (at least for an author) is that of a sales rep. Who are they? What do they do? Despite the fact that editors, marketing, and publicity people spend a lot of time talking to sales reps, often those reps don't interact at all with authors directly. Sales reps are responsible for being the intermediary between the publisher and the retail outlets the publisher sells books to. They're responsible for making sure that stores know that books...

We've talked about bookstores and comics stores before on Graphic Novel TK -- in fact, in our two episodes immediately prior to this! But how are bookstores and comics stores different? Are all their differences encompassed by the fact that one has books and comics and the other just comics? Or are there things that are different about the way they're structured and the way they operate? We talked today to Jake Shapiro, who has worked at both NYC's The Strand and DC's Fantom Comics, about...

Bookstores! They're so full of . . . books. But what about comics? What's their place there? How can people who make comics work to try to find their work a home in a physical space that mostly reaches book readers? What is the audience like? Today we talk to Greenlight Bookstore co-owner Jessica Stockton Bagnulo about how she thinks about comics in bookstores, and how she and her staff to feature authors and books that they like. How big a part of her job is comics-related? Listen to find...

You're going to be an author! But how do you get your books to actually sell? After you've told your friends and family that your book exists, you still have to convince the rest of the people in the world that they should buy it. And your best allies on that front can be bookstores and comics stores, who spend all day every day talking to people about how they should buy graphic novels from them. Today, we talk to the co-owners of Eisner Award-winning comics store Challengers Comics +...

Media! Reviews! It's amazing when you make a book, and then people start talking about it -- online, in print, on the radio, and sometimes even on television. It can seem like that happens spontaneously -- a book gathering praise like a snowball rolling down a hill and accumulating snow -- and that can sometimes be the case. But there's also someone whose job it is to build that snowball and give it a push: a publicist. Today we talk to the woman who coordinates the publicity for Abrams...

Marketing is making sure that the people who would be excited for a particular book know about it, and about how great it is. How does a publisher makes sure that happens? Generally they employ someone whose job is to figure it out. Today we talk to Tucker Stone all about marketing. Until recently, Tucker ran the marketing, publicity, and sales at Nobrow, and now he works for the books and comics distributor Consortium. In today's episode, we discuss his experiences with how to get books out...

Your editor will edit your book! But what else does an editor at a publishing house do? They're the first person at a publishing house to get excited about a book and how amazing it is. How do they work with all the rest of the people at the publishing house -- their boss, the other editorial and design staff, and the marketing, publicity, and sales staff -- to make sure that everyone realizes just how great a book they have on their hands? How much of their job is managing that conversation...