Tag: marketing

General U.S. Grants

As I continue my quest for an agent or publisher, I find that suggestions and ideas from various places just bubble up and spur me to further exploration. I’m happy to run down any lead that doesn’t cost me money.

That’s the most interesting thing about this process, discovering connections that lay undiscovered in plain sight. A good friend and fellow cartoonist that I’ve known since college turned out to be an avid Dickens fan and collector. I never knew this about him until I started this project, and now he’s one of my most avid supporters.

I’ve told you about the buddy who volunteered to take my BLEAK HOUSE portfolio and show it around at the MOCCA fest in New York. No matter that none of the publishers there was quite the thing for me, it’s the network that is developing around my work that keeps the whole thing interesting.

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The Hard Work of Selling

The five years I spent creating the artwork for Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE was not only a labor of love, but it was a process where, as I went along, I pretty much knew what I was doing, and if I didn’t, I knew the ways to figure it out.

Selling this project is another horse of a different color! I knew at the outset that an illustrated classic novel had no natural niche in the current publishing market, but I considered that fact against the marketability of Charles Dickens, and happy to say, Charles and I won.

So Step One was a smashing success. Step Two, a little trickier. I have some friends (or friends of friends) who are published writers, and I did ask one for “advice”, but the fact is, you’ll get the same advice in one form or another from everyone: Pick up a copy of The Writer’s Market and do the research. There are no shortcuts and no preformatted path to success, but this book has a wealth of information. You just have to be determined to dig for it.

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