Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Tape that.

Apparently, I lost Matt Fraction's mention of Gunned Down as a comic he "dug lately" on his and Joe Casey's Basement tapes, but a sharpen eyed friend pointed it to me, and so I read their conversation for the last two weeks: Word does not get across so good on how to make people know your book even exist.

Earlier, they talk about hype as the "word of mouth" that spreads before the book is available. Personally, I really don't put my money on hype. Proper word of mouth, on the other hand, means that people who read the book liked enough to tell other people about it. That's something we're all a little short these days.

Differently from hype, I believe that we need a bigger effort on "getting people to know who you are and what you do". There's a lot of stuff coming out, and we should make it easier for the reader, for the retailer - even for the publisher who may hire you - to know why they should care about your work or at least give it a chance when they never heard of you. Specially when your work does not involve super-heroes.

Me, I love comics. I've been reading comics since forever, I think it's a great way to tell a story in ways that merge what a book can do with what a movie can do, then add something only comics can do. I want to be a storyteller, and I want to tell my stories in comic books.

And I want people to know my stories exist.

Nothing will stop me.

Nothing can.

When you love what you do, you can do it all your life.

I'm still pretty young, so I got that going for me.

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