Wednesday, March 01, 2006

IN CASE U MISSED IT: Independents Day

Jason Berek Lewis is an online columnist, aspiring creator, and stand up guy (I mean hell, he loves Super Real, he's aces). He's got a weekly column on BROKENFRONTIER.com - Industrial Evolution. This week's topic is the recent news of Speakeasy's demise, but he takes the publishers bad news, and spins it into a positive outreach for the industry, calling for an "indepents day":

On Independence Day, take a stand. This coming New Comics Day, give up your copy of Uncanny X-Men or Adventures of Superman and consider instead Coffee and Doughnuts Graphic Novel, Elsinore, Free Fall, Lexian Chronicles Full Circle, Red Sonja or Wall After Wall.

All these books are shipping this week!

If you like any of these books, tell a friend, tell 10 friends. Jump on the net, go to 10 different message boards, and start a thread explaining why you enjoyed the book and why you think others should give it a go.

If you have a blog, or you write for a website, or you are a popular person with plenty of friends, spread the word. Most indy companies don’t have a lot of money to splash around on promotion; they rely on word of mouth (these days, do we call it “word of keyboard”?).

If you hate the book you tried, pass it on to someone who might like it.

Try to do this every week. If you can’t, do it once a month.

The point is folks, just make an effort, if you don't already, to give small stuff a shot, there are indeed scores of quality books deserving of more attention. And by all means SPREAD THE WORD!(this can not be stressed enough)

Don't get me wrong, I love mainstream comics too, but with the "big 2's" current dollar sucking initiatives, and Diamond's new thresholds, it's not just about over-aggressive mid-level publishers failing, the independent comic book itself, as we know it, is on watch. It would really be a shame to lose that facet of the medium. It's up to all of us to ensure that doesn't happen.

Check out the full article HERE

1 comment:

Jason Berek-Lewis said...

Thanks for much for highlighting the column. I am getting some good feedback on this one ...