NY Comic-Con Journal: Day 3

Go elsewhere if you want pointless snark-for-snark’s sake or ill-informed whining from people who didn’t attend the show, because while there were definitely many things that went wrong this weekend, the final result was undeniable: NY Comic-Con was a huge victory for the industry. Not just the usual suspects, either, as I believe Reed’s success in tapping the mainstream side of the publishing industry — ie: Borders, Del Rey, Harry N. Abrams, Simon & Schuster, Roaring Brooks’ :01 (First Second) imprint — plus a small army of librarians who were reportedly roaming the floors checking out many of the indie publishers who were smart enough to have a presence, leveled the playing field quite a bit.

Markosia, in particular, was there in full force and left me rather impressed with their approach to the industry, greatly diminishing my initial skepticism for their long-term prospects. I’m going to sit down with Chuck Saterlee at some point in the near future to discuss their plans, so keep an eye out for that. A brief chat with Devil’s Due‘s Josh Blaylock, while he and Tim Seeley were signing at our booth, gave me some confidence in their direction, too. Image made a big mistake in not being there, IMO, and if I had a project with them that included a TPB collection with any potential appeal outside of the direct market, I’d be pissed by their absence.

I’m still decompressing from the long weekend, simultaneously exhausted and reinvigorated, and have only made a brief circuit of the blogiverse, so for now I’ll simply direct your attention to The Beat for Heidi’s coverage of the Con.

My Establishing Shots column this week will focus on my takeaways from the Con, but I wanted to mention here that both of my panels went quite well, with the Indie Roundtable being surprisingly well-attended, and the All-Ages panel being incredibly engaging despite a predictably smaller turnout. (More on both, later this week, here on the blog.) Overall, I had a blast and am greatly looking forward to next year’s event, already scheduled for February 23-25, 2007 (I think) and presumably moving upstairs to larger quarters.

PS: A. David Lewis covered the Indie Roundtable for NEWSarama, so as soon as his article posts, I’ll link it here.

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.