PrettyFakes

Just a little. When it’s in your economic interests.

Dear Marvel and DC:

Take a minute and go visit any other major publisher’s website. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Did you notice the button that was probably marked “educators”? It’s there so that teachers who want to use a text from that publisher in a course can request a desk copy of their own, usually one per every 20 students or so. In addition to fostering goodwill ‘mongst educators and publishers, it’s also a good way to sell more books. It’s especially helpful when a teacher might want to assign a more recent edition of a book to replace one that’s fallen out of print or has just plain fallen to pieces. Or, let’s say someone might want to assign the collected edition of a work which she only owns in serialized format and doesn’t want to drop $20-30 on material she already has. It would probably come in really handy then. But I understand that all the links to content about new toys and new video games and investor relations and previews for movies owned by your parent company already make for a crowded page, so you may not want to bother.

Yours in pique,
Prof Fury

Dear Comics Retailers:

When someone approaches you about ordering and selling graphic novels for a booksigning to follow a lecture by a critically acclaimed, world-renowned cartoonist, it is probably not a scam. The person is probably trying to help you out. So, there are a couple of correct responses. One is “Yes, thank you for bringing this opportunity to our attention. We are particularly excited not only about the opportunity to sell books to the estimated crowd of 100, but to increase our visibility among a group of consumers with much disposable income but little awareness that there have been any literary-type graphic novels published since Maus. What new streams, nay rivers, of revenue we might disembark upon!” Another possible correct answer is “No, thanks for bringing this opportunity to our attention, but we can’t do it because [insert legitimate or borderline legitimate reason here].” Really, the only wrong answers are mealy-mouthed noncommittal and complete silence to repeated inquiries.

Exasperatedly,
Prof Fury

Dear Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier:

You don’t need to grow up, but please come out sometime this year.

Yours,
Prof Fury

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 9:01 am and is filed under Comixx, Professor Fury, Red Stick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.