In the conference prequel to San Diego Comicon, graphic novel sales moved up despite a tough overall publishing environment. So: how to continue the trend?

I thought most about this not while reading the various big-time coverage of SDCC, but while reading regional reportage of a Canadian artist’s graphic novel debut, which has the enthusiastic but oddly educational tone that many journalists still use to introduce the concept to a general audience. As an insider, I’m usually puzzled by that, but this time I started to think about the ways in which GNs need to be considered in the larger context of trade publishing. That Victoria Times-Colonist article, for instance, accurately points out in the lede that GNs can range from “new ground” to “compilations”. This is definitely what skews publishers’ understanding of GN sales; it’s almost like an alternate universe where anthologies, usually a category-killer in trade publishing, can by contrast be the strongest performers in GNs if they’re part of an existing franchise. (Yes, I did just hyper-direct you to Bone, True Blood and Green Lantern in three words. Now you see the issue.) So the ongoing challenge is: how to make this into a marketing/literary language that everyone can use to their collective benefit?

If you’re a comics industry professional, please download the ballot by August 6 to vote for Dean Haspiel for Best Artist and Jose Villarrubia for Best Colorist. And stay tuned for the results at Baltimore Comicon later that month.

BG strip updates went on hiatus here during June, though you can still always keep up with them via my subscribers. At any rate, here’s some catch-up.

As always, Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald provided a great overview of this year’s outlook for graphic novels at BEA. My additional random thoughts, based on a mix of GN- and non-GN-focused panels:

– Really liked the Evergreen Book Marketing Panel featuring MJ Rose, Gretchen Crary and others; super-interactive, generous, frank discussion of strategy and inspiration. As it happens, Rose did successful promotion for Audrey  (Time Traveller’s Wife) Nifenegger’s first graphic novel The Night Bookmobile, and said of publishers’ skittishness re GNs, “For the right author, genre does not matter.”

-The Hot Fall Graphic Novels Panel was also excellent. I’m biased here, since it featured shout-outs to several clients, collaborators and in-house authors of mine — Jim Ottaviani, Colleen Doran, Brooke Gladstone. But I’m also personally fascinated by how quickly GN publishers are expanding with quality material into categories they weren’t previously known for. Archaia steps into weighty YA with An Elegy for Amelia Johnson, and Dark Horse is likely to make an impact in true crime fiction with Green River Killer. Meanwhile, the Louvre Museum itself financed The Sky Over the Louvre, and panelist Leigh Brodsky volunteered that there’s still plenty of unexploited GN terrain where war and true crime fiction is concerned, since middle- and high-school boys flock to those categories.

At the From Publishing to Packaging Panel, Lena Tabori confirmed that graphic content is of great interest to publishers, and subsequently cited The Influencing Machine, by Gladstone and Josh Neufeld, in her HuffPo wrap-up.

Plus, you could walk the whole floor and experience no sudden amplified explosions, nor linewaiter fistfights between Green Lantern cosplayers. Everyone in trade publishing talks about how crazy BEA is, but by my lights, that’s low-key.

That’s my take on Book Expo America, as quoted in this Publishing Perspectives piece. Sorry, I know it’s a huge groaner, but they got the better title first!

The Defense Department’s getting on the online graphic novels bandwagon. A very interesting development that reminds me of this great article about a gamer-oriented PTSD treatment program…

Those are cherry blossoms. In the fifth panel, everyone starts sneezing uncontrollably.