 |
65,000 attendees—some in costume—
thronged the aisles of New York City's
Javits Center last weekend for the
2008 New York Comic-Con. |
"Over the past few decades, kids’ comics have become the most underground of underground comics," said Diamond’s Janna Morishima at the Kids' Comics Publishers roundtable at last weekend's New York Comic-Con. "Only in the past few years has that started to change." She cited First Second’s children’s line, Scholastic’s Graphix line, and the growing trend of trade houses releasing graphic novels for children and traditional comics publishers developing titles for children as evidence that the market is growing.The panelists agreed that the children’s book market is still in its early stages. "Kids’ book publishers need experience with comics; comics publishers need experience in publishing books for children," said Liesa Abrams of Simon & Schuster’s Aladdin Books. One key difference: "Children’s retailers need prices to be kept low, much lower than you can get away with for the direct market," she said. Randall Jarrell of Oni Press agreed, pointing out that readers could buy a 200-page Captain Underpants chapter book for $4. "That’s a really hard price point for most graphic novel publishers to meet," he said. His solution was to publish Salt Water Taffy, a new graphic novel series by Matthew Loux, on a quarterly basis at $6 for a 96-page graphic novel.
read more
|
