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Jon Auerbach's avatar

This really resonated with me, as someone who wants to keep making comics with lots of different artists, and as a fiction author. I wish there was a good way outside of convention appearances to build up the comic audience in-between Kickstarter launches w/o spending gobs of money on Facebook ads, but I haven't found it yet.

I will also be alternating between book and comic campaigns, although my books are also fantasy, so there is more cross-over there and so I use the same imprint name. Good idea to separate your branding for these two endeavors, given the genre focus of your prose.

Hope to see you at NYCC!

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Adriano Ariganello's avatar

Thanks, Jon.

I love what you've been able to do, using the comics to expand the universe of your novels. It's really a genius way to encourage that crossover audience.

Since I genre-hop a lot with my comics, I thought it'd be best to take Tao's advice and pick a lane for now. I probably won't do that forever.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to have folks like you blazing the trail by balancing both mediums.

Agreed about NYCC! Let's see how the ticket process goes this week. 😅

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Jon Auerbach's avatar

Thank you! Being able to do a spin-off of my existing book series let me have more of an audience for my first comic, and I'm interested to see how many comic readers follow me back to the next fiction campaign, which will also be in this same universe. But eventually I want to move to a unrelated fantasy series (or perhaps sci-fi) on KS, so that will be interesting to see.

Good luck with the NYCC tickets, fingers crossed we both snag them.

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James Ferguson's avatar

You are a force, Adriano! Very impressive to see how you're setting up your creative endeavors for success. I understand how comics fans aren't necessarily novel fans and vice versa, but I would imagine there would be continued overlap for people that are Adriano fans, no? I personally read both comics and prose, but I gravitate more towards audio books than traditional novels (which is why I always appreciate the podcast version of your Substack).

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Adriano Ariganello's avatar

Thanks, James! I can swear I replied to this but I don't see it!

What I was going to say was - I very much enjoy a good audiobook myself. In usually reading books in all kinds of formats at the same time and audiobooks allow me to juggle a couple more!

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Toby Hopper's avatar

This goes into a bit more detail. Spent 17 years in book & music retail (back in the day) but developments like this still strike my fancy! 😆

https://wickedauthors.com/2020/06/08/mass-max-books

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Toby Hopper's avatar

Consider the "mass max" size instead of the traditional mass market paperbacks?

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/83217-harlequin-introduces-larger-mass-market-paperback

It's a bit unique, readers seem to like the size in hand, and where BIG SMOKE is concerned, it's closer to the digest/pulp size of years long ago.

Heck I'll buy a 2nd print of BIG SMOKE v1 in mass max just to have a matching set when v2 arrives!

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Adriano Ariganello's avatar

Ooh. Interesting! I need to look into that.

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Adriano Ariganello's avatar

There's definitely overlap! It's just not 1-to-1.

Will definitely be doing audiobooks for the novels as well, as I'm a huge fan of them too!

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