{"id":3314,"date":"2014-09-10T12:21:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T12:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?p=3314"},"modified":"2014-09-10T12:48:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T12:48:02","slug":"little-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/?p=3314","title":{"rendered":"Little Creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blog-Header-09_10_14\"<\/a>FIRST THINGS FIRST:<\/span> Secret Acres had a grand old time at RIPE<\/a>, the\u00a0Rhode Island Independent Publishing Expo, which really should be RIIPE, but who’s counting? Dave Nuss, smooth operator of Revival House Press<\/a> was our celebrity comics mule and neighbor at the show. We would like him to be our neighbor all the time. In appropriately odd fashion for the place that begat Forcefield and Fort Thunder, RIPE’s table arrangements were way outside of the box. It’s first come, first served at this show. What a nice way to give the locals the upper hand. We drove up in the morning, and drove to Jersey by accident, getting us there late and putting us way in back. It worked out okay for us. On a rainy Saturday, the turnout was what you’d expect for a brand new artsy comics show.<\/p>\n

The Saturday night after-party, however, was probably the best comic show after-party we’ve been to in years. The secret weapon, of course, were some fucking great bands at Providence’s amazing AS220<\/a>. Enormous Door<\/a> blew our hairs back, but Lale Westvind<\/a> was the ringer. She is not only one of the best cartoonists around, she’s an All-Word Guitarist. She would beat the devil in a duel.<\/p>\n

Sunday had nice weather and a nice crowd, including one family so cool, we all immediately wanted kids. One unique thing about the show: it was the first time any of us could remember feeling like we were in the minority as cismen. It’s a great feeling! Ultimately, this show needs to happen when Providence’s colleges are in session, and that’s in the plans. Watch out for RIPE next year.<\/p>\n

Shortly after getting home, we at Secret Acres found ourselves dragged into in an actual internet kerfuffle. A provocative Tumblr post<\/a> from Mike Dawson<\/a> about his dwindling audience, declining book sales and deflated expectations became the talk of the comics blogosphere for a good week. Suddenly, people in corners of the comics world we didn’t even know existed were looking at us. As Mike’s most recent publisher, and as the publishers of the poor-selling book in question, Angie Bongiolatti<\/em><\/a>, we received plenty of uninvited criticism.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, we tend to get more compliments for our work than we get critiques. Naturally, we prefer the compliments (because we’re not insane). However, we do value criticism, no matter the source, and we address every concern as best we can. We\u2019re not going to respond directly to every Twitter, Tumblr and comments section troll because, again, we’re not crazy. Consider this a general response to some of what arose:<\/p>\n

People pointed to the cover of Angie Bongiolatti<\/em> as the culprit for its poor sales. That’s a pretty subjective thing; everyone involved with the production of the book actually likes it, so it’s staying right where it is.<\/p>\n

Some suggested that the cover copy and press copy for the book were weird or lousy. That might be the case. There is no \u201celevator pitch\u201d for Angie Bongiolatti<\/em>, and, generally, we’re not interested in elevator pitch type stuff. We’ve had plenty of success with our press copy, too, in places like the New York Times<\/em>, the Village Voice<\/em>,\u00a0the Chicago Tribune<\/em>, BuzzFeed<\/em>, Huffington Post<\/em>, Slate<\/em>, Paste<\/em>, Paper<\/em>, NPR<\/em>, the Onion AV Club<\/em>, ForeWord<\/em>, Booklist<\/em>, the LA Review of Books<\/em>, the Comics Journal<\/em>, the Economist<\/em>, Bookslut<\/em>, Pop Matters<\/em>, USA Today’s Pop Candy<\/em>, Print<\/em>, Bitch<\/em>, Le Monde<\/em>, the Stranger<\/em>, etc. Some even complained about Eleanor Davis<\/a>‘s quote on the back of Angie Bongiolatti<\/em>. We like the quote. We love Eleanor. Also, SemiPro Tip: if you dislike our covers and our copy, you should probably stop submitting your comics to us.<\/p>\n

Speaking of our press copy, people were confused about the street date for the book. To quote the press release: “IN STORES APRIL 15th, 2014” and, yes, this was in all caps. We suspect the confusion to be the result of the book having a different street date for Diamond Distribution<\/a>, which has a monopoly on the distribution of spandex comics to spandex comic shops. Diamond does distribute some of our titles, but it represents only 8% of our total sales. We have to audition for Diamond with every title (or most, since there are plenty we don’t bother submitting to them). Sometimes there are several months between our submission to Diamond and the time Diamond puts our books in their catalog, but we don’t align our book releases to Diamond dates because it’s not a huge part of where our actual sales come from.<\/p>\n

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\"Blog<\/a><\/p>\n

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We turn books around too quickly. It was about 80 days from final files to the release of the finished Angie Bongiolatti<\/em>, which is something we will never do again. So, point taken there.<\/p>\n

Another useful criticism was that there weren’t enough preview pages of our books readily available on our site or on Amazon<\/a>. We used to have book previews on the old site, but that never made it to this one. They’re up now, on both our site<\/a> and on Amazon.<\/p>\n

It was suggested that we rethink our roles as “distributors of content” because small press was in danger of becoming the “middle man” and that Mike would have been better off self-publishing Angie Bongiolatti<\/em>. Sad to say, we can’t rethink our roles as distributors of content because we’ve never thought of ourselves as distributors of content. We are book publishers. We will have to disappoint again when it comes to being small press middle men, because all presses, great and small, are positioned somewhere between the artist and the reader. There’s really nowhere else for us to be. We gave Mike the opportunity to make whatever comic he wanted, knowing that we would publish it and stand behind it. That book turned out to be Angie Bongiolatti<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A lot of what we’ve published has been books we specifically wanted to exist. Imagine what a blogger who finds Angie Bongiolatti<\/em> a tough sell as a literary graphic novel would make of Gaylord Phoenix<\/em><\/a> or Songs of the Abyss<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Angie Bongiolatti<\/em> outsold Gaylord Phoenix<\/em> through their first 90 days. Gaylord Phoenix<\/em> took a minute to find its audience and now it’s looking like it will need to be reprinted. Edie Fake<\/a> doesn’t have a Twitter or a Tumblr account. Diamond told us that Gaylord Phoenix<\/em> \u201cwasn\u2019t for them.\u201d How did Gaylord Phoenix find its audience? You, mostly. People love that book because, well, it’s a great book. Bless you guys for expressing that love to one another.<\/p>\n

And now the best bad news there may be: Theo Ellsworth<\/a>‘s the\u00a0Understanding Monster Book Two<\/em> will NOT be debuting at this weekend’s Small Press Expo<\/a>. There will be sketched and signed advance copies of the book, and plenty of them, though. We’ve moved the formal debut to the upcoming Comic Arts Brooklyn<\/a>, as Theo will be unable to attend SPX since he’s just become a father! Everyone, please welcome the newest Ellsworth, young Rowan. He’s awful cute. We wouldn’t want to leave him, either. And the Secret Acres baby boom continues as we celebrate our first co-publishing venture with Grindstone<\/a>, Harold<\/a>. Hi, Hal! Proud papa L Nichols will be at SPX on Saturday with a brand new issue of\u00a0Flocks<\/em><\/a> (but not his brand new son). Congrats to all you procreating creators!<\/p>\n

Don’t you worry, we’re not showing up to SPX empty-handed. Sean Ford<\/a> will be there with his\u00a0Shadow Hills<\/em><\/a>, recently re-vamped\u00a0Only Skin<\/em><\/a> and some new prints and pretty things. Eamon Espey<\/a>, local hero of Baltimore and author of the previously mentioned\u00a0Songs of the Abyss<\/em>, will be coming out to say hello. Last, and most definitely not least, grandmaster Corrine Mucha<\/a> will have her big hit,\u00a0Get Over It!<\/em><\/a> in addition to her must-have teeny, tiny little paintings. Alas, Mike Dawson is unable to join us this weekend.<\/p>\n

You can catch Mike next weekend at the Brooklyn Book Festival<\/a> in our home town. Get there early and you can see his panel,\u00a0Single Facing City: Coming of Age Comics, moderated by the\u00a0Paris Review<\/em><\/a>‘s Nicole Rudick and featuring Michael Cho<\/a> and MariNaomi<\/a>! In case you missed it, you can read about\u00a0Angie Bongiolatti<\/em>\u00a0in french here<\/a>, listen to a review in english here<\/a>, and read about it on the Comics Journal<\/em> here<\/a>. There’s more love for\u00a0Get Over It!<\/em> at the Onion AV Club<\/em><\/a>, Cosmopolitan UK<\/em><\/a>, the Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em><\/a> and HuffPo<\/a><\/em> – and Edie Fake and his\u00a0Memory Palaces<\/em><\/a> got the royal treatment from the\u00a0LA Review of Books<\/em><\/a>. How cool is that?<\/p>\n

We’ll be back with the lowdown on SPX and our guest comics mule for this show: Tucker Stone<\/a>. Hoo, boy. This is oughtta be good.<\/p>\n

Your Pals,<\/p>\n

Barry and Leon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIRST THINGS FIRST: Secret Acres had a grand old time at RIPE, the\u00a0Rhode Island Independent Publishing Expo, which really should be RIIPE, but who’s counting? Dave Nuss, smooth operator of Revival House Press was our celebrity comics mule and neighbor at the show. We would like him to be our neighbor all the time. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3314"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3330,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3314\/revisions\/3330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/secretacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}