Graphic Novel Insider #2

Welcome back, or welcome for the first time! The goal of this newsletter, as always, is to demystify the publishing industry for you, while letting me talk about graphic novels!

Today’s topic: What kinds of graphic novels are publishers looking for right now?

Because, yes, you could have an amazing graphic novel project—expressive, compelling art; fast-paced storytelling; delightful characters—and you may have trouble placing it with a publisher. This is because (pay close attention to this part), publishers exist to make money. So they want to acquire projects that they believe will sell to consumers.

How do they know what will sell to consumers? The short answer is that they don’t. Publishers regularly bet big on projects that fizzle in the marketplace, and turn down projects that go on to become bestsellers. They are humans just like the rest of us! But they do have tools they use to make educated guesses.

One of the biggest tools they have is access to a sales database called Bookscan. Publishing folks LOVE Bookscan, because they can look up any book, from any publisher, and see how it’s selling (and you can look at the data in all sorts of different ways—how did this book sell in its first year of publication; how did it sell in its tenth year; how many copies did it sell last week; etc.).

And another tool that they use in conjunction with Bookscan is comp titles. “Comp title” can mean different things: when you are adding comp titles to your graphic novel pitch, they should be the books that yours will sit next to on the shelf. When an editor is adding comp titles to an acquisitions memo, they are trying to tell a sales story. They are saying, “This graphic novel about summer camp that I want to acquire will sell similarly to this other graphic novel about summer camp that was published two years ago.”

Most editors have gotten really good at telling this story. If your pitch has gotten this far—an editor taking it to an acquisitions meeting—that editor believes in your project. So they want to get their team to believe in it as well. And they do this by telling a story with the comp titles they choose. But does that editor know whether your book will sell well? Of course not, but they want to give it a chance. So the comp titles they pick will be ones that also sold well.

Welcome to Graphic Novel Insider

For the past fifteen or so years, I’ve worked as a graphic novel and comics editor. This trajectory has—luckily—coincided with the rise of graphic novels in bookstores and the explosion of interest from “traditional” book publishers in publishing graphic novels. For many of those years, graphic novels were the fastest growing segment of publishing, and in 2021 they became a billion-dollar market (that’s just book-length graphic novels; comic books hit about half a billion that year).

So, yeah, they are a pretty big deal. But what is a “graphic novel” exactly? How are they made? What kinds of comics are book publishers looking for? What about comics publishers (like DC and Marvel)? And can you make any money as a graphic novel creator?

I started this newsletter to cover these and other topics, and also because the mechanics of the publishing industry, graphic novels, and illustrated books in general are one of my absolute favorite topics of conversation. I’ll start out answering questions I’m commonly asked, but if there are topics you want to see covered, please ask!