DC's Under the Radar Marketing

In general I simply don't post when I don't have much to say, which leads to unfortunate instances like the month of July when I averaged about 2 posts a week. I've pretty much had my say about full issue previews as a promotional tool. Still I thought it would be useful to at least point out DC's recent marketing and maybe offer a thought or two along the way.

DC has made several interesting marketing moves recently, making the first issues of five Vertigo series available for free on their website last month and following that up with a free preview of 52. The Vertigo previews are of more help to MacGuffin since we make more in a month off of sales of trade collections of each of those series than a month's worth of 52. Of course, we've been using the First Taste and First Offenses Vertigo samplers to get readers hooked on Vertigo series for quite awhile. Another avenue of exposure is always a positive, though, even if the scans aren't exactly of the best quality.

And then there's word that DC is teaming up with (shockingly enough) Warner Books to cross promote Brad Meltzer's careers as novelist and comic writer beginning with printing the first chapter of The Book of Fate in the first issue of Justice League of America. Apparently Meltzer's future prose work will feature excerpts from his work in comics but I get the feeling that the goal is to expose fans of JLA to his prose novels rather than vice versa.

As I said, though, more exposure is always good.