Comics and Manga

Convention Spotlight: Anime USA

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Part of our continuing series on how to make conventions more supportive of professional fans and geeky ambitions.  The summary of the continuing series is here.

Anime USA is a large convention in Arlington Virginia, taking place in November.  I had the pleasure of talking to the head of programming who himself has an interest in profans – he and his wife are doing their own work for release in 2010.

You may have heard of Anime USA as it's built a good reputation for interesting events and ones for career-oriented fans.

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Disney, Marvel, Tokyopop, Kodansha, ADV – and more

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ADV , anime, comics, Disney, Kodansha, manga, Marvel, Tokyopop

So the Geekonomy has gone bugnuts crazy the last week.  Let's count the ways it changed:

  • Disney bought Marvel, giving them thousands of properties, control
    of more pop culture icons, and an endless parade of bad cartoons of
    Wolverine/Mickey Mouse fusions.
  • Kodansha is ending its licensing deal with Tokyopop.
  • ADV seems to be transferring it's properties to a holding company, making it sound like they're basically dead.

And I was worried about the Everything Wars.

First of all, let me state I DO NOT see this as part of the
Everything Wars – those are battles over technology and access.  THis
is what I've called the Secondary area of the Everything Wars – content.

And
there's a lot to chew over.  So in this analysis, let me do the chewing
– and figure out what it means for you in your career.

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Facebook and distribution

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Idle speculation time here.

With Facebook pretty much dominating social media, and having obvious gaming aspirations, I began to wonder what else Facebook can deliver.  Once I began theorizing, I really began to wonder more.

Facebook could actually be useful as a way to distribute artistic (comic and manga) and written fiction.  Easy for alerts, easy to notify people it's ready, incredibly easy to get more fans to buy into it.  Nice, public distribution that makes people very aware of what their friends are doing and reading.

Facebook could be an excellent distribution platform – read the manga there, discuss it with your friends, etc.  There's already a lot of this in place now – and the widget creation could let OTHER companies do it while Facebook enjoys the piggybacking and additional attention (and possibly cash).

As its my firm belief community building is a big part of success for media efforts, especially new ones, Facebook is a logical place to try or do some of it.  You want to build and maintain an audience – that's one of the ways to do it very fast (with some limits).  A retained, happy, engaged audience buys more of your stuff when it comes down to it, and is more likely to want to see you at a con or invite you to one.

Do I think this is where media distribution is going?  No.  Part part of it doubtlessly will try, far more than is being done now.  I await seeing the results.

– Steven Savage