IDW: The House That Vampires Built

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on November 21, 2006 Sign up now!

by Sunyoung Lee, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 11/21/2006

Looking to attract consumers in a crowded comics marketplace, San Diego publisher IDW has abandoned mainstream superhero comics to offer an idiosyncratic comics list featuring horror and suspense as well as comics based on popular TV shows, books, movies and video games.

How well this strategy has been working can be seen by the array of high-profile properties on IDW’s list. Current bestselling titles include Angel (based on the hit TV series), Spike (an Angel offshoot) and Transformers (of Robots-in-Disguise fame). Next month, IDW will release its adaptation of the film Scarface. In January 2007, the house will launch its first Star Trek: The Next Generation comic. And in February, look for yet another of IDW’s popular Transformers spinoff stories: this time, a four-issue prequel to the new Transformers movie, set to be released next year.

Not bad for an outfit that put out its first book just five years ago and never expected to be publishing comics. Originally founded as a creative service company, by former publisher Ted Adams and three co-founders, Ideas + Design Works’ first published comic was 30 Days of Night, a creator-owned vampire thriller written by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith that had been turned down everywhere, including Dark Horse and McFarlane, before coming to IDW’s attention. The book was a hit: currently in its sixth printing, it remains one of IDW’s perennial bestsellers and has spawned deals for three mass market paperback novels to be published by Pocket Books, as well as a movie directed by Hard Candy’s David Slade and starring Josh Hartnett that is currently being shot in Los Angeles.

This first success convinced IDW it could make a viable business out of publishing comics. It also started a trend of sorts. “When we first started with 30 Days, no one else was doing those kinds of comics,” said editor-in-chief Chris Ryall. “We sort of kick-started the horror resurgence,” Ryall said. Both Dark Horse and Image have subsequently started up their own horror lines.

IDW’s move to licensed properties was originally a way of moving beyond the horror genre. The rationale was simple: not only do licensed properties have built-in audiences, they’re also a short cut into the direct market. Because of the direct market’s no-return policy, getting comic book storeowners to order titles they’ve never heard of is notoriously difficult: “They’re better able to rationalize picking up a title if there’s a prepared name behind it,” says Ryall.

IDW first ventured into licensing in 2004 with the hit CBS series CSI. “CSI was the number one TV show at the time, but a bit of a reach for a comic book, since it didn’t have your typically successful comic book elements, like superheroes or monsters or anything colorful like that,” explained Ryall. “No one expected it to work. When it did, people said, ‘Wow, these guys have taken a property that worked as a TV show and turned it into a comic. Maybe they could do the same thing with a video game or a book.’ ” IDW soon branched out into films—first horror flicks such as Land of the Dead—as well as video games like Metal Gear Solid and books ranging from Clive Barker’s The Great & Secret Show to the Bible.

The company’s success at getting licensing agreements is, in large part, built on relationships it has established over the years with networks and studios, and on its reputation for efficiency and quality. “We try to work with people’s expectations and exceed them,” Ryall said. “Our past experience of making other titles work well and keeping the books coming out on a regular basis—which can be more of a rarity in this business than you’d think—can give us an edge over some other folks.”

Despite the widespread popularity of the licenses IDW takes on, marketing its comics is not as easy as one might think. “We’ve tried various angles, including trying to get mentions at the ends of shows such as CSI,” Ryall reported, “but that’s been just about impossible.” What IDW has done instead is to try various cross-promotional initiatives: for example, shrinking the trim size of its comics so they can be packaged with DVDs or giving comics away free as Circuit City or Target exclusives. Beyond that, the bulk of IDW’s marketing consists primarily of listings in Diamond Distribution’s Previews catalogue. All IDW’s comics, both serials and trade, are distributed by Diamond.

For the most part IDW depends heavily on word-of-mouth marketing, as well as Internet buzz generated by its own and other comic book Web sites. Ryall, who before heading up IDW was Web master for filmmaker Kevin Smith’s site, has built IDW’s Web site to encourage interaction between IDW’s readers and its artists. In addition to sneak peeks at pencilled pages, the site provides a forum where fans can communicate with Ryall and IDW’s artists and staff. The site also offers behind-the-scenes peeks at trade paperbacks providing introductions and other “extras” similar to those you might find on a DVD.

IDW has also begun to ramp up its bid to get into the major chains with projects that often seem tailor-made for bookstores. When IDW first started, about 2%-5% of its sales came from bookstores. Bookstore sales now represent 16% of revenue, and that is growing. These figures have encouraged IDW to experiment with publishing more bookstore-friendly projects, such as the recently released The Complete Collection of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Volume 1. Published in a deluxe hardcover edition in time for the strip’s 75th birthday, the book has already done quite well—the first print run just about sold out in less than a month. IDW plans to eventually publish all of Gould’s Dick Tracy work, a project that could extend over eight or 10 years and would include 25 volumes. “I know it’s got a good presence in bookstores,” said Ryall. “If this first book performs well, that’ll mean even bigger things for the subsequent volumes.”

All this might seem like a lot of work for a small publisher with a staff of only eight to 10 people and ambitious plans to publish 20-25 titles a month (15-20 serials and three to five trade paperbacks). But Ryall is convinced that paying closer attention to the trade book market is worth the effort. “Most of our books tend to get sold to the direct market instead of bookstores,” he explained, “But more and more, that number is evening out.”

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