Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on May 6, 2015 10:56:19 GMT -6
In a two-part interview, Terry Nantier and Jim Salicrup of Papercutz discuss some new initiatives, including the relaunch of Nickelodeon Magazine; their Disney titles, including the Italian series Mickey X and The Zodiac Legacy, which is co-authored by Stan Lee; their planned collections of Dennis the Menace comics; and the return of the Tekno Comix stories conceived in the 1990 by Neil Gaiman.
icv2.com/articles/news/view/31513/icv2-interview-papercutz-terry-nantier-jim-salicrup-part-1
ICV2 INTERVIEW: PAPERCUTZ' TERRY NANTIER AND JIM SALICRUP, PART 1
Selling Kids Graphic Novels
Posted by ICv2 on May 6, 2015 @ 2:28 am CT
Terry Nantier
We recently caught up with Papercutz Publisher Terry Nantier and Editor-in-Chief Jim Salicrup to talk about the changes they’ve seen in the market for kids graphic novels since they founded the company 10 years ago and their plans for the future. In Part 1, we talk about the market for kids titles, the changes at Papercutz, and which titles are working the best. In Part 2, we talked about the publisher’s plans for Fall, including a graphic novel adaptation of Stan Lee’s Zodiac Legacy, a new Disney Graphic Novels series, classic Dennis the Menace collections, the launch of Nickelodeon Magazine and comics, and more (with previously unreleased images).
This is the 10th anniversary of Papercutz?
Terry Nantier: That’s correct. We launched early 2005 with Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, which did great.
What’s changed in the kids’ graphic novel market over the past 10 years?
Nantier: It’s certainly grown very positively. When we first started we really were pioneers (but not complete pioneers). We were taking our cue from the success of manga to kids and taking certain elements from that, but the whole idea of Papercutz was to expand how manga was doing well with kids to a much wider audience as opposed to a sort of fringe, interested-in-Japanese-culture sort of thing, really trying to take something that would have mass appeal to the tween audience. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were the best way to make that statement. Everybody’s grown up on that; everybody knows it. It’s absolutely American apple pie. We definitely got a lot of publicity for bringing it into comics for the first time and we were using the manga style.
We’ve since evolved quite a bit; we’re not that dependent on having to be in a manga style. Our books are bit bigger. They used to be in the manga market size, 5 by 7 1/2, now we’re 6 by 9 and we’re even doing some bigger than that. There’s widespread acceptance for comics being a terrific way to get kids to read. It’s been wonderful to observe, and it’s been great that it continues to grow.
Jim Salicrup: When I was at your seminar before New York Comic Con, was that the first time that you broke out kids comics as a big part of the market share?
Yes.
Salicrup: It was 10%?
Of trade. It’s a bigger percentage in libraries, a bigger percentage overall of the business, but of trade, 10% is kids.
Salicrup: That was exciting. It seemed like, especially for the comics market, that there were quite a few comic book retailers that thought comics for kids were very important, but I think that they were in the minority. I think it’s grown considerably. With the success of our titles and those from other publishers as well, it’s continuing to grow and that’s very encouraging for us.
You mentioned that you’ve changed your format since you started. What were the lessons that you learned about format that caused you to go a little bigger in trim size than you started?
Nantier: It’s a matter of value and what consumers perceive as a good value. We felt that we’re doing that manga and putting a lot of pages into the graphic novel, but we’re doing full color too.
Obviously that’s pretty expensive so it felt like we were driving ourselves crazy doing hundreds of pages in full color like that and still at that smaller size. People weren’t perceiving the value of the book like they would in a larger format. It was an exchange that way and besides it’s better to have more space. Comics do better in a bigger format anyway; they can express themselves better.
Salicrup: I think consumers may have thought they could have gotten two comic books instead of one Papercutz trade paperback, whereas in reality they would have gotten more pages for less money from the Papercutz book. But the idea of buying two things instead of one thing is what we were trying to resolve by going with a larger size, with actually fewer comics pages compared to our original format. I think that just fits better in the comic book market.
Your advertising says that Papercutz is the #1 kids graphic novel publisher. What’s that based on?
Nantier: We’ve achieved some pretty high numbers there with Geronimo Stilton, with over a million sold, with Ninjago, Smurfs, and a number of other properties. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys have all sold over a half million, and we are the only ones doing only graphic novels for kids. We’re not going all across the board with all ages, we are really specialized in kids comics.
You mentioned earlier that you were targeting a tween audience. Is that the sweet spot for your titles?
Nantier: It’s really 8 to 12. That’s what we’ve been targeting all along for Papercutz itself. We’ve launched an imprint, Super Genius, which gives us a chance to go older with some things which we’ll be adding to. We just added Neil Gaiman, but Papercutz itself has been primarily 8 to 12. And as Jim likes to say, it’s really all ages in a true sense.
Salicrup: We try. Some of our books such as Ariol and Ernest & Rebecca I think are all ages in the sense of a Pixar movie appealing to both young and old. Obviously some of our other titles skew to some that are younger than others, some are little bit older, but pretty much 8 to 12 seems to be our audience.
How have things changed in the libraries in the past 10 years?
Nantier: They’ve certainly been champions of graphic novels for kids, so that’s been really wonderful. They were already going in that direction when we started, but our efforts at making comics for kids were very well received from the start. Still we get that reaction to this day, of seeing Nancy Drew and ‘Oh wow, it’s in comics.’ They’re still discovering that to this day, and they’re really excited about that. They think that this is a wonderful way to get kids excited about reading. That has always been an important aspect of our marketing and our sales, more so in some series than in others.
Salicrup: I would say what Terry’s been saying, is that the support from libraries has been good since the beginning, probably more so than even from the comic book marketplace, which has been the one that’s probably changed the most. That’s steadily improved and continued to increase, whereas libraries seemed to love us from the start, partly because we’re very conscious of their needs and we try to present books that are incredibly accessible.
Almost all our titles, I would say 99%, are self-contained stories done in a very super-clear, very easy to read style. Some of the other comics with more experimental-type layouts can be difficult for people who don’t have a lot of experience reading comics to simply read them.
I remember they used to talk about the Ernie Bushmiller Nancy comic strips as being impossible; it takes more time to not read it than to actually read it, it’s so clear. I think with material like The Smurfs, the storytelling is so perfectly clear and inventive and maybe closer to comic strips where the balloons and captions are all at the top of the panels. It’s very clear which characters are speaking. The artwork is done in a way that it’s very accessible to new readers. Librarians and teachers like to say our comics and our books are very helpful for the so-called "reluctant readers." I think that it’s just that ease at being able to read them.
What is the percentage of kid graphic novel business that Papercutz does in libraries?
Nantier: Overall for us we’re looking at 15 to 20% and some books it’s 20 to 25%. Some books that get into mass market, obviously libraries become a smaller percentage. It’s in that range.
What are your bestselling titles or groups of titles?
Nantier: Right now we’re in transition and we’re looking forward very much to the addition of Nickelodeon. We’re very busy putting together the magazine which will launch in June, and we’re already looking at a circulation of over 100,000 into newsstands; then the graphic novels start this fall. As I mentioned, we have perennial bestsellers like Geronimo Stilton that continues to sell 100,000 or more copies a year. We surpassed a million a year ago on that. The Smurfs continue to sell frontlist and backlist, we’re looking forward to the movie coming out. We continue to sell Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, but we have other series that continue to be strong.
Obviously up until recently what was strong for us was Ninjago. We sold over 2 million of those; that did great. That’s kind of cycling out at this point.
Now we’re just launching the whole new Neil Gaiman series of books that he had conceived for Tekno Comix back in the 90s and hasn’t been seen in ages. We had a great launch on that which is adding quite a bit to the Super Genius line, specifically.
Salicrup: One of the surprise hits we have now is the first title that Terry edited for Papercutz when we managed to steal him away from NBM. He found this property, this artist, Deb Lucke, and she created The Lunch Witch for us. It’s gotten rave reviews everywhere.
Nantier: A number of starred reviews.
Salicrup: And the sales have been, if I’m not mistaken, rivaling the Ninjago sales, which is making us incredibly happy.
Nantier: Our first print run is over 10,000, which for an author who is not that well known to begin with is a terrific launch. It’s flying off Barnes and Noble’s shelves, so we’re doing great there. It’s the kind of book that once you see it you just fall for it instantly. It’s a very funny concept. People should check out the brand new lunchwitch.com site that we launched to give you a great feeling for what the book is like.
What suggestions do you have for retailers looking to merchandise a kids graphic novel section in their stores?
Nantier: Well I’ve certainly seen, going to ComicsPRO every year, some retailers really taking the lead and creating a fun little section for kids, even with children’s furniture around in a corner where they can sit down and enjoy some reading for a little bit. Obviously having that section and having it well and clearly identified, even with that kind of little nook, is a great way to go. But even thinking more about having activities for kids that can attract them and attract the whole family in is even better. So those are very good directions to go in encouraging that more family audience to come in. These stores are becoming less dependent on the Wednesday trade. They get a real bump on weekends with families coming in. I think that’s a shrewd way to operate for any comics store.
Salicrup: Far be it for me to tell a comics retailer how to run his business, but then there’s lots of examples across the country of ones that have really championed kids comics. They certainly know what they’re doing. I would suggest retailers who want to improve their kids’ comics sales look at what those guys are doing.
One of the most obvious things to me is that a lot of Papercutz titles appeal to girls. If they carry the titles but they’re tucked in the back somewhere, is there anything just by looking at the outside of the store that’s inviting to kids, especially girls, to come in knowing that there’s something in there for them? I think the stores that do the best with kids have addressed that issue and are seeing positive results for their efforts.
icv2.com/articles/news/view/31512/icv2-interview-papercutz-terry-nantier-jim-salicrup-part-2
ICV2 INTERVIEW: PAPERCUTZ' TERRY NANTIER AND JIM SALICRUP, PART 2
Selling Kids Graphic Novels
Posted by ICv2 on May 6, 2015 @ 2:08 am CT
We recently caught up with Papercutz Publisher Terry Nantier and Editor-in-Chief Jim Salicrup to talk about the changes they’ve seen in the market for kids graphic novels since they founded the company 10 years ago and their plans for the future. In Part 1, we talk about the market for kids titles, the changes at Papercutz, and which titles are working the best. In Part 2, we talked about the publisher’s plans for Fall, including a graphic novel adaptation of Stan Lee’s The Zodiac Legacy, a new Disney Graphic Novels series, classic Dennis the Menace collections, the launch of Nickelodeon Magazine and comics, and more (with previously unreleased images).
The Zodiac Legacy sounds interesting.
Salicrup: Disney owns that property so we’re expanding what we’re doing with Disney. We’ve been doing Disney Fairies for four or five years. We’ve been sort of flying under the radar. Disney Fairies is one of the series that made the transition from the small size to the large size and continues to keep going. That, we’re very happy with.
Stan Lee created a property called The Zodiac Legacy that has been published by Disney Press as a YA series that’s profusely illustrated. That series is written by Stuart Moore and illustrated by Andie Tong. We got Stuart Moore to work on the graphic novel series of the same property so there’s all that transmedia thing going on where if someone picks up the YA book and then reads the graphic novel it’s not rehashing the same storyline it’s actually moving forward and exploring other aspects of the characters, moving the plot ahead as well. It’s very exciting for us to be involved with that. I couldn’t resist after working for 20 years at Marvel to publish at least one series that’s been created by Stan Lee.
Is that going to be published as a comic or a graphic novel?
Nantier: Graphic novel. Besides that, the expansion with Disney involves also doing some other Disney classic characters.
What other Disney titles are you planning?
Salicrup: We’re doing another graphic novel series with Disney, this one under the umbrella title of Disney Graphic Novels and each volume will be different content. The debut volume is featuring Planes, the second one is Mickey X, which is a series that had been published in Italy for quite a few years that’s putting Mickey Mouse in the sort of paranormal adventures that has developed quite a cult following. I think we’ll be bringing it to America so people can actually read it. Then there’s another series featuring Minnie and Daisy together which will be more girl-oriented. [There’s] another classics adaptation parody series featuring all of the Disney characters. It’s a lot of great material that’s been published by Disney mostly overseas that we’re lucky enough to be able to bring over here.
Can you tell us about Dennis the Menace?
Salicrup: Speaking of cult favorites, it’s a well-known character that’s obviously been around forever. There’s a lot of serious, well respected comic book artists, from the Hernandez Brothers to Fred Hembeck, that are big fans of the old Dennis the Menace comic books separate from the Hank Ketcham comic strip. And even then it sort of divides into two groups where there’s the fans of the Fred Toole and Al Wiseman stories, and there’s also a very strong following for Owen Fitzgerald. We’re going to be publishing that stuff in hardcover 192-page books, with lots of background material, biographical stuff, etc., but giving it the classic kids’ comic treatment that the work of Carl Barks and others have gotten over the years. There’s just a handful of really classic, great kids comics that haven’t been collected yet and the Dennis the Menace stuff is a big piece of that.
Were those comics from Fawcett?
Salicrup: Yes, Fawcett and CBS, and a couple of other companies I hadn’t heard of before.
What do you have to work with in terms of original art?
Salicrup: We’re really starting it now. We may have to scan stuff or we may be able to get stuff from King Features. It remains to be seen. I was just talking with Terry about that today, but I think it’s going to come out beautifully.
King Features?
Salicrup: They own the whole thing [including the comics].
Is the Nickelodeon material launching as comics or graphic novels?
Nantier: We’re doing a monthly magazine first. That’s primarily going into newsstands but also subscriptions as kids magazines marketed that way, then we’re collecting what’s appearing in the magazine in graphic novels.
When you say newsstand, do you mean Barnes & Noble or Kroger?
Nantier: Barnes and Noble magazine stands, but it’ll also be in Walmart and supermarkets. We’re going to have prominent positioning for the launch of this. I think people will be seeing us pretty much everywhere because we’re getting a lot of excitement out there and a lot of positioning in top slots for the launch of this magazine in June.
Salicrup: For many years Nickelodeon published Nickelodeon Magazine, which was sort of a mix of articles, features and a big chunk, maybe 50% comics. Our magazine is closer to over 80% comics. There will still be some activities and short articles and a lot of pages like that, but the majority will be comics based on current shows and new shows going forward based on our deal with Nickelodeon. The early issues will prominently feature Sanjay and Craig as well as the Breadwinners but starting with issue three or four, Harvey Beaks joins the line-up and as the magazine keeps going, more and more characters will be added with each issue. And each of those individual series, as Terry said, will then be collected into their own graphic novel series.
It’s been a few years since Nickelodeon did their magazine. Do you know why they stopped and then decided to have you do it?
Nantier: I think they had a large staff doing this and it was a multi-subject magazine about celebrities, etc. [It was] expensive for them and they weren’t in the magazine business. By 2009 they decided to get out of that. Magazines are a difficult business, there’s no doubt about it. You have to play this very carefully. We’re not looking to create an ad base here, we’re not selling advertising. It’s going to be all content and we’re going to be on a cover price and subscription revenue model, so it’s a different take on this. And for them, they had to concentrate more on what their strength is which is their TV channels, animation and live action shows.
Salicrup: Back when I was at Marvel, with Star Wars I got to learn that distribution is everything. With the first six issues of Star Wars we republished in every possible format: it was treasury editions, mass market paper backs, the actual comic books, bagged comic books, anything that we could have thought of, and sure there were probably some collectors that wanted to get every version, but I think it’s more a way for us to reach audiences we may not be reaching in other places. As Terry said, if it’s in Barnes & Noble, there’s still millions of kids who watch Nickelodeon and may not go to a comic book store.
Every American family is in a super market every week.
Nantier: Exactly, and it’s probably a lot easier as a comics property to stand out in a supermarket as opposed to even book stores and comic book stores. At this point it’s gotten so crowded. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope we know what we’re doing.
Anything else that you think our readers should know?
Nantier: We haven’t mentioned this much, except for Lunch Witch, which is a great launch of this, but we are getting into originals here and author-based concepts and series, not just the licensed materials. Lunch Witch is a great first example, but we’ve got a whole line-up of great stuff coming up such as Scarlett, by John Buller and Susan Schade .
We also have The Red Shoes, which is an adaptation of fairy tales by Metaphrog, a name that may ring a bell with old fans from their Louis series. And we have further things that we’ll be announcing. We’ve got a baseball-themed book for kids next year and many of these authors are bestselling authors in their own right. They’ve been very successful picture book authors with various series in the past, so we’re quite excited about that direction we’re taking as well.
Maybe kind of turn the whole tables around so that we have something to license as opposed to buying the licenses.
Salicrup: Things like our deal with Nickelodeon and now trying to do more original creations that we’re involved with is maybe the answer to your first question of how have we changed 10 years later. In the very beginning we saw virtually no competition when we were going after kids’ licenses; now it’s become a very competitive field, so this just seems like the right move for us to be doing at this point.
icv2.com/articles/news/view/31513/icv2-interview-papercutz-terry-nantier-jim-salicrup-part-1
ICV2 INTERVIEW: PAPERCUTZ' TERRY NANTIER AND JIM SALICRUP, PART 1
Selling Kids Graphic Novels
Posted by ICv2 on May 6, 2015 @ 2:28 am CT
Terry Nantier
We recently caught up with Papercutz Publisher Terry Nantier and Editor-in-Chief Jim Salicrup to talk about the changes they’ve seen in the market for kids graphic novels since they founded the company 10 years ago and their plans for the future. In Part 1, we talk about the market for kids titles, the changes at Papercutz, and which titles are working the best. In Part 2, we talked about the publisher’s plans for Fall, including a graphic novel adaptation of Stan Lee’s Zodiac Legacy, a new Disney Graphic Novels series, classic Dennis the Menace collections, the launch of Nickelodeon Magazine and comics, and more (with previously unreleased images).
This is the 10th anniversary of Papercutz?
Terry Nantier: That’s correct. We launched early 2005 with Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, which did great.
What’s changed in the kids’ graphic novel market over the past 10 years?
Nantier: It’s certainly grown very positively. When we first started we really were pioneers (but not complete pioneers). We were taking our cue from the success of manga to kids and taking certain elements from that, but the whole idea of Papercutz was to expand how manga was doing well with kids to a much wider audience as opposed to a sort of fringe, interested-in-Japanese-culture sort of thing, really trying to take something that would have mass appeal to the tween audience. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were the best way to make that statement. Everybody’s grown up on that; everybody knows it. It’s absolutely American apple pie. We definitely got a lot of publicity for bringing it into comics for the first time and we were using the manga style.
We’ve since evolved quite a bit; we’re not that dependent on having to be in a manga style. Our books are bit bigger. They used to be in the manga market size, 5 by 7 1/2, now we’re 6 by 9 and we’re even doing some bigger than that. There’s widespread acceptance for comics being a terrific way to get kids to read. It’s been wonderful to observe, and it’s been great that it continues to grow.
Jim Salicrup: When I was at your seminar before New York Comic Con, was that the first time that you broke out kids comics as a big part of the market share?
Yes.
Salicrup: It was 10%?
Of trade. It’s a bigger percentage in libraries, a bigger percentage overall of the business, but of trade, 10% is kids.
Salicrup: That was exciting. It seemed like, especially for the comics market, that there were quite a few comic book retailers that thought comics for kids were very important, but I think that they were in the minority. I think it’s grown considerably. With the success of our titles and those from other publishers as well, it’s continuing to grow and that’s very encouraging for us.
You mentioned that you’ve changed your format since you started. What were the lessons that you learned about format that caused you to go a little bigger in trim size than you started?
Nantier: It’s a matter of value and what consumers perceive as a good value. We felt that we’re doing that manga and putting a lot of pages into the graphic novel, but we’re doing full color too.
Obviously that’s pretty expensive so it felt like we were driving ourselves crazy doing hundreds of pages in full color like that and still at that smaller size. People weren’t perceiving the value of the book like they would in a larger format. It was an exchange that way and besides it’s better to have more space. Comics do better in a bigger format anyway; they can express themselves better.
Salicrup: I think consumers may have thought they could have gotten two comic books instead of one Papercutz trade paperback, whereas in reality they would have gotten more pages for less money from the Papercutz book. But the idea of buying two things instead of one thing is what we were trying to resolve by going with a larger size, with actually fewer comics pages compared to our original format. I think that just fits better in the comic book market.
Your advertising says that Papercutz is the #1 kids graphic novel publisher. What’s that based on?
Nantier: We’ve achieved some pretty high numbers there with Geronimo Stilton, with over a million sold, with Ninjago, Smurfs, and a number of other properties. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys have all sold over a half million, and we are the only ones doing only graphic novels for kids. We’re not going all across the board with all ages, we are really specialized in kids comics.
You mentioned earlier that you were targeting a tween audience. Is that the sweet spot for your titles?
Nantier: It’s really 8 to 12. That’s what we’ve been targeting all along for Papercutz itself. We’ve launched an imprint, Super Genius, which gives us a chance to go older with some things which we’ll be adding to. We just added Neil Gaiman, but Papercutz itself has been primarily 8 to 12. And as Jim likes to say, it’s really all ages in a true sense.
Salicrup: We try. Some of our books such as Ariol and Ernest & Rebecca I think are all ages in the sense of a Pixar movie appealing to both young and old. Obviously some of our other titles skew to some that are younger than others, some are little bit older, but pretty much 8 to 12 seems to be our audience.
How have things changed in the libraries in the past 10 years?
Nantier: They’ve certainly been champions of graphic novels for kids, so that’s been really wonderful. They were already going in that direction when we started, but our efforts at making comics for kids were very well received from the start. Still we get that reaction to this day, of seeing Nancy Drew and ‘Oh wow, it’s in comics.’ They’re still discovering that to this day, and they’re really excited about that. They think that this is a wonderful way to get kids excited about reading. That has always been an important aspect of our marketing and our sales, more so in some series than in others.
Salicrup: I would say what Terry’s been saying, is that the support from libraries has been good since the beginning, probably more so than even from the comic book marketplace, which has been the one that’s probably changed the most. That’s steadily improved and continued to increase, whereas libraries seemed to love us from the start, partly because we’re very conscious of their needs and we try to present books that are incredibly accessible.
Almost all our titles, I would say 99%, are self-contained stories done in a very super-clear, very easy to read style. Some of the other comics with more experimental-type layouts can be difficult for people who don’t have a lot of experience reading comics to simply read them.
I remember they used to talk about the Ernie Bushmiller Nancy comic strips as being impossible; it takes more time to not read it than to actually read it, it’s so clear. I think with material like The Smurfs, the storytelling is so perfectly clear and inventive and maybe closer to comic strips where the balloons and captions are all at the top of the panels. It’s very clear which characters are speaking. The artwork is done in a way that it’s very accessible to new readers. Librarians and teachers like to say our comics and our books are very helpful for the so-called "reluctant readers." I think that it’s just that ease at being able to read them.
What is the percentage of kid graphic novel business that Papercutz does in libraries?
Nantier: Overall for us we’re looking at 15 to 20% and some books it’s 20 to 25%. Some books that get into mass market, obviously libraries become a smaller percentage. It’s in that range.
What are your bestselling titles or groups of titles?
Nantier: Right now we’re in transition and we’re looking forward very much to the addition of Nickelodeon. We’re very busy putting together the magazine which will launch in June, and we’re already looking at a circulation of over 100,000 into newsstands; then the graphic novels start this fall. As I mentioned, we have perennial bestsellers like Geronimo Stilton that continues to sell 100,000 or more copies a year. We surpassed a million a year ago on that. The Smurfs continue to sell frontlist and backlist, we’re looking forward to the movie coming out. We continue to sell Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, but we have other series that continue to be strong.
Obviously up until recently what was strong for us was Ninjago. We sold over 2 million of those; that did great. That’s kind of cycling out at this point.
Now we’re just launching the whole new Neil Gaiman series of books that he had conceived for Tekno Comix back in the 90s and hasn’t been seen in ages. We had a great launch on that which is adding quite a bit to the Super Genius line, specifically.
Salicrup: One of the surprise hits we have now is the first title that Terry edited for Papercutz when we managed to steal him away from NBM. He found this property, this artist, Deb Lucke, and she created The Lunch Witch for us. It’s gotten rave reviews everywhere.
Nantier: A number of starred reviews.
Salicrup: And the sales have been, if I’m not mistaken, rivaling the Ninjago sales, which is making us incredibly happy.
Nantier: Our first print run is over 10,000, which for an author who is not that well known to begin with is a terrific launch. It’s flying off Barnes and Noble’s shelves, so we’re doing great there. It’s the kind of book that once you see it you just fall for it instantly. It’s a very funny concept. People should check out the brand new lunchwitch.com site that we launched to give you a great feeling for what the book is like.
What suggestions do you have for retailers looking to merchandise a kids graphic novel section in their stores?
Nantier: Well I’ve certainly seen, going to ComicsPRO every year, some retailers really taking the lead and creating a fun little section for kids, even with children’s furniture around in a corner where they can sit down and enjoy some reading for a little bit. Obviously having that section and having it well and clearly identified, even with that kind of little nook, is a great way to go. But even thinking more about having activities for kids that can attract them and attract the whole family in is even better. So those are very good directions to go in encouraging that more family audience to come in. These stores are becoming less dependent on the Wednesday trade. They get a real bump on weekends with families coming in. I think that’s a shrewd way to operate for any comics store.
Salicrup: Far be it for me to tell a comics retailer how to run his business, but then there’s lots of examples across the country of ones that have really championed kids comics. They certainly know what they’re doing. I would suggest retailers who want to improve their kids’ comics sales look at what those guys are doing.
One of the most obvious things to me is that a lot of Papercutz titles appeal to girls. If they carry the titles but they’re tucked in the back somewhere, is there anything just by looking at the outside of the store that’s inviting to kids, especially girls, to come in knowing that there’s something in there for them? I think the stores that do the best with kids have addressed that issue and are seeing positive results for their efforts.
icv2.com/articles/news/view/31512/icv2-interview-papercutz-terry-nantier-jim-salicrup-part-2
ICV2 INTERVIEW: PAPERCUTZ' TERRY NANTIER AND JIM SALICRUP, PART 2
Selling Kids Graphic Novels
Posted by ICv2 on May 6, 2015 @ 2:08 am CT
We recently caught up with Papercutz Publisher Terry Nantier and Editor-in-Chief Jim Salicrup to talk about the changes they’ve seen in the market for kids graphic novels since they founded the company 10 years ago and their plans for the future. In Part 1, we talk about the market for kids titles, the changes at Papercutz, and which titles are working the best. In Part 2, we talked about the publisher’s plans for Fall, including a graphic novel adaptation of Stan Lee’s The Zodiac Legacy, a new Disney Graphic Novels series, classic Dennis the Menace collections, the launch of Nickelodeon Magazine and comics, and more (with previously unreleased images).
The Zodiac Legacy sounds interesting.
Salicrup: Disney owns that property so we’re expanding what we’re doing with Disney. We’ve been doing Disney Fairies for four or five years. We’ve been sort of flying under the radar. Disney Fairies is one of the series that made the transition from the small size to the large size and continues to keep going. That, we’re very happy with.
Stan Lee created a property called The Zodiac Legacy that has been published by Disney Press as a YA series that’s profusely illustrated. That series is written by Stuart Moore and illustrated by Andie Tong. We got Stuart Moore to work on the graphic novel series of the same property so there’s all that transmedia thing going on where if someone picks up the YA book and then reads the graphic novel it’s not rehashing the same storyline it’s actually moving forward and exploring other aspects of the characters, moving the plot ahead as well. It’s very exciting for us to be involved with that. I couldn’t resist after working for 20 years at Marvel to publish at least one series that’s been created by Stan Lee.
Is that going to be published as a comic or a graphic novel?
Nantier: Graphic novel. Besides that, the expansion with Disney involves also doing some other Disney classic characters.
What other Disney titles are you planning?
Salicrup: We’re doing another graphic novel series with Disney, this one under the umbrella title of Disney Graphic Novels and each volume will be different content. The debut volume is featuring Planes, the second one is Mickey X, which is a series that had been published in Italy for quite a few years that’s putting Mickey Mouse in the sort of paranormal adventures that has developed quite a cult following. I think we’ll be bringing it to America so people can actually read it. Then there’s another series featuring Minnie and Daisy together which will be more girl-oriented. [There’s] another classics adaptation parody series featuring all of the Disney characters. It’s a lot of great material that’s been published by Disney mostly overseas that we’re lucky enough to be able to bring over here.
Can you tell us about Dennis the Menace?
Salicrup: Speaking of cult favorites, it’s a well-known character that’s obviously been around forever. There’s a lot of serious, well respected comic book artists, from the Hernandez Brothers to Fred Hembeck, that are big fans of the old Dennis the Menace comic books separate from the Hank Ketcham comic strip. And even then it sort of divides into two groups where there’s the fans of the Fred Toole and Al Wiseman stories, and there’s also a very strong following for Owen Fitzgerald. We’re going to be publishing that stuff in hardcover 192-page books, with lots of background material, biographical stuff, etc., but giving it the classic kids’ comic treatment that the work of Carl Barks and others have gotten over the years. There’s just a handful of really classic, great kids comics that haven’t been collected yet and the Dennis the Menace stuff is a big piece of that.
Were those comics from Fawcett?
Salicrup: Yes, Fawcett and CBS, and a couple of other companies I hadn’t heard of before.
What do you have to work with in terms of original art?
Salicrup: We’re really starting it now. We may have to scan stuff or we may be able to get stuff from King Features. It remains to be seen. I was just talking with Terry about that today, but I think it’s going to come out beautifully.
King Features?
Salicrup: They own the whole thing [including the comics].
Is the Nickelodeon material launching as comics or graphic novels?
Nantier: We’re doing a monthly magazine first. That’s primarily going into newsstands but also subscriptions as kids magazines marketed that way, then we’re collecting what’s appearing in the magazine in graphic novels.
When you say newsstand, do you mean Barnes & Noble or Kroger?
Nantier: Barnes and Noble magazine stands, but it’ll also be in Walmart and supermarkets. We’re going to have prominent positioning for the launch of this. I think people will be seeing us pretty much everywhere because we’re getting a lot of excitement out there and a lot of positioning in top slots for the launch of this magazine in June.
Salicrup: For many years Nickelodeon published Nickelodeon Magazine, which was sort of a mix of articles, features and a big chunk, maybe 50% comics. Our magazine is closer to over 80% comics. There will still be some activities and short articles and a lot of pages like that, but the majority will be comics based on current shows and new shows going forward based on our deal with Nickelodeon. The early issues will prominently feature Sanjay and Craig as well as the Breadwinners but starting with issue three or four, Harvey Beaks joins the line-up and as the magazine keeps going, more and more characters will be added with each issue. And each of those individual series, as Terry said, will then be collected into their own graphic novel series.
It’s been a few years since Nickelodeon did their magazine. Do you know why they stopped and then decided to have you do it?
Nantier: I think they had a large staff doing this and it was a multi-subject magazine about celebrities, etc. [It was] expensive for them and they weren’t in the magazine business. By 2009 they decided to get out of that. Magazines are a difficult business, there’s no doubt about it. You have to play this very carefully. We’re not looking to create an ad base here, we’re not selling advertising. It’s going to be all content and we’re going to be on a cover price and subscription revenue model, so it’s a different take on this. And for them, they had to concentrate more on what their strength is which is their TV channels, animation and live action shows.
Salicrup: Back when I was at Marvel, with Star Wars I got to learn that distribution is everything. With the first six issues of Star Wars we republished in every possible format: it was treasury editions, mass market paper backs, the actual comic books, bagged comic books, anything that we could have thought of, and sure there were probably some collectors that wanted to get every version, but I think it’s more a way for us to reach audiences we may not be reaching in other places. As Terry said, if it’s in Barnes & Noble, there’s still millions of kids who watch Nickelodeon and may not go to a comic book store.
Every American family is in a super market every week.
Nantier: Exactly, and it’s probably a lot easier as a comics property to stand out in a supermarket as opposed to even book stores and comic book stores. At this point it’s gotten so crowded. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope we know what we’re doing.
Anything else that you think our readers should know?
Nantier: We haven’t mentioned this much, except for Lunch Witch, which is a great launch of this, but we are getting into originals here and author-based concepts and series, not just the licensed materials. Lunch Witch is a great first example, but we’ve got a whole line-up of great stuff coming up such as Scarlett, by John Buller and Susan Schade .
We also have The Red Shoes, which is an adaptation of fairy tales by Metaphrog, a name that may ring a bell with old fans from their Louis series. And we have further things that we’ll be announcing. We’ve got a baseball-themed book for kids next year and many of these authors are bestselling authors in their own right. They’ve been very successful picture book authors with various series in the past, so we’re quite excited about that direction we’re taking as well.
Maybe kind of turn the whole tables around so that we have something to license as opposed to buying the licenses.
Salicrup: Things like our deal with Nickelodeon and now trying to do more original creations that we’re involved with is maybe the answer to your first question of how have we changed 10 years later. In the very beginning we saw virtually no competition when we were going after kids’ licenses; now it’s become a very competitive field, so this just seems like the right move for us to be doing at this point.