Sunday, September 11, 2011

To Kill Or To Fix?

From a "Publishorial" by Jenette Kahn in The Witching Hour #74 (1977), an interesting discussion of the decision whether or not to cancel low-selling books:



["[T]ruly a sincere one?" How many books was DC putting out for "insincere" reasons?]


Ironically, this was printed just a few months before the infamous DC Implosion.

Still, a lot of food for thought here. Do publishers still go through this process when making these decisions? Is there thought given to whether a creative team is "committed," or whether their talents could be better used elsewhere? Are books canned because they somehow "diminish the prestige" of the publisher?

Keep these in mind when, 8 months from now (?), some of the casualties begin to be announced in the New 52...

Finally:

Oh, how quaint. Not just one distributor for comic books? Enough for a whole association--and that just for one region?? Oh, you crazy 1970s...

2 comments:

Martin Gray said...

Oh, memories. I remember that one. It's fascinating to see how much DC wanted to foster a sense of 'we're all in this together'.

Harry said...

"Symbiotic colleagues"? Is this really 70s DC, and not 90s Marvel cashing in on the popularity of Venom...? ;)