Buzzscope on Speakeasy

Buzzscope's massive article about the Speakeasy situation is now up. It's a doozy. Here's what I have to say.

Honestly? The numbers didn't move much at all. Had we continued self-publishing, our numbers would probably be at about the same plateau. The constant delays and miscommunications between Speakeasy and the printers have in fact probably hurt us in the long run, because when we self-published, we had every issue out not just on time, but usually early, and now issue 4 is two months late, issue 5 will be two months late, and hopefully, we'll be caught up by issue 6.

As to how it's going to affect us... Well, despite any animosity that comes out of my big stupid mouth, Adam's been doing his best to be a stand up guy. He assured me that Elk's Run will see print and that together we're finding a way to make it happen. I announced over on my blog a few of those steps. First, we're raising the price on issue 7 and 8 up to $3.99. This sucks. This kills me, because I've spent years criticising the pricing of comics, but, at the end of the day, I have a responsibility to my co-creators and to my business partner to lose as little money as possible, and that extra dollar means that we can actually afford to pay our letterist and colorist without having to take it out of my already quite depleted grocery money.

As to Diamond, we're well above their cutoff, and they've been huge supporters of the book from day one, so, for the time being, that's not a concern. Where all this stuff really affects us is in marketing and promotion. We can't afford Previews ads anymore; we�re drastically cutting back on our convention appearances this year; and, we're switching all of our comp list over to digital copies of the books. Right now, all we care about is getting the book out, and come hell or high water we're going to do it.�