Larry Young causes a Riot

Jason Richards at Riot Comics talked to Larry Young, AiT/PLanet Lar publisher and all-around comics marketing guru, this week:

9. You're pretty well known around the comics corner of the internet, much to the betterment of your company. But do you think your company would be as successful if the internet didn't exist or if you didn't have such a huge outlet in which to espouse your ideas? Is there another way to go about it?

Certainly the guerilla-marketing aspect of web, the low-cost/high eyeballs return of just a small amount of time invested interacting with the community is a positive thing for any independent shop. I was happy to see that my pal Alex Segura was hired by DC as their community manager, a move I advocated for them way back in 2002 in a "Loose Cannon" article on CBR.

So even Warner Brothers recognizes the value of community management. And, of course, we were the first publisher to do outreach to the bloggers, resulting in Johnny Bacardi calling me "The Patron Saint of The Comics Blogosphere."

Now, that's a little grand, but I can't help but notice lots of other independent publishers flowing the review copies around, too, so who knows? I've been called worse on the Internet, that's for sure. :)

Go read the whole thing.