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Comic strips Interviews

Lee Salem provides insight into syndication

1 minute 10 comments

Dawn Douglass, a regular here on The Daily Cartoonist operates the Wet Ink forum and recently interviewed Lee Salem, President of Universal Press Syndicate, about the process of getting syndicated, what gets syndicated and how the syndicates are dealing with changes in the market.

A sampling of questions and answers:

10. Are you concerned about the declining state of newspapers? Does Universal Press have a contingency plan if print really does fold? Do you think UPS and Uclick will ever merge back together?

LEE: What decline? But yes, we are concerned. Print revenues will be important to us for a long time, but we’re doing more with the online side of newspapers with special projects, emphasizing efforts in ancillary rights and broadening our offerings beyond the traditional column and comic strip. Right now, uclick does its thing and UPS does its, but we all recognize the need to work more closely. The Web, newspapers, calendars, books, television and movies afford us and the talent we represent a lot of opportunities. For The Argyle Sweater, we had a card deal and a calendar deal before the panel began in newspapers, thanks to in-house enthusiasm by our affiliate, Andrews McMeel Publishing. The outlets are many, including animation.

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Comments 10

  1. Nicely done Dawn. Good questions, format and good interview overall. Not too many surprises, but a frank, relevant interview is refreshing and informative none-the-less!

  2. Both this interview of Salem and the Mr. Media one from a while back were very informative and interesting. Good questions, Dawn, and thanks for doing this.

  4. Thanks, Everybody. I appreciate the nice feedback.

  5. I must echo the comments from the others. That was a very good interview. I thought the questions on the topic of the changing climate in printed media and online conent were particularly well thought out. Great job Dawn.

    I always get a kick out of interviews with editors because what they say they look for in a comic strip seems to be the exact opposite of what I do LOL.

  6. Ummm, that’s “content.”

  7. Thanks, Gary.

    I have to say it was nice of Lee to do spend the time doing this. Did you notice? He even used capital letters! 🙂

  8. Syndicates should add a link to this interview as a footnote on their submission guidelines 🙂

    Special thanks to Dawn for preparing such relevant questions and to Lee for participating!

  9. Excellent interview. As others have stated, no real surprises, but it is good to hear from a professional in the field. Especially Lee Salem.

  10. Anybody who expects surprises from syndicates hasn’t been in cartooning very long. Ha! 😉

    Thanks guys! 🙂

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