As mentioned back in August, Bill Kellogg, the Marketing Director behind Tundra, proposed hosting a self-syndication seminar in Las Vegas for early spring. Due to scheduling conflicts, the seminar is being pushed back to September or October of 2009. He has confirmed to me that Amy Lago, comics editor at Washington Post Writers Group, will be there. He hopes to have the dates nailed down by mid-December.
Since 2006, when Bill began marketing Chad Carpenter’s Tundra strip, the number of papers the strip appears in has grown to over 240 newspapers. Along with Bill’s presentation, other speakers will also share their stories on how they’ve successfully marketed their cartoons.
Thanks Bill! That actually works better for me!
I’d be interested to know if the seminar might be on the web so those of us with little to no funds could avoid the challenge of coming up with the cash needed to get to Vegas. Just a thought. I’d love to tell my wife I need to go to Vegas for business but I don’t think she’d buy it.
Hopefully what happens in Vegas WON’T stay in Vegas! It sounds like a great seminar for any cartoonist to attend.
More seminar info:
The plan is for Chad & I to cover self-syndication and have Amy Lago talk about what it takes to get syndicated as well as critique your work for anyone interested. Who knows, she might even find the next syndicated strip at the seminar. This should be a great chance to meet one on one with the â??big cheeseâ?? of a syndicate.
Andrew Feinstein of Girls & Sports will also talk to the group. For those of you who don’t know, Girls & Sports was self-syndicated in 200+ papers before it was picked up by Creators Syndicate. He should be able to give some good insight into self-syndication and Creators Syndicate, as well as the pros and cons of both. In addition we intend to have an editorial cartoonist and a web cartoonist share their ideas so we can cover all bases. Of course Alan will be there too.
Jim, a big part of self-syndication is the “selling” so your first step to being successful at it would be to sell your wife on the idea that you need to go to Vegas for a few days. If that doesn’t work, we are going to have a videographer there to make CD’s of the seminar which will be available through him a few weeks afterwards for a reasonable price.
We will be putting a page online with more details as things firm up and I will get regular updates and web-links to Alan to post as well.
That is great news! I’m goin’!
Very interesting. Thanks for offering this.
Are you planning a one day event or longer?
We are planning on a two day seminar and depending on the interest, possibly (2) two-day seminars. That way we can have one on the weekend for those who can’t make it during the week or for those who need more time in Vegas.