Tina’s Groove creator Rina Piccolo tears down the pieces of what goes into a syndicate sales kit or sales brochure.
Putting together a sales brochure begins with a conversation between the cartoonist and the syndicate editor. What’s discussed ranges anywhere from the gist of the comic to who reads it, and why an editor of a newspaper would want to include it on their comics page. At this stage everything that is fundamental about the strip is dissected, and examined. (If it’s a brand new strip, this process is pretty much straight forward in that the main objective of the brochure is to introduce the strip, launch it, and try to get the strip into as many markets as possible. If it’s a strip that’s been around for a few years, like Tina’s Groove, then the discussion involves what significant changes the strip has gone through that may draw fresh attention to it from clients.)
Tina’s Groove is great. It’s a very underrated strip.