Posted this at FA, but post it here too: So I got a rejection letter for our next book Dragonlast. :/ a bit of fustration.
This is the email I got From Diamond:
>>On DragonLast. I have distributed the samples throughout our department and unfortunately it does not look like something we would want to list at this time. It appears to be a title that would succeed in overseas markets and not in comic shops in the United States. We have seen comparable material solicited through Previews and retailers which have not been supported by retailers. At this point this is not something we would be willing to list.
The book feels very condensed. There does not seem to be much character development. The framing device with the old man who is telling the story to a group of children feels awkward because it takes the reader completely out of the story. There are times when the book does not feel that it is paced at the same tempo. A reader might be reading along with pages where there are sparse amounts of text and then they will hit a wall of text.
This title really feels more like a manga in the art style and story telling. Some companies have tried to recreate the success of manga titles but when the books are from the United States, historically, we have those titles not supported by retailers. <<
Now I know their is a fetish market for women next to deadbodies (I heard about this book years ago). But apparently they don't think that Dragonlast will make the sales minimum over women and dead bodies. >_< Ughhh Thing is this is not even the best art. Diamond got the full preview, and Satanasov (https://satanasov.deviantart.com/ ) who has worked for EA and UBI Soft and can pump out 3 pages ADAY like this.
This greatly interfears with our Fall listings. As the other books are still not yet ready, and Evil Diva is taking a break for the new artist to catch up and to figure out how to make sure #3 sells as good as #1.
Now for those of you that may say "why not go digital" we do, do Digital, and yes while it does cut down on Printcosts, our following online just isn't strong enough to help sustain the company. We'd need 1000 sale to sort of break even compared to the 450-500 we'd need to sell through Diamond. While this is annoying, Diamond still has the best reach for us at this time. If we where larger then maybe eh forget them but we're not. Really only Image,DC,Marvel and Dark Horse can say forget Diamond and yet they still don't.
