Comiket, Pearly Kings and Nosferatu.

It was a strange trip down to London on Saturday for the winter Comiket. After a typical train journey (in that it arrived 15 mins late) we encountered a Pearly King at the Underground Station (which made more sense when we found out that it was The Lord Mayor's Show), who appeared to be being stalked by Nosferatu, which was not so easy to explain. Colin and I decided to keep well out of it, it never ends well for bystanders when titans clash.

We arrived with time for a coffee before setting up the table and being ready for the customers to start to enter the building.
It was a very slow start, and although the doors had opened at 10am, by 2pm we had sold less than 10 books. I must confess to being a little concerned that my joints would have to undergo yet more damage as we lugged all of our stock back up north.
But things picked up, and by 5pm we had sold almost as many books as we did in the Spring event. My joints we safe... for a bit longer anyway.
There was a little incident concerning Robots, which you can read about over on my Strange Times blog...
It was great to meet up with Olivier & Anders of Cinebook, ’J-P’ of London Horror Comics, Camlia & Taylor from Orbital Comics, Dave O’Connell, Andy from Broken Frontier, and Becky Bagley who created Tick, and provided a pin-up for Robot Shorts.
The Comica guys had put a lot of effort into yet another great event. I think the number of customers were down a little and I know some stalls suffered due to this. Clashing with the Lord Mayor's Show didn't help, and a friend of Accent UK, Matt Boyce, had struggled across London by bus adding about an hour to his journey. I'm tempted to write to Boris Johnson to see if he can't move next year's Lord Mayor's Show, but may have better luck suggesting that the organisers move the Winter Comiket instead.
All in all it was hard work but rewarding and as Colin and I sat back on the train home and discussed the future of Accent UK, we both agreed that it certainly included more Comikets.
Thanks to Megan Donnolley, Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury and all their helpers for another event like no other.

WesterNoir Issue 1 review.

WesterNoir Issue 1 gets a great review over at http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/in-review-westernoir-book-1.html, and as planned Issue 2 will be available at Thought Bubble.

Babble... the one that got away.

When Lee Robson brought his book Babble to our attention a while back, we were interested. Very interested. But while we were taking our time, discussing this between ourselves at Accent UK, Com.X nipped in. Lee knows a good thing when he sees it and so took them up on their offer, and who wouldn't, Com.X produce some great books.

So what is Babble all about ?

Carrie Hartnoll is a girl lost in a life going nowhere fast, until a chance encounter with an ex-boyfriend affords her the opportunity of a whole new career in Ivy League America, as part of a research team attempting to resurrect the language of Babel – a language, it is theorised, that can be understood by any human, from anywhere in the world.

As Carrie pieces together her fractured personal life, she becomes embroiled in the mystery surrounding the apparent suicide of the project’s original team leader, which propels her to uncover the horrific truth about the language and why it was written out of the history books…

Babble is an original graphic novel by Lee Robson and Bryan Coyle (both of whom have produce work for our snthologies in the past) due to be published by Com.X in December 2012.
You can pre-order it from comic shops now with the Previews order code OCT120971. Alternatively, you can pre-order it online here: http://www.babblecomic.com/where-to-buy/.

I've not seen the finished book, but I'll be picking this one up as soon as I see it based on what I saw back when we almost published it ourselves.

Accent UK will be at Comiket.

Colin and I will be returning for the latest Comiket Festival in London on Saturday.
We always enjoy this event as we get to meet so many new creators and manage to sell a good number of books to new and returning customers alike.
Pop in if you're passing...

Off Life hits the shelves of London.

A new free anthology has hit stores in London, and I believe is already.. well, I can't say 'Sold Out' really as it's free, but they've all gone.

You're never quite sure what to expect when you're approached with the opportunity to place an advert in a magazine or flier, and it was no different with Off Life. So, whilst the approach was very professionally done I still had doubts when I opened my posted copy.

I needn't have worried at all. It's a fabulous little product. The printing, paper and colours are wonderful and the stories I've read so far are great.
If you're lucky enough to be able to pick these up in the future, I believe they are bi-monthly, then I'd recommend doing so, and if you're an Indie creator/publisher then it gets good coverage of London and so I feel is a good opportunity to spread the word about your books. I'll be looking to advertise in it again next issue.

Great reviews for new Accent UK books over at Burnt Weiners..

'Missing - Have You Seen The Invisible Man ?' and 'Who On Earth Was Thaddeus Mist?' get great reviews over at the Burnt Weiners podcast, Episode 133, and if you scroll down a but you'll find that Owen Johnson, the main mind behind Thaddeus Mist, was interviewed by the guys.

Both of these books, and the next installment of Josiah Black should be launched at Thought Bubble next month... if all goes well.

10th Anniversary Offer in this month's PREVIEWS

As we've previously announced on this blog, we've decided to move away from our themed anthologies, and concentrate more on one shots. What we didn't predict was the amount of feedback we'd have on this decision, a decision that wasn't made lightly. Those who contributed to these books and those who read them were all very disappointed that we'd not produce any more following Victoriana.

The decision was really driven by falling orders from PREVIEWS, and therefore the decline in getting these books out there to shops across the world. Speaking to Diamond we've seen that the biggest dip in orders from stores has actually been in the UK. Maybe this is a byproduct of us hitting more UK Conventions lately, or maybe it is due to the challenges on comic stores to order comics that aren't linked to The Watchmen or the 52 relaunch of DC.

We'd discussed the concept of an 'Accent UK Introductory' pack with Diamond quite a while ago, but never really took it any further, and thought that maybe now was the time to try it, and also combine this with an 'Anthology Promotional Pack' idea we'd been playing around with.
And taking Diamond's advice, we've agreed to focus on encouraging UK stores initially, and take this idea to the US PREVIEWS if it proved at all successful.

So the October PREVIEWS (number 289) offers two of our anthologies to stores for £5 each. The collections will still retain their original cover price, so I'm not sure if the stores will pass on the full deal to their customers, but either way we hope this'll get them to give the titles a chance.

We'll let you all know how it goes.