Publishing Basics

I've spent the last couple of hours doing some preliminary work for my "Reviewing the Mail" posts for Monday, and I've been surprised and appalled by how many comics publishers -- generally the big ones, too -- who can't handle the very basics of 21st century bookselling.

Here's the #1 thing: you need to have your final cover feeding to the online retailers. Their pages -- particularly Amazon's -- rise to the top of search results for book titles and authors, and it behooves you to have your actual, final cover (not the art without type, not a panel from the book, not any other damn thing) there.

I know feeds don't always run smoothly -- a fair part of my job is dealing with "this book has the wrong cover/wrong copy/ is missing quotes" issues. But you get them done, because they're important.

And it wouldn't kill you to have some decent copy there, as well.