Comic Genius
Pow! He sold his comic online. Bang! He made $100,000 a week.
Back in 1996, few had experienced the Internet, let alone
purchased from it-but that didn't stop Marc Silvestri, owner of
Top Cow Productions Inc. in Los Angeles, from diving headfirst into
e-commerce and offering his hot new comic on the Web. The move
certainly paid off-he made $400,000 in just four weeks.
With publishing rights to the character Lara Croft from the
wildly popular Tomb Raider video game released earlier that
year, Silvestri arranged for a special-edition comic. Forgoing the
comic-book-store route, he risked selling it exclusively on his
Web site.
"Even back then, we knew our core audience wasn't only
into comics and video games; they were also very
computer-savvy," says Silvestri, 42. With most of his ads
appearing in the industry trade magazine Wizard, Silvestri
expected to move about 70,000 comics. Instead, 150,000 copies sold
out.
Top Cow has since caught Hollywood's eye. A film and TV
division has been launched, nine movies are in development, and the
company's Witchblade comic is enjoying a second season
as a TV series on TNT. Sure, sales for 2001 were about $15 million,
but that doesn't mean Silvestri has forgotten the risk that
started it all. "We'll do more experimenting," he
says, "and see how far we can stretch this whole e-commerce
thing."
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