Publishing Comics and Graphic Novels

There is a dearth of good quality Indian comic books around. The comics scene in India is dominated by either mythological and historical themed comics (Amar Chitra Katha) and super-hero themes (Raj Comics). With a growing readership for books in general, there is tremendous scope for creating high quality comic books and graphic novels which tackle contemporary themes (such as school/college stories, adventure stories, parodies etc).

Source: Hush (by Manta Ray)

The industry has started picking up in India recently with new publishers like Level10Comics, Holy Cow Entertainment, Liquid Comics coming on the scene. We want to aid in the creation of high quality comics, but we don't have a concrete idea of how we'll do this. From our preliminary research (talking to artists, studios, online) we have found that the process of creation of a comic is in three broad stages:

1. Content - What the artists and writers create
2. Publishing - Editing, finding the artists and writers and coming up with new story lines, and whatever else that needs to be done before the comic book can be printed.
3. Sales & Marketing

We are doing a market study with comics readers and non-readers to find out what the customers are looking for. At the same time we are talking to people already in the industry including writers and artists, distributors and publishers. With this basic research done, we will generate ideas on what area of the industry to target.

If you have ideas or suggestions, kindly leave a comment, or contact p11nikhilg @ iimahd.ernet.in.