Messageboards can be a great source of promotion for any of you young artists and authors out there. Some are better than others. Comic Book Resources and Comic Related are probably the best two I have found. Holmesian.net and Scarlet Street are also two really great Sherlock Holmes forums for those of you writers or illustrators who wish to promote your Sherlock Holmes related artwork and books.
All four of those I have found to be very artist and author friendly.
Newsrama is probably the worst of the bunch. Mostly because unless you're not a DC or Marvel type book or a big named artist you kind of get swept under the carpet as far as promotion is concerned.
It's not like your posts will get deleted or anything but your posts and promotions don't get as much notice as the first four forums I mentioned.
Since I'm not a Jim Lee or a Frank Miller, not many people really care about my work on Newsrama. But that's understandable. Jim Lee and Frank Miller have been paying their dues for a lot longer than I have and have a larger body of work than I do. Besides the fact they have a great deal of quality work on their resume. So naturally they deserve all the recogniton they get.
But it all comes down to finding your audience. Which means not only finding comic related messageboards but also finding messageboards that relate to your particular genre of work. As I mentioned earlier, I have three or four books that are mystery related. One of which is based on William Gillette's play Sherlock Holmes. So, I find blogs that are either mystery related or Sherlock Holmes related.
Some of the best advice I ever got ten years ago as far as promoting your work is that there is an audience for everything and the key is finding that audience. Which I have along the way. And also doing the shows my audience has also found me.
Naturally, there is the downside of messageboards. The fan sites in particular.
I was reading a writer Jon Blum's blog. He and his wife Kate Orman have written a great deal of Doctor Who books and audio plays which I have greatly enjoyed. He had written a blog on how he has made a decision to frequent the messageboards a lot less. This is what he wrote and I agree with him:
I've spent so much time here in an environment where peoples' postings are basically attack or defense; as Kate once put it, we wear our opinions like gang colours. No matter how much I try to step away from the conflict, I'm still part of it. I'm tired of having to defend what I enjoy, when I could just get on with enjoying it. Plus over the years, I've become hyper-critical of the sort of mishegoss we all indulge in in fandom... especially the underlying assumptions that our criticisms, our obsessions, our priorities and values in storytelling, what those of us in this little room will think of these episodes in twenty years' time, is what really matters about Doctor Who.
That is probably the reason I stopped frequenting many of the messageboards dedicated to shows, musicians or sports. What irks me is the elitist attitude some fans have on some of these sites.
Some fans act as though if you don't know every little detail of that person or that show you're not a fan and therefore don't deserve to live on planet Earth.
Why can't people just enjoy something without being judged? I don't know every little detail about Doctor Who, the Beatles or David Bowie. But I like them and I enjoy them. Isn't that enough? Apparently not.
I can remember 10 years ago frequenting a Paul McCartney site and having some of the club members getting really (and I mean REALLY) upset with me about posting a picture from The Rutles. The picture was a parody of the Beatles Abbey Road cover.
You WOULD NOT believe the response I got. It was as though I had just posted a picture of John Lennon lying in the morgue.
Incidentally that picture of Lennon DOES exist. And it was used in a music video for his song Woman.
They thought what I posted was disrespectful because the guy who was supposed to be George Harrison wasn't wearing pants. REALLY??? Are you kidding me? When the Rutles came out in 1978 all the Beatles were still alive and well. And not to mention George Harrison was a fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus not to mention a very close friend of Eric Idle who wrote the Rutles.
And the scene was making fun of the whole Paul is Dead rumor. In the original Abbey Road Cover Paul McCartney is not wearing shoes as he walks across the street. Some people back then saw this as a symbol of death. Paul is passing over the River Styx or something.
Well, Eric for the Rutles changed it from the Paul character to the George character having the death rumor. So, he had the George character crossing the street with no pants on. Which he said in the film was the Tibetan sign of death.
Why? Because it was funny. Apparently not, because these Paul McCartney fans found it in poor taste. Despite the fact George (as I mentioned before) was a fan and friend of Eric Idle and Monty Python AND appears in the film.
For people who claim to know everythin there is about the Beatles, that kind of shows a lack of knowledge.
But many of the reasons Mr. Jonathan Blum stated in his blog are really the reasons I stopped frequenting the messageboards from the discussion aspect. You just get tired of arguing with people over silly things.
I have connected with some really great people online who not only buy my work but are also really fantastic artists and writers as well.
But then there are some really nasty little toadies who live for nothing else but picking fights on messageboards, people's blogs and even Youtube.
Which I suppose we are all pretty brave from behind a computer monitor a thousand miles away. Especially when we snipe people anonymously.
But with that said, it hasn't deterred me from posting on messageboards. Everything is a great promotional tool if you use it right. E-Bay, deviantart, web blogs, messageboards, chat rooms (do they still exist?), Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Dailymotion and Twitter.
I've found I really started to get a much broader audience by selling artwork on E-Bay and I highly recommend it to young artists. Not only is it good for giving you a little extra scratch to take your sweetie out to dinner and a movie. But also it'll help you build up a fanbase.
I have people as close as Worcester to as far as Australia buying my books and my illustrations thanks to E-Bay.
There's no excuse for not getting your work out there. Especially when there's so much technology at your fingertips to allow you to do so. So, stop picking fights with other people on messageboards and their blogs and START PROMOTING YOURSELF!!!
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