tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post4781564713382466735..comments2024-02-03T13:09:38.313+00:00Comments on Mirabilis - Year of Wonders: A grand ship out on the ocean, all mounted with silver and goldLeo Hartashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14417174942647091006noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-64401157354990846972010-03-31T11:52:50.469+01:002010-03-31T11:52:50.469+01:00I have been wary in the past of working with huge ...I have been wary in the past of working with huge corporations for the reasons you cite, Peter, but in our case we may have had the opposite problem. Most of our dealings (which amount to one meeting and two phone calls in the last year) were not with RH themselves but with David Fickling Books. Now that the ball has been passed to RH itself, I'm actually pinning my hopes on the relentless yet dispassionate logic of corporate thinking, in that a comic like Mirabilis is of negligible interest to RH and in any case wouldn't be worth their while publishing without the involvement of its creators, but if we can find a way to continue it then it will cost them nothing and could even benefit them - at no risk, expense or effort to themselves. Our greatest allies could be the bean counters, if we can just get them to look at it!<br /><br />Our agent has been trying very hard since before Christmas to sort something out, the frustration being how slow it is. We already lost one chance at finance for the whole series and missed out on being able to take it to Bologna this year. But the upside is that we haven't actually been negotiating with RH up till now, and maybe they will reply to our agent's suggestions for ways to keep the project going.<br /><br />I love the idea of creatives getting a direct route to their audience with iPhone, etc, as you know. At the same time, I think it's been a wake-up call for some of those behemoth corporations. A friend of mine was telling me recently that working on a game for Disney has been a huge pleasure because they have made sure to listen to the developer's needs and even paid for the initial concepting stage. Allegedly even the BBC are starting to respond more openly and fluidly. If RH follow suit by letting us have our baby back, I'll be here praising them to the skies!Dave Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-47996250961222516552010-03-31T11:18:55.099+01:002010-03-31T11:18:55.099+01:00Reading this should be a real eye opener for all o...Reading this should be a real eye opener for all of us. I'm just amazed that a publisher with a property as exciting as Mirabilis on their desk seems so frozen with indecision. My feeling about Random House is that perhaps they are just too big, corporate and committee driven to make the kind of bold initiatives that are required these days.<br /><br />My friend Jon Higham who has twenty plus years of writing and drawing children's books and has seen the shift from the days when he could get a thumbs up from Sebastian Walker as opposed to leaving a proposal at the same publisher now to be picked over by a committee over a period of months, has turned his attention to to creating a series of stories around a character called Elly the Reindeer for ITouch and IPad apps, which he's putting together with a very enterprising developer in Mumbai. He's very into the ITunes Apps store and was expressing surprise that in spite of the fact the French have 100 graphic novels now as apps, Walker Books, Puffin, Random House - you name them, are still conspicuous by their absence.<br /><br />So your experience with Mirabilis sound like yet another indicator that some UK publishers have just got too ensnared with corporate thinking. There are I suspect a new generation of Sebastian Walkers, Andre Deutschs, Tom Boardmans and James Warrens but not I suspect working within the airless confines of a one take over too many publisher's committee room.Peter Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15566601617123798061noreply@blogger.com