One More Digression: Selling Murf

An important piece of producing Murphy’s Manor comic strips was keeping in enough subscribing newspapers on a continuous basis to make it worth my while. That I did, barely.

My sales technique changed a lot of the years. The first six Murf strips were mailed out to a published list of gay newspapers, along with a cover letter.

And here is the cover letter. Printed in blue ink on 20# white bond paper using my Gestetner 260 silkscreen mimeograph.

I didn’t get my first computer until 1984. The software and hardware of DOS were not useful in producing artwork for a number of years yet, nor had the Internet yet emerged. But it was sure a godsend for record keeping. The first letter was simple and contained typos. But later as I grew skilled with WordStar, SuperCalc, and dBase I generated sophisticated mailmerge solicitations complete with branching if() statements.

The first challenge in selling a comic strip was just getting somebody’s attention at the newspaper. Getting your letter opened without being thrown into the trash. Getting your email past spam filters and read. Never knowing what works best for any given newspaper, I sent my letter to the editor one year and the publisher the next. I sent paper letters by mail one year, and the next I used email, then paper again the next year.

Did it work? Well enough, yes. But I never hit upon a magic sales approach.
 
Meredith Willson was right. You’ve gotta know the territory.