Tunji Anjorin, President and Editor-in-Chief of Panaramic Comics, shared his experiences in the comic book publishing industry over the past five years during a panel session hosted by Purple Shelves at the Geek Pop-Up event on Saturday, 29 June 2024.

 Tunji observed, "All of the bookstores in Nigeria, or even Africa, have pretty much disappeared, and we had to start from scratch," attributing this drastic change to the COVID era. He recounted the tough decisions he had to make for his company. "Are you going to start from scratch because there's a digital landscape that is attractive to the younger audience?" he pondered, mentioning the rise of Zoom and the return to office life.

 "There are five major issues in our industry," Tunji explained. "Financing is an issue. Visibility is an issue; marketing is an issue. Distribution is an issue... And arguably, visibility might be the major one... When high traffic areas like Shoprite and Ikeja City Mall went out of business during COVID, schools went out of business during COVID… We had to redevelop our distribution model. It almost felt like, does this make any more sense? Do we lean more towards digital, or do we find new ways? I think intellectual property comes into play."

Other panel members also contributed to the discussion. Sunkomi Akinboye, Martial Artist and Creative Director of Linebug Studios, provided deeper insights into the challenges the comic book publishing industry faces. "I think visibility is lacking because we haven't proven the relevance of this medium. That is why we don't have visibility. Visibility requires aggressive marketing. Most people want to produce books without checking the numbers. In marketing, 1% of the market is actually the demographic that will buy your product. So, if you have a marketing budget that reaches 10,000 people, only 1% will buy it."

Sunkomi referenced the music industry's rise to prominence and suggested that the comic book publishing sector could adopt a similar blueprint. Drawing from his professional experiences, he advised, "Take charge of the marketing, be aggressive, and spend money on it. Many waste money on production. I can't count how many publishers I've worked with where we've finished the book and then asked, 'What's the plan for selling it?' and they don't know. They're basing it on the assumption that people like books and will read them. How are you going to throw the book in the air and expect people to find it?"

Servio Gbadamosi, Author, Curator, and Publisher at Noirledge, offered a new perspective. He viewed the problem in terms of essential services and how comic book publishing should position itself accordingly. He believes that until this is achieved, visibility and relevance won't make much difference.

The moderator, founder of Purple Shelves, Amara Chimeka, emphasised the need to find solutions to these problems. Tunji, Servio, and Sunkomi covered several issues and solutions, drawing from their years of expertise and resilience. The session concluded with several copies of the Queen Amina comic book being gifted to members of the audience.

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