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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Wednesday 13 January 2016

Egmont, Egmont and Egmont

Some asked me whether I had put forward any projects to Egmont Publishing? Well, "thanks" for reading my past posts!  (To that person, seriously, I know you were just asking so apologies.  Just a bad few years!).

Egmont put an end to projects I was working on with Fleetway when they bought out that company and "saved" it by dumping everything it was doing.  Egmont also, before that, cancelled the projects I was working on with Bastei Verlag.

However, it is a business so I know how it goes.  And, yes, I did write to Egmont in the UK who either never respond, which is, professionally speaking, insulting.  So after all my attempts with Egmont UK I went straight to Egmont and it's HQ in Kobenhavn (Copenhagen), Danmark.

The people in Danmark told me I ought to submit projects to so-and-so in the UK.  So it all went back to so-and-so who.....never responded.  I sent the material again, Recorded Delivery and it was signed for. I even talked to someone by phone and still no response.

You see, Egmont, last time I checked, had over 21 overseas branches around the world including
Australia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States.

As shown in Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and, to be shown in The Green Skies (at some point), Black Tower has characters from far more countries than even Egmont covers. And characters from different genres -as you might know if you've ever checked the online store!  So the idea of something like Return published by an international publisher seemed like a good idea.  A version published in the PRC for instant could have more emphasis on the Chinese heroes (though they are very prominent as it is).  Or India -the same though, again, Indian characters did feature strongly. But "Can you add more Latvian action?" -no problem.  "Could you add more Ukraine action?" -sure.  And so on.

I packaged comics for a long time so adding for a particular area or taste is no problem.

However, even with the huge popularity of the super hero movie (and Return was far MORE than a super hero book) Egmont has not shown any interest at either the UK side or Danmark.

So,yes, I've tried, tried, tried and triple tried but an international publisher has to be interested and cheap merchandise related magazines (not comics) seems to be how they want to go.

Pity but that's publishing.

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