Friday, December 19, 2014

Snippets #17: April 30, 1984


       This one is from April 30, 1984 letter to my brother Don:

       "The mood in Turtleland is one of growing excitement as the day of the Portsmouth comic book convention draws ever closer. Our full-page ad came out this week in the Comics Buyer's Guide, and it looks pretty spiffy. Hopefully that will generate more orders. We are continuing to receive a trickle of orders generated by the press releases that we sent out, and are starting to get orders for t-shirt iron-on's from the ad sheets that we sent out with the books.
       This should also be the week that we see ourselves all over the local print media. The first story on the turtles came out yesterday in the Portsmouth Sunday Herald; I'll try to include a copy of it with this letter. It's pretty cute. The Free Press and the Transcript should have our stories when they come out tomorrow, and Foster's Daily Democrat will probably run their piece on the Turtles this Friday in their feature magazine. We've also been mentioned in Portsmouth Magazine and re:Ports; we may also be featured on the cover of re:Ports (which is a weekly rag covering entertainment in the seacoast area) next Friday. We're keeping our fingers crossed.
       What could be either the biggest publicity we get, or turn out to be absolutely nothing, is that UPI (United Press International) might be interested in doing a story on us. I sent a press release to their Boston offices on a lark, not expecting that anything would come of it. But last week I got a call from a woman at UPI who asked me to send her a copy of the book and some more information, and said that UPI might (and I emphasize MIGHT) want to do a piece on us. If they did, it would be fantastic! But being the semi-realist that I am, I'm not holding my breath."

       [As previously mentioned, UPI did, in fact, do that story, complete with photograph, and we got a boatload of publicity from it. What a stroke of luck! 
       Of course, it's also true that, had we not taken the initiative and sent out that press release to UPI, it is extremely unlikely that they would have ever taken notice of us and our little comic book. So I guess it wasn't ALL luck. -- PL]

2 comments:

  1. "Diligence is the mother of good luck." ~ Benjamin Franklin
    -Mel-

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  2. Do you think this Fosters article is related in some way to that column the newspaper editor wrote that was in the comments a few posts ago?

    Maybe he's remembering that a story was written - and somehow twisted in his head that you were asking for a purchase of art, when you were actually showing the art off, as part of the interview?

    It would make sense, since clearly there was SOME interaction with Fosters at this time - but not that you were looking for "grocery money" as his column put it.

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