ROXANNE SPEAKS!
Welcome to one of our TWO cutting-edge on-site newsletters….ROXANNE SPEAKS! It will be the 21 Century version of the BOB SPEAKS! editorials that Bob wrote back in the 80’s. It’ll give you updates on things like convention plans and upcoming new projects. Hopefully, it will also be a depository for some of the great letters we get from our fans. The second current newsletter will have practical information like how to download our digital products and where to go to find what and is being written by Tony Dumont, your web developer and Production Manager.
It’s been a crazy busy January. Since opening the Bob Burden Comics online store early in the month, the new Flaming Carrot Comics website has generated more business transactions in three weeks than the former site did in over a decade! This is extraordinary, but at the same time understandable.
Back at the turn of the century there were only 361 million internet users. Now there are about 2,000 million. And the daunting reality of this situation is that nearly half of these users are on the Asian continent. http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/10/22/incredible-growth-of-the-internet-since-2000/http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
This purely statistical advantage certainly is working in our favor, but internet user numbers alone are not the only key to our success. Social media, especially Facebook, has exploded far beyond anyone’s expectations. The Social Network has fabulous benefits, but also nefarious dangers and has to be used carefully and STRATEGICALLY! We have been using Facebook as a great advertizing tool. It costs us nothing but the exposure that it gives us is huge.
And our runaway Facebook presence started with Craig Gould, a FB poster who had also been a backer on our kickstarter campaign. He contacted me about a month ago and made me what seemed, at that time, a strange offer. He asked me if I cared to be the administrator of the Flaming Carrot character page on FB. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Flaming-Carrot/399622050083412?fref=ts He told me that HE was currently the admin, but that hardly any people went to The Carrot’s page. This was the case because Craig, who knew little about what was going on in our organization, was at a loss as to what to post to make the page interesting and exciting. As soon as I read Craig’s post, I turned to Tony and read him what Craig had written. Without flinching, Tony said to tell Craig “Yes!” which is what I did. So Craig handed me the reins, with Bob and Tony as co-admins. Bob will actually play the role of The Carrot on occasion, but most of the time it is me who is doing the talking. Tony, however, never jumps on as the Carrot. So if you ever read a post from The Carrot and think, “Is that a comment from Tony?” the answer will always be “No.” Tony is here for technical support and should always be taken seriously. I, however, am free to make a fool of myself. This character page has turned out to be gobs of fun and Facebook subscribers are “liking” it a lot! Additionally, the success of The Carrot character page spawned the idea of my administrating the Mysterymen Comics page as well which has also been generating plenty of noise. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mysterymen-Comics/469918329739149?fref=ts
While I’m on the subject of Tony, HE is the third ingredient that was absent from the original Flaming Carrot website. Tony started programming in the 80’s. While Flaming Carrot Comics were gaining momentum, Tony was hard at work honing his craft. And when I was generating my own original comic book lettering fonts, Tony, coincidently, was in technical support at Macromedia for the Fontographer program…the program that I was employing. By the time the first decade of the current century came around, Tony was at the pinnacle of his programming career. He led a team of programmers whose mission was to create artificial intelligence to predict financial trends for a hedge fund. This was his last corporate job. He developed an intense dislike for corporate politics and ended up “dropping out” to fade into obscurity, which almost identically mirrored what had happened to Bob after the Mystery Men movie. Long story short, Bob and Tony met a couple of years ago and the rest is history.
We have fulfilled all our kickstarter orders now, except for THE GREAT RACE posters, which are still in production. When we opened our store a line the fans, who had missed the kickstarter several months before, had queued up to get a second crack at some of the products that were in the campaign. And the really great thing about the store opening is that we didn't get a SINGLE cancellation from all the customers who had been standing in the queue, some since as early as the beginning of September! Well, That’s All Folks! (from me.)
Now here is the really important part of this news broadcast. We want to see letters! Lots and lots of letters!!! Like back in the 80’s! We would like to see letter-hacking brought back stronger than ever! We’d also love to see your videos about The Carrot and other Bob Burden properties!...or Fan Art…or photos of your costumes…or animations…or ANYTHING Burdenian! It’s all up to YOU…the fans!!! Please send all submissions to speak@bobburdencomics.com
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