Former DC Entertainment and Random House publicity executive David Hyde announced plans to launch Superfan Promotions, a new Los Angeles-based publicity and marketing firm aimed at supporting traditional authors as well as a new generation of comics and graphic novel creators. The new firm will launch with clients from comics publishers Drawn & Quarterly and IDW as well as the indie literary house, Dark Coast Press.
"Superfan Promotions’ mission is to collaborate on creative promotional campaigns that resonate with a mainstream audience but also engage passionate superfans,” said Hyde, who left DC Entertainment in 2012. The company’s first clients reflect the diversity of the kinds of projects that he is looking to champion, Hyde said. Hyde said Superfan Promotions will provide "scalable promotional models to fit the different needs of clients and their projects," as well as "marketing campaigns, events, and social media engagement for authors, artists, conventions, festivals, stores, entertainment companies and publishers."
Hyde’s initial clients include acclaimed Montreal-based graphic novel house Drawn & Quarterly where he is working on campaigns for cartoonist Art Speigelman (Co-Mix) and writer and magazine editor Tavi Gevinson (Rookie Yearbook Two). Hyde will also work on the publicity and marketing for comics artist Dan Goldman, whose webcomic Red Light Properties will be released in print in early 2014 by IDW Publishing. In addition Superfan Promotions is working with novelist Samuel Sattin’s League of Somebodies, a paperback original released earlier in 2013 by Dark Coast Press and has just released as an audiobook by Audible.
Hyde told PW he is the process of “finalizing additional clients.”
A veteran of traditional book publishing as well as comics and graphic novel publishing, Hyde joined DC Comics in 2003, after leaving Random House where he worked at Vintage and was an assistant director of publicity at Anchor Books. Hyde worked on publicity campaigns for such authors as Alexander McCall Smith (Ladies Detective Agency), Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn) and Richard Russo (The Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls).
A former senior v-p of publicity at DC Entertainment, Hyde not only managed some of the publishers' biggest promotional events—including the bestselling publishing tie-in with the release of the Watchmen film, as well as graphic novels by Brad Meltzer, Dean Haspiel, Jonathan Ames and Harvey Pekar—but also oversaw the launch of The New 52, the wildly successful relaunch of DC Comics' superhero line in 2011. Hyde also oversaw the company’s transition to day and date digital release as well as the company’s reorganization from DC Comics to DC Entertainment in 2009-2010.
