Using its database of more than 86,000 cartoons, the New Yorker's Cartoon Bank has found a profitable niche: developing custom books for the promotional and executive gift market.
The Cartoon Bank was launched in 1991 by New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff as a private business venture that licensed the use of rejected New Yorker cartoons. Conceived by Mankoff as a way to generate extra money for the group's cartoonist members, the business became so successful that the New Yorker acquired it, put Mankoff in charge and began archiving all New Yorker cartoons in the Cartoon Bank database.
By 2003, Cartoon Bank had developed its own customized book publishing operation. The service publishes specially compiled books using the digitized New Yorker cartoons on virtually any subject. The books are not sold through bookstores; the New Yorker has separate deals with traditional publishers for trade book cartoon collections. Instead, custom-published books are commissioned by companies to give away to executives, general staff and customers.
The Cartoon Bank, based in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., published four custom books in 2003 and produced "dozens" of titles in 2004, according to Andy Pilsbury, v-p of business development at the company. He expects Cartoon Bank to produce books for as many as 100 different customers in 2005. Most of the orders, said Pilsbury, number between 500 and several thousand books. Cartoon Bank's custom book clients include Court TV, Yahoo! and the Westin Hotels, as well as nonprofits like WNET, NPR and the American Lung Association.
Pilsbury said the company has done custom books of cartoons about lawyers, architects, bankers, dentists, horses and even astronauts. The CB also turns its cartoons into customized desk calendars, journals, Post-it notes and note pads—"virtually anything that can be printed," he said. The books are produced using both print-on-demand technology and standard offset printing, depending on the quantities needed, and can be various sizes. Pilsbury noted that the books can be customized with, say, an introduction by the CEO, special dates or any information the firm may want.
The Cartoon Bank continues to license cartoons to other kinds of publishers; "textbook publishers are big customers," said Pilsbury. "A New Yorker cartoon is a powerful way to convey an idea. It takes aim at a different part of the brain."
