Bamboo is an independent comic book publisher;

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Emma Gatto : Bamboo Edition is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year; we have a series with 20 volumes that are still going strong. Inevitably, when you get to volume 20, 21, 22… we have regular readers who wait for the book to come out, but the challenge for us is to reach new readers, especially on social media, where the audience is generally quite young.

At Facebook, we know that our audience is growing. We have series that had their heyday before the social media boom. Now we try to renew them through our digital communication, but it is difficult because we do not necessarily have the audience that those series are going to reach. We are trying to find a new communication channel, whether it is a podcast or new influencers. For example, at the end of this year we will publish volume 21 of a humorous series called Les Pompiers (The Firefighters), and we have tried to survey the professional firefighter communities. I am also the community manager of Ediciones Draco, whose editions are fantasy comics for young adults. On Bookstagram and BookTok , fantasy and young adult genres are doing very well, better than others. Our challenge is to show the public that if you like reading young adult novels, it is very likely that you will also like reading young adult comics. We have to put an end to the idea of ​​comics as a genre, it is not just about the Smurfs. In comics you can find really fantastic stories, and we try to position ourselves that way.

Do you seek out influencers based on their interests, their audience, or both?
Fabrice Fadiga : We have several challenges because of the wide range of topics we cover; we have comics for all ages, but also for practically all professions and sports. It's simple humour. So we're not necessarily looking for just literary influencers, they can be influencers or content creators who have ties to an institution or a profession that might be relevant. We do a lot of prospecting in this area. We have great adventure and historical comics with themes like World War I or the Resistance in the Basque Country, so we need to find people who can talk about those topics.

What is your approach to gifting books?
Emma Gatto : Our approach is to target micro and nano influencers with communities that are large enough to be interesting, but not so large that the content gets lost among the rest of the content in a vast community. When I contact influencers, I always start from the assumption that, after looking at their account and their content, I see that they are interested in literature. We send them a specific press copy for communication, like the ones we send to journalists. We do this in exchange for a review, or for them to highlight us on their account. If the influencer has multiple platforms, it will be to briefly mention them at the beginning of a YouTube video, to do an Instagram story, or a review post after they have read it.

Do you have a budget for influencers?
Fabrice Fadiga : Being an independent publisher, the budget for influencers is quite small. Before I joined the company, it didn’t do influencer campaigns, so I had to prove the relevance of influencer marketing. I have an annual budget, which means carefully selecting partners. Some won’t do anything without compensation, so fingers crossed. They’re not capitalist monsters, they like money like anyone else; if they get a comic they like, they’ll talk about it, but they’ll read what they’ve been paid to read first because it’s a job. For the different titles, we determine with the editors and sales teams if we can get some budget. There are certain influencers whose views I can calculate in advance. There are certain titles that can’t fit into the influencer package we already have, and others that I try not to spend too much money on. It’s a balancing act.

How do you think literary content for influencers will evolve next year? Is there room for it on emerging platforms like Twitch?
Fabrice Fadiga : There will be a change in terms of remuneration. There is more legislation on this, especially regarding free content [and gifts], which are counted as influencer income. There are all the algorithmic issues wi vp design officers email database th platforms that can make certain investments counterproductive. Ideally, publishers would be able to produce their own content, to become their own “influencer”. But that is complicated by the specific nature of publishing: there are few resources, few employees, and therefore few people who can do it, unless we want to employ more people. Maybe, in 18 months, there will be jobs and hiring, or maybe even publishers will start hiring influencers, because if you are going to pay them 1000 euros a month, it might make more sense to hire them full-time and integrate their mastery of the tools and platforms.

Twitch: why not? There are literary influencers on it. There are creators like @madamepointvirgule (2.2k Twitch followers, 9.57k Instagram followers) who does live streams on Twitch, or @bulledop (26.7k Twitch followers, 34.1k Instagram followers) who is on Twitch and used to play games. On @madamepointvirgule it's actual reading. It's weird, but it works. I don't think it will explode with thousands of people connecting at the same time to watch someone read - at least not yet - but it's something to explore.

I talked about literary influence, but in the Manga category; manga influencers have lost popularity. They have become something like advertising sandwiches, because they do very flashy things. They concentrate on certain agencies. When they talk about what they do on a day-to-day basis, fans are fine with it, but if they see several of these influencers talking about a Manga that has just come out, things get complicated. There is also a problem of harassment in the Manga community that can go quite far because it is a fairly young community, quite male, quite toxic. It is complicated. The advantage that the literary community has is that it is very female, so there is not the same toxicity.