TKO Studios and Simon & Schuster Reach Distribution Agreement
Comics publisher TKO Studios has reached an agreement with Simon & Schuster to manage trade book sales and retail distribution. The agreement begins February 1st and will see Simon & Schuster hand the global distribution of the publisher's comics, graphic novels, and literature. TKO Studios launched in 2018 and boasts a diverse catalog from an all-star list of creators, authors, and artists. The company was founded by Salvatore Simeone and Tze Chun. Simeone is the author of Bram Stoker award nominee Lonesome Days and Savage Nights, as well as an entrepreneur, publisher, and producer. Chun is a TV showrunner, writer, producer, and director.
"We're excited for this partnership with Simon & Schuster to dramatically expand the reach of our extensive, bestselling catalog and bring TKO titles to the attention of an even wider range of retailers and fans around the world," says Tze Chun, TKO Studios President and Co-founder.
"We are delighted to welcome TKO Studios to our family of distribution clients," said Michael Perlman, Vice President, General Manager of Simon & Schuster Publisher Services. "We look forward to working together to take their business to new levels."
TKO Studios is using a different release strategy than some of the larger publishers. Adopting the "binge-reading" model, TKO makes the entire run of a miniseries available all at once. Chun spoke with ComicBook.com about this publishing philosophy, which admittedly came from the fans.
"One thing that we kept on hearing over and over again was when we started pitching them the way we were gonna binge release our books, offer the first issue free to read, and offer them in multiple formats, the thing that we kept on hearing was everyone wants something new to happen in comic books, but no one's done it yet," Chun said.
The three options available for fans are digital, in a collected trade paperback, and single issues released at once in a collectible, display-ready box set. "I love the comic book industry," Chun added. "I love the fact that comic books are unlike any other type of storytelling. And it honestly kind of hurts me to see the fact that the comic book audience has not grown, and has, in fact, dwindled over the last 20 years."
TKO earned a 2020 Eisner Award nomination for Sentient and was nominated Publisher of the year by Tripwire magazine. Notable TKO titles include Djeliya by Juni Ba, The Banks by N.Y. Times bestseller Roxane Gay (Hunger, Bad Feminist) and Ming Doyle (The Kitchen), the Eisner Award-nominated Sentient by Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth) and Gabriel Walta (Vision), Sara by Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys) and Steve Epting (Captain America: Winter Soldier), Graveneye by Sloane Leong and Anna Bowles, as well as the upcoming illustrated novellas Brood X by Eisner nominee Joshua Dysart with M.K. Perker, and One Eye Open by N.Y. Times bestselling author Alex Grecian (The Yard) with Andrea Mutti. Both titles are scheduled for print and digital release under the new TKO Rogue literary imprint on March 11th.