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Post by the4thpip on Apr 10, 2015 11:26:27 GMT -5
Well, the new top 10 is out. There are three slots taken by solo books featuring women, four by solo books featuring men, one by a solo book featuring a duck and two team books.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 10, 2015 11:54:59 GMT -5
Wow, that's a butt-kicking by Marvel over DC! I'll be very interested to see the numbers... I'm shocked to see that Nemo TPB 1st on that list... I wonder if that was a loot crate thing?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2015 15:01:36 GMT -5
The one place I think Disney should load up with comics is the gift shops at their various theme parks. Its usually families doing a week's vacation and staying in a nearby hotel or a hotel on the park's premises, and parents are usually exhausted and looking for something to keep the kids occupied for the night. Have racks of comics and the cheap trades you put in Walmart for sale in the gift shops so parent scan buy them for the kids or kids can bug their parents for them-I thought the Season One trades Marvel did would be a great fit to be sold in a place like that too. I'd also stock all those IDW Disney comics too if I could work ou a deal with IDW. Just seems that would be a no-brainer source of sales and marketing your product.
But DC is still on the newsstand, and their newsstand cover price is a dollar more than direct copies. When Marvel was last on the newsstands, this was the case too, because margins are smaller on the newsstand because you have to pay to print copies that don't sell. In the direct market, Marvel prints 50K of a book and sells all 50K to Diamond. On the newsstands, Marvel prints 50K sells 10-15K and has t eat the printing cost on the rest that were returned. The higher cover price covers the revenue gap. Of course that makes the comic itself a less desirable purchase on the newsstands because it's value is even less.
It takes two to tango to revive non-direct distribution, and there really is no infrastructure in place for it for Marvel either, so it will also require an investment to set up that infrastructure again, so there would have to be gangbuster sales outside the direct market to cover more expenses with smaller margins, and they probably look at their trade and gn sales numbers from the bookstore markets and feel there is not enough volume of merchandise that will move in that market to make it worth their while, and the potential retailers look at general periodical sales and think it's not worth their time and investment either, so, as Kurt Busiek said when he discussed this issue at length a number of years ago-if the system worked and made everybody money, it would still be in place. It wasn't working, and wasn't making anyone money and the direct market was. If you want something outside the direct market to evolve and rise up to supplement that, it's going to need to be something new, not a return to things that weren't working for anyone. Problem is, it takes time and money invested to create and nurture something new, and that's not something the big 2 have the inclination to do. This was before the digital revolution of comics started (and before ebooks were really part of the landscape even), so many thought digital could be that something new, and it still could be as it is in that it needs to be grown and nurtured stage, but whatever that new thing is, it's not going to be successful overnight and people who's jobs are on the line base don what quarterly reports say are not the people who are going to be willing or able to play the long game, and publishing at Warner and Disney is most definitely at the mercy of quarterly reports.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2015 15:02:52 GMT -5
Wow, that's a butt-kicking by Marvel over DC! I'll be very interested to see the numbers... I'm shocked to see that Nemo TPB 1st on that list... I wonder if that was a loot crate thing? It was a month were most of DCs top books weren't coming out, such as Snyder's Batman which is a perenniel top 10 book, but it didn't have a March issue because of the whole Edngame/Convergence thing. -M |
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Post by the4thpip on Apr 13, 2015 15:56:40 GMT -5
The numbers are out, and Captain Marvel, Ms Marvel, Squirrel Girl and Spider-Woman all posted solid gains compared to last month. This issue of Captain Marvel is not part of the Black Vortex crossover yet, so it looks like word of mouth is the reason. Same with Squirrel Girl and Ms Marvel. And Spider-Woman is probably seen a "Ding Dong, Greg Land is gone" bounce (over 11% more than last month!). Also: Silk #1 charts again with over 11,000 copies, which is huge for a 2nd charting. Looks like retailers underestimated the demand for a third spidery woman on the stands. www.comicbookresources.com/article/star-wars-continues-to-dominate-the-direct-market-princess-leia-1-sells-over-250k |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 13, 2015 16:09:47 GMT -5
Yeah, #2 help up surprisingly well, too... only lost 20% of the sales (it's usually at least 50). Spider-Gwen #2 did better (Still over 100K) but list 57+% of the first issue sales.
Looks like Loot Crate didn't do much for Orphan Black... #2 charts at #181... under 11K copies.
I actually kinda surprised at the crazy sales from Star Wars.. it's not like there were no Star Wars comics before.. are there that many speculators? Or is Marvel really 10x better at marketing than Dark Horse? Or is it a distribution thing? The mind boggles.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Apr 13, 2015 18:47:58 GMT -5
I think the Star Wars thing has a lot to do with speculators (All those variant covers) but I'd also chalk it up to a fact that a lot of readers don't look at much beyond Marvel titles, even if they are Star Wars fans. I do think that there's a sect of fans that like the fact that Star Wars is back at Marvel, though.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2015 21:11:51 GMT -5
Bleeding Cool is surmising Squirrel Gril might be cancelled with #8 due to changes in the content of the first 2 trade volume solicitations, but it could just be RJ being RJ again and stirring up crap. Similar assertions were made about Guardians 3000 in the same article and he ten lists all the Marvel titles with similar sales levels, so it could just be him digging for hits.
-M
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Post by the4thpip on Apr 14, 2015 1:41:34 GMT -5
Looks like Loot Crate didn't do much for Orphan Black... #2 charts at #181... under 11K copies. Of course, that just means retailers either did not know about the Loot Crate promotion when they placed orders or don't think it will do much to prop up sales on the title. We might see a lot of re-order activitiy on that one. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 14, 2015 6:32:52 GMT -5
Bleeding Cool is surmising Squirrel Gril might be cancelled with #8 due to changes in the content of the first 2 trade volume solicitations, but it could just be RJ being RJ again and stirring up crap. Similar assertions were made about Guardians 3000 in the same article and he ten lists all the Marvel titles with similar sales levels, so it could just be him digging for hits. -M I don't read BC much, but when I have, I get the feel Johnston mostly just points out the obvious, like 'X sales are low, and probably will be cancelled', or 'X character is red hot and probably will get an ongoing', then gloats when his guesses are correct. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 14, 2015 6:38:03 GMT -5
Looks like Loot Crate didn't do much for Orphan Black... #2 charts at #181... under 11K copies. Of course, that just means retailers either did not know about the Loot Crate promotion when they placed orders or don't think it will do much to prop up sales on the title. We might see a lot of re-order activitiy on that one. Maybe.. if that's the case, that's unfortunate. If I was a non-comic book person, and went into the comic book store to get one particular thing, and they didn't have it... I'd not go back. Especially if the guy working there is dismissive of it (which most probably would be). |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2015 13:06:47 GMT -5
Of course, that just means retailers either did not know about the Loot Crate promotion when they placed orders or don't think it will do much to prop up sales on the title. We might see a lot of re-order activitiy on that one. Maybe.. if that's the case, that's unfortunate. If I was a non-comic book person, and went into the comic book store to get one particular thing, and they didn't have it... I'd not go back. Especially if the guy working there is dismissive of it (which most probably would be). The problem is the direct market is not built for walk in impulse buys, it's foundation is built on people knowing what they want at least 3 months before it is released, and there is so much product from all the publishers that retailers cannot afford to stock things on the chance of a walk in impulse buy, they can only stock what they know will sell, since it takes an 80% sell through of what thy order to break even/make any profit with the way the margins are in the business. Imagine say the automobile business this way-well we only stock the cars we know will sell to customers who pre-ordered and a few others, and all the manufacturers sell their cars to one central distributor and we have to order through them at twice what the manufacturers sold the car for, so sticker prices are higher so we can make our margins. And if you want to special order something, we may or may not be able to get it for you...it's just a terrible business model and retailers are stuck in the middle of it because the publishers get there money without risk and Diamond makes their money without risk but the retailers shoulder the risk and the highest costs/lowest margins and cannot really service the end customer in the best way possible because of those monetary burdens and restrictions. -M |
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Post by Action Ace on Apr 14, 2015 19:19:51 GMT -5
Maybe.. if that's the case, that's unfortunate. If I was a non-comic book person, and went into the comic book store to get one particular thing, and they didn't have it... I'd not go back. Especially if the guy working there is dismissive of it (which most probably would be). The problem is the direct market is not built for walk in impulse buys, it's foundation is built on people knowing what they want at least 3 months before it is released, and there is so much product from all the publishers that retailers cannot afford to stock things on the chance of a walk in impulse buy, they can only stock what they know will sell, since it takes an 80% sell through of what thy order to break even/make any profit with the way the margins are in the business. Imagine say the automobile business this way-well we only stock the cars we know will sell to customers who pre-ordered and a few others, and all the manufacturers sell their cars to one central distributor and we have to order through them at twice what the manufacturers sold the car for, so sticker prices are higher so we can make our margins. And if you want to special order something, we may or may not be able to get it for you...it's just a terrible business model and retailers are stuck in the middle of it because the publishers get there money without risk and Diamond makes their money without risk but the retailers shoulder the risk and the highest costs/lowest margins and cannot really service the end customer in the best way possible because of those monetary burdens and restrictions. -M "Any customer can have a comic done in any genre that he wants so long as it is superhero." Henry Ford |
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Post by Dizzy D on Apr 15, 2015 8:04:43 GMT -5
Yeah, #2 help up surprisingly well, too... only lost 20% of the sales (it's usually at least 50). Spider-Gwen #2 did better (Still over 100K) but list 57+% of the first issue sales. Looks like Loot Crate didn't do much for Orphan Black... #2 charts at #181... under 11K copies. I actually kinda surprised at the crazy sales from Star Wars.. it's not like there were no Star Wars comics before.. are there that many speculators? Or is Marvel really 10x better at marketing than Dark Horse? Or is it a distribution thing? The mind boggles. Probably the combination of a couple of things: Upcoming movie has reignited some interest in Star Wars and a reset of the entire Star Wars "canon" (basically all the novels and comics and games are no longer canon, only the movies, the TV series and the new novels/comics). Also they have put some top talent on the three series and the series are all on the most popular Star Wars characters. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Apr 27, 2015 8:40:22 GMT -5
Yeah, #2 help up surprisingly well, too... only lost 20% of the sales (it's usually at least 50). Spider-Gwen #2 did better (Still over 100K) but list 57+% of the first issue sales. Looks like Loot Crate didn't do much for Orphan Black... #2 charts at #181... under 11K copies. I actually kinda surprised at the crazy sales from Star Wars.. it's not like there were no Star Wars comics before.. are there that many speculators? Or is Marvel really 10x better at marketing than Dark Horse? Or is it a distribution thing? The mind boggles. That is strange. I guess direct market consumers identify with the brand more than the content? This also means that Star Wars backlist/trade sales will go down the crapper, 'cause Dark Horse is much stronger in the bookstore market than Marvel. |
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