I was really digging Rebirth at first, and I still am to a degree...but I decided to drop Batman after the 5th issue.

Still interested in where Wonder Woman, Deathstroke and Hellblazer are going, as well as 'Tec to a degree...but other than that, the only titles I care about from DC are a couple of their Hanna Barbera series like Future Quest and Wacky Raceland.

Hell, those are just about the only ongoing series that I'm reading.

So was Rebirth a critical failure or just a sales failure?

Again those good sales numbers are sales to retailers, if retailers aren't then selling to end customers they are unhappy that they bought so many. After the fact returnability looks like a step to placate unhappy retailers, but that's conjecture on my part.

They also ended up having to pulp an issue of Green Lanterns supposedly because of something to do with a word balloon on the cover, pushing back the bi-weekly schedule on that book, and there has been a constant flow of post-solicitation creative changes to meet deadlines (which affects the book's returnability-if the change occurs after FOC (final order cut-off) it is supposed to be returnable anyways, so the returnability move by DC may just be because most of the books are falling into that rabbit hole as they have to jump through hoops to maintain the every other week schedule and get books out on time no matter who is actually writing and drawing them or how bloated the credit box gets-hell maybe we'll even see a cameo from the Crusty Bunkers or their descendants in a credit box one of these days (hey kid can you digitally ink 3 pages for us, just trace the pencil line work with the stylus, the book is due at the printer tomorrow ).

So Rebirth has been a message board darling and a sales chart winner so far. The question is, how reflective are those sales to retailers and hardcore message board fanboy missives to the reality of how Rebirth is selling to end customers and their reaction to it. If the books are sitting on retailer shelves (or worse horded by retailers and speculators after the Rebirth Special price bloat-it's on it's 4th printing, but some retailers and speculators are sitting on cases of the first print to sell at double to triple cover price down the road and at cons making it look like it is scarce and needs reprints, but the first printing never actually made it into end customer hands (neither did most of the second prints, or 3rd prints) as each printing is selling out at Diamond before it ever reaches shops, which means retailers aren't putting them out on the shelves (either sold to preorder customers and just held back).

The real test for Rebirth is going to be a year into it to see how it's still selling and how well it keeps its bi-weekly schedule. Twelve issues (one year in) the new 52 had stumbled and was showing a lot of cracks, by 24 issues in (2 years) it was falling apart except for 2-3 very good selling titles. Most of it was retailers correcting their orders to what was actually selling to end customers by the end of the first year, and then end customers losing interest in the second year. Rebirth will have 2 years worth of attrition possibility in its first year because of double-shipping, so we won't have a real accurate read for how well it is doing until that year in point. What will sales look like when retailers adjust to actual sales and how many readers will lose interest 24 issues in when it's not the shiny new thing and something else has captured their short attention span interest and thus their dollars?

It'd be great if the big 2 could stabilize the market and promote long term growth, but the market seems resistant to that and the big 2 are chasing the flashy numbers of sales to retailers not end customers because that's how the big2 make their money these days. Returnability should be a game changer, a sign of confidence in the books so retailers can order big and let the books find their audience-Image does it on some of their first issues of new series (usually first 3 issues) so the books can be promoted and find an audience, it limits the risk to retailers, but that's only the case if returnability happens before the books are ordered, not after they have been on sale for a month. When it happens them, it's a sign your partners (i.e. the retailers) are unhappy and is a means to avoid the torches and pitchforks if the grumbling gains steam and becomes the typical internet mod mentality. The timing of the returnability is the concern here-especially since it is occurring in the wake of the Hastings debacle while the industry is looking at the fall of Hastings due to their overordering of stuff that didn't sell and getting stuck with it contributing to their bankruptcy and the industry losing a retailer that was responsible by itself for about 5-10% of all direct market sales.

-M

Two years down the road...just in time for ...


GEOFF JOHNS RETURNS TO COMICS!!!

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA VS THE WATCHMEN!!!

FOR THE FATE OF THE DC UNIVERSE!!!

ONE MILLION VARIANT COVERS!!!

EXCLUSIVE ALAN MOORE COMMENTARY IN EACH ISSUE!!! (OK I made up this one )

And the shop I was in last week had just returned about 1000 copies of the various DC books that just didn't sell. He usually keeps over orders and blows them out as dollar books at cons, but he decided his budget was cut too thin this time and variant sales had slowed and didn't cover as much of the overage as it had in the past, so to make his books make sense and have capital on hand for the rest of the year he rounded up all the DCs and got credit for them, something he never did before on returnable books. He also had a lot of subscribers dropping because of double shipping earlier than he expected(has has his attrition rates for titles calculated out fairly well so he can adjust his orders according to the curve that his store has produced for years) and some dropping because of late changes to creative teams, so he had more unsold leftovers than he expected when he ordered.

Anecdotal, sure, but he basically said the market has changed and it makes more sense now to claim the returns than it has in the past for him, so JJM is correct, in the past it may not have meant much, but the game is changing and the past trends may not be as applicable as most think. We'll see.

-M

He said he actually sold about half of what he ordered in the first 2 weeks, and a good chunk of that was supplying other shop owners who had underordered and didn't want to deal with the hassle of Diamond reorders and get charged out the wahoo for shipping when/if Diamond decided to ship the reorders separate from their regular order as they do more often than not on smaller accounts. He was a bit worried though because off the shelf sales of the books outnumbered pull sales, but those off the shelf sales weren't translating into subscription adds, which is how things usually go in his shop. A lot of people were sampling and not coming back, or not adding to pull lists because they didn't want to commit to the books. He said his Batman sales were down with King not Snyder writing and that he had severely over-ordered on that thinking it would sell as well to end customers as the new52 book had because i's Batman afterall, but it didn't. He looked at the end customer sales bump new52 books had gotten and ordered aggressively, and he did see an uptick on initial sales on some of the books, but no where near the actual sales o end customers he got with the new52. The general feeling among his customers is that there is too many books on the market, too many to try many new things, and $6 a month is too much to commit to 1 title when they are balking at $4 a month for a title with Marvel books anyways. They aren't willing to drop books they are getting to try new things, and even the few that are, have too much too choose from right now so the anticipated end sales spike he thought would be there wasn't, and if DC was giving him an opportunity to get rid off books that weren't selling and recoup his money to spend on different books that might sell in the future, he was going to take it. This is the same dealer who 3 months after it came out, had scores of copies of Before Watchmen titles in his bargain bins at shows because he ordered aggressively, got and sold the limited variants to his hardcore variant collector customers and even selling he books at 50 cents to a buck each in con boxes added to his profits because the variants had paid for the high initial orders. But he said, the market has changed since then, and variant sales are not paying for the high initial orders this time around, and end sales aren't as high as he had anticipated (he's calling it reboot fatigue in the same vein he saw event sales trial off in his store overt he past 2 years) while sale son books like Walking Dead, Saga and others that offer a complete story reading experience are steadily growing. Cusotmers are telling him they are possibly interested, but prefer to either trade wait the Rebirth stuff or ry to cherry pick it from bargain bins down the road, hey don' want to commit to titles that constantly have late changes to creative teams and double ship, they would rather check it out down the road when it's cheaper and they already know what they will be getting.

Now sample size is small here, and anecdotal, and the industry might be experiencing something different overall and elsewhere it might be selling to end customers like gangbusters, but DC sales press releases are notorious for spin and DC execs are the ones who cancelled their regular column on CBR because retailers were pestering them with questions about actual sales vs the spin the press releases were throwing out there and other issues that didn't paint the rosy picture they wanted to sell in the column. This is the same group that showed up to celebrate the market share gains when the new52 launched then disappeared from the scene and any interviews when Marvel rebounded to retake the lead and new52 sale sfizzled, so the fac tthey are downplaying returns and pumping up marketshare gains again is par for the course and not necessarily an indication of what the reality is.

So like I said we'll see. Now that retailers are almost at the point where they are ordering Rebirth books after seeing how sales to end customers are actually doing, we will start seeing more accurate numbers in the order rather than guess work and optimistic (or pessimistic) forecasts.

I'd love to see DC and the industry have a big bounceback, but the press release stuff/spin and decisions making coming out of DC has that eerily familiar hollowness of what they did at the launch of the new52, which makes it all feel SS/DD with a new coat of paint feel rather than any actual change in the way they go about their business.

-M

per ICv2.com


DRAMATIC SHIFT IN DC SALES

Year over Year

Posted by Milton Griepp on October 17, 2016 @ 6:53 am CT




Comic sales in September demonstrate just how dramatic the "Rebirth" impact on DC Comics sales has been. A year ago, in September 2015, there were just six DC titles with sales over 50,000 copies (see "Top 300 Comics--September 2015"). In September 2016, one year later, there were 38 DC issues with sales over 50,000 copies (see "Top 300 Comics--September 2016").



We also took a look at sales of DC comics in September of 2011, the first month of the "New 52" relaunch. That month, there were 27 DC titles with sales over 50,000 copies.



To summarize:

Year

DCs Over 50,000

2016

38

2015

6

2011

27

The increase in the number of DCs selling over 50,000 copies this September vs. a year ago is dramatic, but perhaps not that meaningful because DC sales a year ago were at such a low ebb. But the comparison to the "New 52" launch month is more significant; a lot more DCs are selling well than were selling well during DCs last relaunch. Overall a very positive sign for DC and the strength of the "Rebirth" initiative.