ack. luv ya, but ack.

"ack"?

Not sure if I linked this article here before, it's from The Atlantic back in May and analyzes why sales are down for Marvel ways they they can possibly reach out and gain new readership and actually get people to stick around. It more focuses on what not to do thought, which is pretty much the way Marvel's business practices (an to a lesser extend DC's) are currently going about things.

-M

Those 5 million copies, is it worldwide ?

That's interesting. Could it be the lack of appeal for caped Superheroes ?

How much does the Asterix book cost? I can't imagine if a brand new original book about Superman was released , it would reach 5 million units ordered.

If the book is targeted at the niche audience that prefers monthly floppies, just changing format isn't likely to make it appeal to a broader audience. Just look at the Earth One OGN and Season One OGNs Marvel and DC tried. The format changed, but the type of content was the same kind of stuff that only appeals to the hardcore niche audience. There is no market mechanism in place to get that kind of book to the wider audience. There are books that sell well to wider audiences, for instance Ms. Marvel and Moon Girl sold extremely well when offered by Scholastic, no exact numbers were available but anecdotal accounts put them at selling anywhere from 5 to 10 x the number of copies they did through Diamond in trade. That's not anywhere near Asterix numbers, but it's a damn bit more than anything coming out of the direct market not named Walking Dead is doing with wider audiences. Graphic novel imprints from the big 7 book publishers are doing very good numbers with OGNs in the book market (books like March featuring John Lewis's story) did very well in the book trade and each new volume of it (there are 3) have sparked more sales on previous volumes. It helps that Lewis and the creators did late night and early morning tv talk show appearances promoting the books when they came out, because they are sold like <gasp> books and promoted like books and put in places where people buy books, something comic publishers like Marvel and DC don't seem inclined to put much effort into anymore (if ever). (As an aside Sana Amanat did do appearances on Kimmel promoting Ms. Marvel and other Marvel stuff right around the time the books were tearing up Scholastic sales, coincidence?).

The thing is comic publishers are slavishly devoted to the idea of if we build it they will come, even when they try other formats than the monthly floppy, but the sad truth is they aren't coming. You have to go to them, but that's work and investment and means you can't simply cater to the hardcore comic fan audience, collect your money and move on to the next event or cross-over.

Taking a 6 issue comic story that doesn't appeal to a wider audience and repackaging it into a single volume (or bypassing serialization to put the same story out as an OGN) is not going to change anything. Doing that is missing the forest for the trees. You have to produce content the audience wants, and there is a demand for super-hero content out there, but not the continuity-porn never changing status quo pablum that is offered month in and month out to hardcore comic fans. If you produce product that caters only to an audience that numbers less than 250K and doesn't appeal to a wider audience, you cannot reasonably expect it to sell to a larger number than that.

The conundrum for Marvel and DC right now is every time they produce content that might appeal to a wider audience, that niche audience rebels because they are not being catered to, and won't allow product to be produced for other markets even if it is in addition to (not instead of) the product they want. In order to find a bigger audience, they may have to let go of the hardcore niche that sustained them (but is not really doing that any more) unless some other solution is found. That is risky, There is no guarantee they will find a larger audience elsewhere, there is no doubt there core niche is shrinking via attrition and not finding any real growth without it being a zero sum gain (i.e. any growth in one area equals losses in other areas so there is no actual net gain or growth). The month Dark Metal #1 sold 250K units, the industry as a whole was down a sizable percentage, meaning even though DM sold 250K, everything else sold less and the overall market sold less for the month despite the one titles success.

I don't foresee Marvel of DC doing anything that will change the current paradigm or find anything near the success of Asterix. As bad as things are in the current industry, they still benefit the most from the current status quo, so there is no inventive for them to challenge the status quo. There's no superficial change that will fix things.

There are things that can be done to try to achieve growth, but they are small baby steps that won't change quarterly reports enough or soon enough to get the big 2 behind them. It's got to be grass roots, done by fans, creators, retailers, and publishers to build interest and get comics that will interest people into the hands of people who will appreciate reading them and potentially buy more of them. David Petersen (creator of Mouse Guard) had a lot to say on the subject at the Ringo Awards. Look at what some of the successful retailers (like those who win the Spirit of Retailing Eisner Awards) are doing to grow their customer base. Look at how the bib 7 book publishers are building their audiences/customer base for their OGN lines, etc. Asterix-like numbers in the US market is not going to happen overnight, and maybe not ever, but there can be growth, but not by doing the same old same old things and peddling the same old same old comics no matter what format they are in.

-M