Print runs are set by preorders. If people who want the book don't preorder it with their retailers, retailers don't order enough, and print runs aren't set high enough to meet actual demand. The entire direct market model is based on selling books to people who already want them, and in the modern market that has come to mean those who preorder books not walk in foot traffic customers. There are too many books and too much risk on retailers end for them to risk overordering on a book they don't have preorders for, so the number of shelf copies are often limited. Add in the fact that many comic retailers had their cash reserved depleted during pandemic shut downs and the market is not robust enough for many of them to have built reserves back up, and many accounts were required by Diamond to pay for a week's shipment of books at the time of delivery so shop that don't have a lot of liquidity cannot afford to order books they are not 100% sure will sell because if they fall short one week, they can't get the next week's shipment to sell to raise revenue. As Brian Hibbs has pointed out several times, the way margins work, retailers need to sell 4 out of every 5 books they order to break even (this factors in not just cost of the books, but cost of shipping, labor coasts, operating costs, etc.). If you sold 4, but order 6, you lost money on that book, so if you have preorders for 4 copies, ordering 6 is a very risky proposition. And when a book gets good buzz, or is one people were hesitant to preorder and then decide to go buy it after final order cut offs (which are like 1-2 months before a book ships and many people who may want the book may not even know it is happening yet to let a retailer know they want it, but orders and print runs are then locked in at that point. Publishers usually only do minimal overprints above preorders to cover damages, so the only copies available for reorders are those extra copies that weren't used to replace copies damaged in shipment to retailers. Vary rarely, a publisher will believe in a book and overprint, but those are by far exceptions and not the rule. So whenever a book gets a late surge in demand, either after FOC but before release, or after release, there's not often enough copies to meet that demand and additional printings happen. The problem is the marketing hype usually comes in 2 phases-when announced and solicited, and then when completed previews are available. The issue is that second part usually happens after FOC, so it's too late for retailers to adjust their orders at that point if that second wave of marketing works, and too risky to up orders before then in case it doesn't. Add in the nasty wave of flippers and speculators raiding comic shops and snapping up existing shelf copies to slab nd or flip on ebay immediately to exploit the demand and shortages for their profits and it makes it near impossible for retailers to anticipate demand on some books with reasonable accuracy and order accordingly without risking their cash flow in the process. Add in that later printings often have new variant covers, so some collectors who got 1st printings still want later printings because of collectability, so again its hard to gauge what actual demand is, and those flippers do the same thing with later printings that they do with first printings, muddying the water even more. So good luck if you are a retailer trying to accurately set your orders so there are enough copies to satisfy demand without destroying your cash flow if you guess wrong.

But multiple printings of popular books in not a new phenomenon in comics. Action Comics #1 was so popular in 1939 it went back to press 3 times, we just don't hear about it because some folks don't want to try to parse which extant copies are which printing and how if at all that would effect values. God knows the folks at CGC are incapable of doing that, even when there are some distinctive ways to distinguish between printings.

Publishers shouldering the books and allowing returnability on books would ease a lot of this, but their margins aren't big either and many smaller publishers would be pushed to the brink if they had to absorb those costs, and cover prices would certainly go up even more to cover it for all customers, which might eat into the demand. so there's not an easy solution, and it's at the heart as to why the direct market is not one with a lot of growth potential, because it's too risky and too difficult for retailers to shoulder the burden of stocking copies for potential new customers to buy because if those new customers don't show, they won't be able to stay in business for long. but any potential new customer is likely to miss out on stuff they might be interested because they didn't know 3 months in advance they wanted it to preorder it.


-M

PS add in the existence of multiple distributors now and having to navigate different tiers of discounts based on overall volume of purchases from each one affecting exactly what your margins on each book is only adds to the difficulty of the algebra each retailers must do each month to try to find the right formula that allows their store to remain profitable. Then they have to do it again with any non-comics stuff they carry (gaming materials, snacks, toys, apparel, book distributors, etc. and such to protect the balance between cash flow and potential revenue stream while also being on the floor waiting on customers and doing the labor intensive work of checking and and putting out orders several days during the week and wading through multiple newssites an social media feeds to see the PR hype each and every book is getting and the reaction to it and how that may affect the alchemy of ordering each and every book in the monthly catalog.

If there's unsold copies sitting around at lots of dealers, the books likely not going to multiple printings. And often, it's the big volume dealers like Midtown, Lonestar, DCBS, Westfield, etc. who are the ones getting the high buy in variants, not the local small business owner run shops who don't do the volume normally to quality. Some do if they specifically have a customer who requests it and who shoulders the cost of the buy in, but all of that is figured into the preoder numbers and thus the print run. It's the books that don't get the preorder numbers (probably because they don't have 100 different variants or high buy in variants) that get late buzz or unexpected buzz and disappear from shelves quickly where the flipper effect becomes a negative issue for retailers trying to satisfy their regular customers' demand for the book.

The complaint I hear over and over again from the retailers I know about flippers is they are not regular customers. They provide no reliable and repeated revenue flow for their shop. They only show up when one of those books hits looking to scavenge copies, which while the short term revenue may be nice, if it prevents those regular reliable customers from getting copies and lowers customer satisfaction, it may hurt the shop long term if that regular customer has to shop elsewhere to get what they want. And for most shops, it is those long term steady repeated sales that keep them in business, not one time quick hits.


-M

Void Rivals #1 is now up to it's 8th printing. I've never seen that before now. Even if it's the variant covers that are driving these new printings, it feels like it's not going to end anytime soon. It just seems crazy to me.