Interesting conversation over at ICv2, the comics analysis/trend-tracking site.
First, Steve Bennett writes about underperforming titles from a retailer perspective, essentially suggesting that shop owners “just say no” to low-selling books:
And what we can do is stop ordering certain comics. I know we’ve been down this road before but if you haven’t already, take a look at the ICv2 Top 300 Actual Comics list for April, in particular the bottom. I knew comic books sales were down but, man, when a color superhero comic book from Marvel or DC sells 15,000 copies or under you really have to wonder what the breakeven point is for the publishers. I know this may sound crazy, but maybe if they published fewer comics the circulation of the comics they did publish would actually go up.
Then, graphic novel reviewer and library consultant Katharine Kan chimes in with her own perspective, which is, “Hey, waitaminit—low-selling titles are often GOOD!”
Those low-selling titles may be selling at lower numbers, but it doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. Retailers should instead encourage their customers to set up pull lists for those titles. I have never depended on a shop carrying what I want to buy for 12 years.
Obviously, many of you highly enlightened readers bypass the direct market and order your books from HeavyInk, but still:
What’s your take on this? Do low-selling books need to be crushed beneath the bootheel of the top sellers in order to strengthen the marketplace? Or are the low-selling titles often the under-the-radar classics that make comics collecting fun?
(And can you tell which side of the argument I’m on?)
Thanks to Dan for the heads-up on these articles!
Comments
Interesting.
I can understand why a comic book shop would think that it would be a good idea initially to drop anything that wouldn’t sell mass quantities of stock. If you drop the low-sellers, profits go up, right
My problem with this is that even though main-stream titles are good, you see so much more innovation with the smaller names. When it does happen, it gets dropped (The Boys was originally under Wildstorm, a DC subsidary and was dropped supposedly because of the parodying of the Justice League. Thankfully it’s now a part of Dynamite Entertainment).
The interesting thing about the Long Tail is that the total amount of sales of items that sell 1 copy a week can be a lot higher than the total amount of sales of items that sell 10 copies a day.
Why?
Because there might be a thousand times as many slow sellers as fast sellers, so this more-than offsets the slower individual sales.
Jeff Bezos at Amazon gets this.
Over at SmartFlix, we carry 6,000 different how-to DVDs, and most of them are very slow renters…but 5,000 slow renters adds up to a ton of DVDs moving all the time!
At HeavyInk, we intend to carry the full range of every comic book, every graphic novel, every statue, every toy, every game, etc. that Diamond carries…and a lot more indy / small press stuff that Diamond doesn’t carry.
Also, quantity has a quality all it’s own – when you know that your local brick-and-mortar store is unlikely to carry some weird little title from a minor publisher, but you know that HeavyInk will definitely carry it, that helps you make the decision to just move all your subs over to HeavyInk.
...at least that’s the theory!
Titles that are good (by which I mean, there’s an audience out there for them) may be poor-selling because no one has been able to connect title to audience. The DM seems very good at putting superhero comics published mostly by four or five pretty firmly established companies and/or massive media conglomerates in front of the few people in the world who are already superhero comic readers. It seems not so good at connecting other sorts of titles with other sorts of people.
Enter Heavy Ink, stage left.
Or maybe stage right. Or stage crazy. I dunno. But I should probably leave politics out of this… ;-)
I do think the industry needs to be more focused on the quality of titles and not the collectability. Comics aren’t stocks. They don’t go up because Marvel arbitrarily decided to print a 15-to-1 variant. That being said, I think there needs to be a massive axing of titles from the big 2, less volume of floppies (especially initial series) and a push toward quick TPBs. My logic behind that is that retailers won’t be stuck with so many stagnant issues they’ll never sell and those who really want the issues but missed out on initial releases can always collect the trades.
I’ve grinded this axe before but I’ll grind it again:
I would love to see the lower-level selling titles used to really experiment with format and delivery method.
Blue Beetle could come out every three months as a 120-page digest-sized graphic novel for $9.95.
Checkmate could go to a digital-only release with trade collections that gather issues every six months or year.
Birds of Prey could go to a 99 cent newsprint monthly format with higher-end trade collections.
But yeah—this guy’s nuts. Why eliminate low-selling quality titles to help the big sellers sell more? Does that mean the Big Two are gonna cancel those low titles and work twice as hard to make the big titles BETTER? Probably not…they’ll just cancel the low titles and we’ll be stuck with big sellers that are often crappy, with very little variation and experimentation.
I think often times the low selling books are either the really bad ones, and the really great ones. Just the way it is; all mediums are like that.
Most of the books I read are definitely not in the top 100…. mind you, I don’t really read that many books from the Big 2.
However, if they did cancel a low selling Big 2 book that I happened to read, I highly doubt it would cause me to decide to pick up one of their higher selling books… I mean, if I wasn’t interested in said higher selling book in the first place, why would I want to seek it out now…? Canceling that low selling book would only make me stop buying one of their books.
From a retailer’s POV I can understand this. As a fan and an aspiring comic book writer any comment to cancel lower selling titles are discouraging.
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