Today, I’m staring down the initial order deadline for titles releasing in November. The initial order deadline is something I neglect to realize is coming until a few days before they’re due – and while there’s always a lot of prep that is done ahead of time, going through the order book will still take […]
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Blog: PW -The Beat (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: hip hop, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, convergence, Top News, The Retailer's View, Comics, Retailing & Marketing, Cancellations, Commentary, Add a tag
Blog: PW -The Beat (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Comics, DC, Comings & Goings, Cancellations, Breaking News, Future Comics, Deathstroke, Hawkman, Sterling Gates, Sword of Sorcery, Add a tag
TweetWhat a day. It’s been revealed that May will see six more DC titles cancelled, being Deathstroke, Hawkman, Team 7, Firestorm, Ravagers, and Sword of Sorcery. Some of the books have been going since the very start of The New 52 initiative…. some of them lasted for a much shorter period of time. Team 7, Ravagers and Sword [...]
Blog: Pop Goes the Library (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: TV, semi-serious, eulogies, cancellations, tongue-in-cheek, guilty pleasures, Chrismukkah, The O.C., Add a tag
Well, the writing was on the wall when the fourth season of my cheesy, yet strangely beloved teen soap The O.C. opened this September to pathetically low ratings. Fox has now cancelled my beloved guilty pleasure, with the finale set to air February 22. At least they're planning for it, and they're not just yanking it with narrative threads all a-dangle. In memoriam (since I totally missed eulogizing James Brown & Gerald Ford while I was on vacation with my family), a handful of good things The O.C. introduced to the world during its tenure on the airwaves:
- Nerd cool: let's face it, protagonist Seth Cohen (as played by the adorable Adam Brody) has brought sexy (okay, maybe a tepid "appealing" would be more accurate) back to nerdiness. A master stroke for skinny Death Cab-loving boys -- and the girls who never thought they'd love them -- everywhere.
- Mix CDs: these are nothing new, but the six official mix CDs that make up this show's soundtrack kick major sonic booty. Featuring artists like the aforementioned Death Cab, Sufjan Stevens, Mates of State, and Imogen Heap, they are gateway listening to indie rock nirvana and are therefore must-haves for my library's collection, and quite possibly for yours.
- Indie Rock Rocks: Well, duh. A major part of the show's appeal, for me, at least, was the fact that they played good music in every episode. And not just any good music -- good music on little labels like Kill Rock Stars, SubPop, and Sympathy For The Record Industry. It's a big deal for a major TV network to showcase long tail music. Let's give Fox some credit.
- Showcasing Michael Chabon: I didn't include this in my five things, but Michael Chabon is one of my favorite authors. Even when he is so (justifiably) in love with his own prose stylings that he can't, you know, move the darn story forward, I forgive him and love him. Hi, Michael! Wonder Boys is another of my all-time favorite books; I think I might like it even more than Kavalier & Clay, which fellow O.C. viewers will recognize as a core element in the Seth Cohen Starter Pack, the gift Seth bestows upon his two would-be ladyloves in the first Chrismukkah episode. Which brings me to...
- Chrismukkah! The all-purpose Winter Holiday for interfaith families (Seth's mother, Kirsten, is an ur-shiksa, a size 2 Nordic Goddess, married to a Nice Jewish Boy from the Bronx, Sandy) has enjoyed quite a boost in notoriety and popularity since The O.C.'s first season. As half of an interfaith couple myself, Chrismukkah really resonates with me, though my husband prefers his own coinage, Chanumas.
So long, O.C.! We hardly knew ye!
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>> “What’s more, it creates the appearance where Marvel, and the retailer, are attempting to unjustly profit from an appropriated culture.”
It’s amazing how much typing one can get done despite having one’s head wedged proudly up one’s own backside. Ignore a group? You are unjustly excluding them from participating. Feature a group? You are appropriating their culture for profit.
It’s almost as if the thought process were about moral preening rather than logic or principle.
Great column! I agree with so many things you said, but DC and Marvel do’t seem to give a s.it. Dc is not the only one lacking information on their products. My august marvel sales analysis will talk a little about how Marvel did not give a definite number of issues to people buying from the Previews.
To JRH: I appreciate your opinion on the matter. The point I was attempting to get across – and one that is actually made in the context of the article you pulled that from – is there is a difference between celebrating a culture, and holding that culture ransom using qualifiers that effectively limit the supply and manufacture demand – while ALSO ensuring there are unsold copies of the regular editions chocking out shelves and clogging up cash flow.
Just stop ordering variants.
Tell your customers you can’t offer variants anymore unless they are a standard variant that doesn’t require you to order additional copies (essentially a 50/50 mix).
Your good core customers will certainly understand.
The speculators (if you have any) will just have to go elsewhere (they were not exactly good sustaining customers anyway — I gurantee those guys will chase a bigger discount given the opportunity).
If I walked into my local comic shop and they had zero variants, it wouldn’t bothrr me one bit. I READ comics for the content between the covers, not because of some spiffy looking image on the outside. If publishers want to sell a comic, put your best image on the cover. Don’t go trying to sell it with multiple images. Sell me on the ONE awesome image and even more phenomenal interior material.
Great article! As I see it, variants are a deadly thing. On the one hand, I admit loving a lot of them. On the other, I see how badly it can damage retailers and almost force them to take a gamble. I think Valiant is one of the few companies that does variants right, avoiding any wild and wacky things that need to be done, instead opting for simple 1:10, 1:25, etc.
To Brandon: yeah, I went digital. But keep on defending the marginalized.
“The only reason to use older ordering models, is to placate the collector’s market, which is often volatile and always, always, always unsustainable.”
Pistols at dawn, dude.
I have 26 years of hard sales data that really really clearly shows that you will always sell more copies of the first issue of an ongoing series of a meaningful character than you will of a mini-series of the exact same thing. ASM #1 vs ASM #1.1 for a great nearly perfect “head to head” recent example — we gave the books to the same sub customers, and the ongoing not only did better in the short term (by about 15%), but went on to sell about another third more copies of the ongoing, after the “life” of the mini.
We also sold more copies of the collections of the “ongoing” v1 than we did of #1.1.
YES, the sales velocity of MOST periodical is measured in periods that span days (if not hours) — except when it isn’t. Then periodicals will sell and sell and sell if you let them.
I fundamentally and unreservedly revile your statement that this is about “collector’s markets” — we’re a readers store; always have been always will…. and readers are happy to enter into a periodical-driven comic months after release for a select group of titles.
I actually think that the very notion of “seasons” means there’s less of a reason to buy into a periodical, because there is less urgency to “Stay current” — and that “Wednesday Experience” is the engine that really drives a whole lot of this business.
“or rather, the market is supporting the weight of an immense amount of product with a third of the unique product as a base. This is not a sustainable model, but one that’s born out of the ever increasing pressure that the companies are under to keep profits and volume up.”
One thing that never gets brought up in these discussions is our friends at Diamond.
a 1:25 variant for a book that sells 50k copies yields a MAXIMUM circ of 2000 copies — that’s assuming all stores everywhere order exactly in increments of 25, which is patently not possible or true, or even WANTS the variant (some don’t!)
Diamond makes, we’ve always been led to believe, a limited single-digit percentage of cover price on at least Marvel and DC (the other three “premier” publishers are far less clear) — I think a comic like that might only be drawing a gross income of a few hundred dollars. Do you think that’s really paying for the costs of the infrastructure behind it?
I mean, six years ago DCD changed their minimum order threshold from small press to $2500, and one imagines their costs have risen since then — if we assume (and I suspect this is low, as an average) that Diamond is making 15% on a “small press” book (buying at 60% and selling at 45%), then it might be safe to assume that they’re looking for $375 per line item as being “worth it” to distribute. If they’re only making 6% on a DC/Marvel book… well you can do the math and see that handling *most* variants probably isn’t “worth it” for Diamond — especially since I bet you those are the comics most subject to petty complaints about condition and outright lying about receipt, and therefore that cost Diamond the MOST to handle.
It’s a bigger concern, I think, how much bandwidth and resources that Marvel just absolutely wastes for everyone else for just marginal gains that would be much more sustainable if they put that brainpower into different marketing fun — even not caring about Variants in the main store, it take me like 50% more time to do the Marvel order than any other publisher because it’s fiscally foolish to not run their weird math and see if huh, by buying 15 more copies of SAM WILSON CAPTAIN AMERICA #1, *they pay me* $1.42, and I have 15 more copies to try to sell… or liquidate for more profit….and it unlocks a 1:25 that also generally offers a better margin.
But that’s not something that is currently presented to us programatically, and it just consumes a lot of time and attention to do those maths… and it doesn’t inherently sell-through more copies. All for me, at least.
Like… if you’re going to have “order 150% of Y in order to unlock Z”, and you’re doing this on a multi-title plan like the Hip Hops, at least have Y *be a constant and not a variable*. If you make a path to order a product difficult, AND you make it difficult to understand, then you will invariably create friction and poor customer experience somewhere in the chain, and that’s the last thing you ever want to do. “I’d love to order you ‘every Hip Hop cover’ [Beloved Customer Name], but Marvel won’t actually let me do that unless I buy 200 comics I don’t believe I can sell” or “No, I know, [A Different Beloved Customer], that we are ‘”The” SANDMAN store’, but I am physically incapable of ordering you that awesome Jean James cover, ironically because I sell so many copies of SANDMAN!” are not conversations that I, oddly, enjoy having. Go figure!
-B
And somethig hasn’t been said also about this variant crazyness: it kills al of the fun of the back issue search. Before, you were able to identify a specific issue by its cover. You knew you had this specific issue because you remembered the cover. Now, you can’t search and buy back issue, relating on their covers, because you will see in back issues bin tons of covers you don’t know…of comics you already purchased.
It just kills the identity of a specific issue of a comics, which is never good in the long term.
that was me :p
Order the amount you think you’ll sell.