Thanks Paul!!

:)

Er, yes it would. Honest.

I’m more of an idea man. I leave the actual number-crunching to others. (Actually it’s a time issue. However, since Paul already has the data, the marginal additional time to run the regressions would not be terribly onerous for him–not that I’m volunteering him to do even more work than he already does!)

“One could take the statistical market data one step further and create an electronic futures market for titles.”

Well, this wouldn’t really work because there is no underlying security. In other words, even if a future issue sells more than expected, there is no way for a speculator to make profits off of that (unlike, say, oil futures, where if you lock in a low price now for December light crude, and December light crude is actually quite expensive, you have profited).

However, you are right that if regressions work as I describe above (and I am not convinced that they would), you would be able to determine better what causes sales of an individual comic to increase or decrease. It could, conceivably, be a really useful marketing tool. Indeed, flaming gorillas on motorcycles might be shown to positively affect sales in isolation from whatever is happening in the market for comics as a whole. Right now, editors just make guesses about this kind of thing; it’s time to bring science into these decisions, since as we know, art is greatly improved when artistic decisions are made using hard-core numeric marketing data, as opposed to such intangibles as talent, inspiration, or genius.

03/07 M.A. Avengers #11 - 7,068 ( +0.2%)
04/07 M.A. Avengers #12 - 7,092 ( +0.3%)
05/07 M.A. Avengers #13 - 7,251 ( +2.2%)

02/07 M.A. Spider-Man #24 - 6,678 ( +6.5%)
03/07 M.A. Spider-Man #25 - 6,408 ( -4.0%)
04/07 M.A. Spider-Man #26 - 6,478 ( +1.1%)
05/07 M.A. Spider-Man #27 - 6,818 ( +5.2%)

03/07 S-M Loves Mary Jane #16 - 6,279 ( +2.6%)
04/07 S-M Loves Mary Jane #17 - 6,332 ( +0.8%)
05/07 S-M Loves Mary Jane #18 - 6,490 ( +2.5%)

02/07 M.A. Fantastic Four #21 - 4,508 ( +1.1%)
03/07 M.A. Fantastic Four #22 - 4,588 ( +1.8%)
04/07 M.A. Fantastic Four #23 - 4,604 ( +0.3%)
05/07 M.A. Fantastic Four #24 - 4,807 ( +4.4%)

I think it’s great that some kids comics are going up in sales, but I wonder why.

hmmm… would an ape riding a motorcycle through a roaring fire increase sales? #1 reboots with big name creators? Announced cancellations? missed ship dates? and what funny suit jackets would traders wear on the sales floor of the Comics Exchange?

And yet, if Rich Johnston is to be believed, Dan Didio’s contract got renewed!?! Best thing Paul Levitz could do now is have Countdown’s final issue end with Earth-2 Superman stepping out of the shower to the revelation that the past 20 years [real time] have all been a dream. Couple that with an announcement that Didio’s been fired and an immediate line-wide relaunch with all but Superman, Batman and Detective Comics restarting at #1, and you’ve got the kind of clean slate, hard reboot that will get media attention, pique reader interest — old and new — and give DC a shot at not just stopping the bleeding but pumping some life back into its superhero line.

It’ll never happen, of course, but wouldn’t it be great to see them have the courage to attempt it?

First, look at month by month percent increase or decrease for Marvel as a whole (i.e., the change in total number of units sold divided by the previous month’s total number of units sold). Then run a statistical regression for the history of individual titles with the recent history of of Marvel as a whole.

This would give you a “beta” for an individual title–in other words, it would show you whether it tends to change or swing more or less than the entire Marvel line.

The reason that this would be interesting is that it would help differentiate between increases or decreases in a comics’ sales based on the popularity of that particular title as opposed to increases or decreases based on the popularity of the Marvel line. In other words, say Marvel runs a big, cross-line event that is successful. In theory, it should have a tendency to increase sales (or at least slow the decrease of sales) of most titles they publish. We could determine that by comparing the change in the individual title and the change in the line, and using the beta to come up with a theoretical change that we compare to the actual change. In that way, we could see if a specific title is getting the expected boost from a line-wide event.

Likewise, making such a comparison each month of expected change versus actual change would show us if any title seems to be showing unusual growth or shrinkage that cannot be attributed to some line-wide change–and if so, you could speculate why. (Obviously the “why” is the most interesting question–and always the most speculative.)

This business of regressions and betas is pure statistics, and specifically in this case it comes from stock trading, where returns on individual securities are compared to market-wide returns. (If you go to Reuters and look up a stock, it will give you its beta amongst the other information. Ford Motor Company’s beta is currently 1.92.) The same sort of basic statistical analysis done on stocks might be interesting if performed on Marvel (or DC) monthly sales.