And publishers only make that worse by focusing on the lowest common denominator. It seems to me that superhero comics used to level with their audience more, rather than pandering to it. On the other hand, characters only became popular in the publishers’ eyes because people wanted to see more of them. That’s very different from comic book writer/artists with their own creative vision who can stick with it, which probably explains some of the popularity of manga: it tells its stories without being yanked around by marketeers as much as DC/Marvel books have in this century.

(which is all conjecture on my part, of course, but does that really need saying?)

Interesting stuff to read, but in the end I think it all boils down to this: what’s visible and recognizable will obviously outsell what’s more obscure (both in the literal and figurative way). That doesn’t imply any judgment of value though, so what’s there to argue about, really?

One of my interests is rationalizing the universe in which superheroes operate. I believe that practically any power can be linked to a particular human gene or gene-like (viral) sequence in the human genome (or be based, of course, on technology). Such genes can be artificial or natural; one can envision an organic android, who possesses a genome studded with multiple artificial genes which can be turned on and off in various configurations as desired.

Psionic energy doesn’t have to be written as vague wish fulfillment. The energy could be defined as units (neurolts) convertible into equivalent units of kinetic energy. The power levels of individuals could be rated (similar to the numerical ratings of Kirlian auras in Piers Anthony’s “Cluster” series of SF novels).

If superhero stories were written in ways that made them practically indistinguishable from SF, would they be appealing? Or is the concept of the superhero just a turnoff?

SRS

Doesn’t your first sentence lose sight of the fact that Brian’s argument is about how well it appeals to or works for non-DM readers? And doesn’t the rest of that paragraph lack anything other than anecdotal evidence?

You haven’t been to NYPL for a while if you think that Donnell has a big comics collection. It’s closed for good because the building was sold. (Absolute shame, too.)

Having said that, you’re right, I’m wrong. There’s quite a few copies of NL&R at NYPL:

http://leopac6.nypl.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=123BK820109T1.29597&menu=search&aspect=basic&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=dial–3&ri=3&source=~!dial&index=TW&term=new+love+and+rockets&x=6&y=15&aspect=basic

In the end it doesn’t matter what your personal feelings towards IC are, it sells, period. One of three things happens when it sells, either a reader throws their arms in the air and gives up, they get on wikipedia and figure it out, or they come into a lcs and buy back issues/trade paper backs. I can’t help the first example, but the second two are potential customers.

I mean Hulk is not the best book in the world, but people sure do buy it and they actively come in to buy it. Would I rather people bought Comic Book Comics? Hell yes, but THE BIG BOOK will always out. It is our responsibilty as retailers to nuture both the reader who wants whatever big book there is (and notice what books they may like as a result) and help out those readers who want something a little more substantial. You know this though. Instead of worrying why something sells, why not just recognize that it does and turn that into a win for you?

We can argue all day long as to why L&R seems to perform better in the DM, or why Manga was a powerhouse for a few years in the Mass Market, or why Infinite Crisis sells so well in trade in both markets. Again, its fun to do, but it is up to us to recognize what sells nationally, but more important what sells in our microcosm…. capitalize on that and grow our customer base.

Bookscan charts and Diamond charts are a tool, both fallible in their own ways, both extremely useful in their own ways.

So I think Heidi and Dirk are both right — Bookscan isn’t an accurate picture of sales, but it is one tool to gather an insightful estimate.

As for all the other stuff about art books and genre books and DM and manga and libraries, I have no idea, but who needs more ideas in a 70+ reply post?

Really, everyone here knows that Japan more or less has cornered the American comic book market. Why argue about superheroes versus indie when this basic fact is true?

Actually, that’s not true. Crisis On Infinite Earths was not collected until 1998, and even then it was a pricey hardcover with a limited print run. Affordable paperback edition wasn’t published until 2001.

Next year we’ll have 12 books and 15 months worth of numbers. So maybe I’ll be a bit more informed then.

:)

Unbelievable! I fail to check in with CNN for a couple of days and miss the fact that Time Travel has been all figured out. That’ll teach me.

John

That’s probably true to a certain degree. But it also stars famous characters that have DECADES worth of brand awareness. That goes a long way. And people won’t realize how confusing it is till they’ve already bought it. Some people just keep buying things because they like the characters or want to see what’s happened to the characters they used to love.

Ironically, Scott Pilgrim 5 has outsold Secret Invasion TP in our store.

But Scott Pilgrim’s sales pattern is more akin to a periodical than a tp because it is all-new material.

Outside of Watchmen, some of our highest-selling tps and hcs over the past few years have been ogns: Pilgrim, the Joker HC, Pride of Baghdad, LOEG Black Dossier.

Similarly, series like Walking Dead, Y and Fables (and newer series like Criminal, Boys, DMZ, Sword, Umbrella Academy) also sell heavily on release because to people who only read the tpbs, they are new material.

I am probably arguing this in the wrong place but I have a different perspective on Infinite Crisis.

1) First, it’s a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, which–along with Watchmen and Dark Knight–is one of the few comics from 1985-86 to still be in print (and has been continuously for 20 years).

2) Second, IC sells for the same reason COIE: even casual curious readers love the idea that a story has everybody in it, lots of costumes and lots of fights. (Remember, both COiE and IC were credited with bringing Marvel readers to DC–readers who reportedly loathed the “inside baseball”/multiple earths stuff.)

3) If Amazon and the B&N websites are part of the Bookscan total, then it is fair to presume these books are selling to the existing fan base who may purchase periodicals from DM retailers like you and me. But they buy their higher-priced tpb and hc items from discount websites. Certainly there is anecdotal evidence that whlle sales of Absolute Sandman v1 were strong in the DM, sales of later volumes seem to have emigrated to the online discounters.

For the record, I seem to have enjoyed Infinite Crisis more than you. And like Final Crisis, it is much more enjoyable in the book collection (IC includes some edits that improve on the perodicals).

Steven: Re “If Quesada is claiming that the readership is demanding events and event tie-ins, then he’s basically calling the readership in general stupid” — Christopher already refuted this, but no, “stupid” is your value judgment, not Joe’s. What he’s doing is looking at sales figures and seeing what the audience is buying. Not the only way of deciding what sort of fiction to publish (and, I know, not the only way Marvel makes decisions). But not a cynical one, either.

Regarding libraries, I have nothing to say except that the New York City system has 117 copies of Bob Haney’s Super-Sons trade paperback in its collection.

To answer your questions: “Where are people who are bypassing the DM for whatever reason buying their books at?
Why are they buying their books there?
How much of the current comic book buying is lost to the DM?”

I just need point out this from your post: “I’ve befriended a comic shop owner who explained to me why it’s a chore for him to order anything not in the front of Previews.”

There you go.

I’ve had it trying to buy books at local comic shops. All I see are stuff from the front of Previews. I’d love to go to a shop and leaf through books (like you state that you do) but I can’t do that at “your average LCS” (for want of a better term.

They forced me to seek elsewhere, and I have. Other non-comic only books stores and the internet, as well as comic conventions (MOCCA, SPX).

I can only ASSUME that the comic shops don’t want me as a customer if all they’ll order from is from the front of Previews.

Kinda. BookScan includes sales from Amazon, B&N.com, Powells.com, and so on. It wouldn’t include, say, Khepri though (but who is certainly buying through DM channels)

“Why is it so hard to believe that Infinite Crisis sells well in the book market? It was a high profile book that years after is still being talked about”

Personally, I think INFINITE CRISIS is the very definition of “insider baseball”, that it doesn’t make any sense if you don’t have decades of comics reading under your belt, and barely makes sense if you do. It is, I think, the poster child for “what people in bookstores supposedly don’t want”

Also, we can only track about 6200 copies sold in the DM for it — which means the bookstore market just about doubled that, yikes!

-B

Yes. This. Thank you.

I absolutely agree with everything you just said.

I’ve befriended a comic shop owner who explained to me why it’s a chore for him to order anything not in the front of Previews. He makes a profit of about $400/week. He’s so worried about tying up too much money in a front of the Previews book that won’t sell through that processing my order sometimes escapes his thoughts. OK, cool, I get that, you know? To add to that, like you said, Joe, I’m not always comfortable ordering books sight unseen. So, it’s easier for me to wait until I can leaf through a book at the bookstore and buy from Amazon, totally bypassing the LCS. That’s the discussion I think needs to take place - where are people who are bypassing the DM for whatever reason buying their books at? Why are they buying their books there? How much of the current comic book buying is lost to the DM?

I’m not buying the argument anymore that people don’t want to read comics or that kids are too distracted by video games. Look at manga. Manga is a category that rose up totally in spite of the DM and really can’t be dismissed as just a fad anymore. Manga is doing something right everyone is missing.

Trying to compare Naruto to Love & Rockets isn’t going to help anyone out. One book is selling like the Bible in Utah and one is only appealing to the lit minded set. The elephant that everyone is doing their best to avoid is what appeal does manga hold that it can defy all conventional sales knowledge?

Actually, the more I think about it, trying to compare Love & Rockets to anything is kinda silly. The Hernandez brothers and Fantagraphics together made a decision to change the format to generate more sales. I don’t think anyone expected sales to equal Watchmen, Naruto, or the DaVinci Code. Anyone who is trying to make a case for those sales as equivalent is reaching. The question remains - how is manga selling so well with virtually no support from comic stores? How can comic stores tap into that?

Catnyp (the research catalog) does not have a copy. LEO, the branch catalog, shows 30 copies available.

http://leopac3.nypl.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1R354VM627906.16512&menu=search&aspect=numeric&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=dial–3&ri=&index=ISBN&term=9781560979517&x=0&y=0&aspect=numeric

And I warn you all… NYPL has an EXTENSIVE circulating collection of graphic novels. 1415 titles under the subject “graphic novels” (more if you include subcategories). The Donnell Library Center and the Mid-Manhattan branch have the best selection. All circulating books can be reserved as well.

I stock the graphic novels section for an independent kidslit bookstore in Altanta, GA. Because we a)don’t have the space to stock much manga (if a series is over a half-dozen volumes, we can’t devote the shelf space to it), and b) I have to be fairly cautious about appropriate content (there are more books about superheroes I can stock in the store than comics, to be honest)– over 90% of our GNs are independents (we do have an adult section where we stock older/mature material, but, let’s face it, superheroes just aren’t competitive there, except maybe Watchmen).

We are a NYT bestseller list reporting store, but none of our sales go through bookscan. We are the “go to” store for author visits in the area: this year we got Jeff Kinney, over every B&N in the region (maybe it’s because of their financial woes, but Borders doesn’t seem to compete for authors here). Last year we had Patrick McDonnell, Mo Willems, Marc Brown, Rick Riordan, and the author/artist of the new Madeleine book, just to name a few of the biggies.

We have had net growth over the last year, as opposed to many, many bookstores and comic book stores, chain and independent, both locally and nationally. But again, none of our sales are reported to Bookscan.

What do we sell in the GN section? Bone, obviously, but more broadly, if it’s a GN from Scholastic, or from any big publisher and kid-friendly, we’ve tried it and had some success (Don Wood’s Into the Volcano didn’t do so well, but I’m guessing that’s because it’s hardback). Have any of you even heard of Rapunzel’s Revenge? It’s written by Shannon Hale, a big kidslit author, and outsells all Star Wars titles, and superhero titles (which consists of a couple of batman and spider-man books) we carry–it’s from Scholastic. Also, that recent Frank omnibus is a regular seller. Lots of the Top Shelf and First Second catalogs. Several NBM titles. In the adult section, David B’s Epileptic was one of our book group selections this year.

Graphic novels are not huge here, but they are perennial. And I’m guessing that our sales are competitive with, or beat several DM stores in the greater Atlanta area.

Put another way:
what do the various stores devote most of their graphic novel section/comics specific shelfspace to? DM comics outlet: superhero GNs. B&N chain outlet: manga. Independent bookstores: independent GNs. And of these three types of stores, which are there no statistics for?

All of this disregards libraries. And where are librarians getting their suggestions from? Well, in every community I’ve ever lived in where there’s a good independent bookstore? Librarians are going there, not to their local direct market comic book store or the local big chain box store.

But I will say that comic book stores seem woefully ill-equipped to serve the market that’s they have a home-court-advantage in, and if independent/art GN publishers went away tomorrow, we would have very little interest in, what is for us, right now, a growing section of our business.

“Kenny” isn’t a made up name. It’s my actual Goddamn name. Geez, you can’t not be an insulting jackass, can you?

I’m not sure how you read all that into what was said on the video. Quesada is payed by the retailers to produce that sells for the stores. What he’s telling us is a reality he has to contend with as a publisher, not any kind of low opinion of the fans. In fact, I see him going out of his way to explain this stuff to the fans and everyone else alike, because he believes that they are capable of understanding it. I see heads of other companies being condescending smart asses at panels all the time, but not him. I also see (despite so many peoples complaints) an EIC that makes sure that every comic that comes out of Marvel is a quality product, written and drawn by people who love what they do, and produced with the latest printing technology, on the most beautiful glossy paper. These comics may not suit your taste all the time, but I would find it very hard to believe that Quesada is simply pandering to what he feels are the lowest common denominator in intellect.

Here’s some information from OCLC’s WorldCat (the version libraries use, not worldcat.org, which is a useful tool).

171 libraries in 36 states (and two foreign countries) have cataloged at least one copy of “Love and Rockets: New Stories #1″. Again… OCLC does not include ALL libraries on the face of the planet, just the ones which subscribe to their bibliographic network. As a comparison, 1130 libraries have cataloged Watchmen (9780930289232) and 4087 the Da Vinci Code (9780385504201).

http://firstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSQUERY?format=BI:next=html/records.html:bad=html/records.html:numrecs=10:sessionid=fsapp1-36216-frkoyem1-48tx8x:entitypagenum=2:0:searchtype=advanced

(The New York Public Library allows online access to this database with a valid library card. The Catnyp catalog is available to all.)

Hibbs tries to prove the DM is the place best suited to sell art comics, insinuating that if they can’t do it then maybe people just don’t want to buy them. Dirk shows that art comics DO sell outside the DM, but also outside of Bookscan’s range, but now we’re nit picking a comment he made about libraries and marketing? No wonder the Internet’s reputation for thoughtful discourse is about as low as GW Bush’s approval ratings.

Besides, hasn’t Diamond effectively made a lot of this old flame war moot? Without the low-selling floppies that the fans of art comics probably still go to the DM to get, I imagine most will finally give up on the DM (those that haven’t already) and start shopping exclusively on-line or at bookstores. I know I’ve already been pushed to that point myself. If it wasn’t for still looking at bargain bins and grabbing a couple of Image, IDW, etc. books every now and again, I’d have no reason to go at all. I’d buy more comics but the DM seems to keep trying to make that harder and harder without ordering everything months in advance sight unseen. Even then, most retailers I’ve encountered act as if it’s a chore to order from anyone not in the front 1/3rd of Previews.

In the end Bookscan is a useful too – but publishers need to look at and analyze more data in order to get the bigger picture on where their titles eventually land.