In today’s PW Daily, Calvin Reid write that DC will expand its After Watchmen promotion with even more titles (including collections), co-op advertising and social networking:

The After Watchmen program will initially focus on a list of about 20 book collections—from other works by Alan Moore to such works as Bill Willingham’s Fables to Brian K. Vaughan’s Y The Last Man—likely to appeal to new fans as well as to established comics fans looking for something new. The program will include the launch of, AfterWatchmen.com, a new Web site set to launch on March 11 (the site will feature an expanded list of 50 titles) and a 32-page After Watchmen, Whats Next? booklet which will highlight the list of After Watchmen titles. Among the 20 titles on the initial After Watchmen list are Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis, Garth Ennis’s Preacher, Brian Azzarello’s Joker; Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. The program will also include co-op advertising programs, e-mail newsletters, new groups on Facebook and MySpace and national consumer advertising.

As we mentioned when the program was first announced, this is a smart move to take advantage of Google if nothing else, and a nice, reality-based program to rope in a few of the newly baptized WATCHMEN fans into becoming more serious comics readers.

Over at Robot 6, writer Ken Marcus (SUPER HUMAN RESOURCES) has a long list of marketing tips that, in the Post-Benchmark era, will need to be heeded more than ever, as he faces harsh facts:

People do not care about you. Not readers, not retailers, not the press and maybe not even your publisher. No one gives two turds about your book except for you. (The publisher thing isn’t really true, but regardless, this NEEDS to be your working mindset.) So making other people give two turds about your idea rests solely on your shoulders. That’s another way to say “marketing.”

If you build it, they will ignore it. Look, there are too many baseball diamonds in too many fields in that Previews catalog. And most of them look better than yours. Too many people think they can send their files off to the printer and book their table in San Diego. Nope. You’ve created your book. Now comes the hard part.

You’re getting great press when your comic comes out. AKA, you’re ‘effed. This is the No. 1 thing I don’t get. Creators doing all their interviews and previews the month their comic is out. Indy comics are all about pre-ordering. Getting people to ask their LCS for your comic the month it’s in Previews. This is the already-on-life-support lifeblood of indy comics. You have a few weeks before your issue #1 hits Previews and through the rest of that month. That is your sweet spot for pushing all your press and PR.

There much more, equally common sense advice, but the last bit we quoted is both accurate and frustrating. The disconnect between marketing to the comics shop retailers who are the customers for Diamond and most comics publishers, and marketing to the people who are the customers of the comics shops is still a wide one. In a world of tiny margins, it’s a hard one to negotiate.

Or as someone very smart about comics we were talking to the other day told us, in complaining about the ideas of some publishers, “They think an interview in Newsarama is all they need.”

As the swallows return to Capistrano, as the bats return to Colossal Caves, as the wildebeest migrate across the Serengeti, and the alewives return to Lake Damariscotta, so we celebrate the season with the annual Hibbs/MacDonald/Deppey BookScan debate. Here’s last year’s bout from The Beat, with many of the same competitors taking part in this Soap Box Derby of sales figures. TRADITION!

Today, over at Journalista, Dirk offers his annual disclaimer and you can tell he’s serious because he uses words like “proffered.” He also tweaks Hibbs a bit by quoting very, very similar passages by Hibbs vis-à-vis indie/art comic sales from every year since 2003. Dirk finds the smoking gun of Hibbs’s ulterior motives right here in the Beat comment section:

Actually, I’d characterize my argument as “the argument that ‘oh but if only we could get “lit comics” out of the stinky dirty backwards Direct Market, then everything would be light and honey forever and ever, amen!’ is pretty demonstrably wrong”

and then spends a good few paragraphs circling, stabbing, stamping, yelling “Ugga! Bugga” and while still failing to refute anything.

Look, I don’t want to live in a world where L&R #1 sells only 719 copies in bookstores. But before anyone goes any further with all this “It’s a guess, it’s wrong, it doesn’t add up” stuff, let’s look at one fact about the BookScan numbers. While they DO NOT measure all book sales across all channels, they do measure 100% of sales in approximately 70 percent of bookstore channels. So by any standard, it is a metric for comparison, analysis and debate.

In order to prove that BookScan is wrong, Dirk dons his sleuth hat:

Hibbs’ claim that Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 sold just 719 copies, however, motivated me to e-mail Fantagraphics’ Gary Groth, Kim Thompson and Eric Reynolds to find out if they could add some light to all the heat. While I suppose it’s possible that Hibbs’ BookScan reportage might turn out to be true, it struck me as being unlikely. Still, one must investigate, and the resulting email exchanges seemed to produce light and heat in equal amounts: Not because the Fanta staffers were dissembling or in any way less than forthcoming, but because the nature of the mass market essentially makes even the vague sort of instant tallying one expects from the Direct Market to be impossible in the short term. Short of absolute disaster, any attempt to figure out how a given title has done in the returnable booksellers’ market within its first year of release inevitably turns out to be little more than guesswork.

So is that dissembling or not? Sounds like it to me. Dirk goes on to present the Internet version of a school film on the publishing business, explaining how mighty catalogs roll out and orders are placed, and books are sold and returns are made, and it’s all a great unknowable system of terror and awe, but just to reiterate, BookScan sales are via UPC scans, so they are not guesswork at all They are sell through in a certain percentage of the retail market.

That said, of course there are other channels and other markets. It would be interesting to see what Reynolds, Groth, and Thompson all had to say on the topic in a neutral ground, but unfortunately Dirk just quotes them in random bits so it’s hard to see context.

And in the end, what’s sauce for the autobio cartoonist is sauce for the spandex superhero. Groth suggests that

It doesn’t make any sense to differentiate libraries from bookstores; they both buy books from the same wholesaler(s) at the same price. It’s like differentiating chain stores, indies, PXes, big box stores or any other particularized sales destination.

That’s certainly true, but that means you also have to count SUPERHERO and MANGA sales to libraries, and no one wants to do THAT do they?

Another place where I think Dirk gets fuzzy is here:

According to Groth, there are currently over 10,000 copies of Willie & Joe in play outside the Direct Market, while the figure that Hibbs quotes BookScan as giving for it is just 5485 copies. While more returns are likely, we’re nonetheless talking about a title that’s been in the marketplace for nine months and counting. At this point, one could be justified in assuming that it’s a good way over the hump. And if that number winds up holding steady, we’re talking about not a 10% difference, not a 30% difference, but somewhere near a 100% difference between BookScan and the real world. What will the end figure wind up being, do you think? 90% off the mark? 80%? 70%?

That is categoricaly not true. Once again, Bookscan measures sell-through, the number of books that have been purchased by consumers, whether via a bookstore or an online retailer. 10,000 is the sell-in number. It’s the reason why you will walk into a bookstore and SEE a copy of Willie and Joe on the shelf while browsing. That sell-in has not yet been converted to sell-through. Later in the piece, Groth mentions that publishers can expect a third of books sold-in to be returned, which is indeed about industry average. (20 percent returns is considered a very good number.) It is quite likely that many of the FBI books that are on shelves but not sold to consumers are at indie bookstores where the publisher is a favorite and the individual owners believe in the titles. Heroes and visionaries, you might say.

Where I do agree with Dirk is that if selling graphic novels into bookstores wasn’t profitable for Fantagraphics and D&Q, they probably would have gone out of business some time ago. Or as I wrote the other day, 

I can also attest that sometimes selling only 2000 copies on BookScan is perfectly okay. Anything in five figures is probably very profitable, and numbers far lower than that could also make money or break even. I have no idea what the golden number is — it undoubtedly varies from book to book and publisher to publisher.

To me the question is still how to get sell copies of the good stuff to people who would enjoy it? L&R #1 may have sold-in 4000 copies, but can it sell-through more? Can Bill Mauldin sell more copies? Can Tatsumi?  Can Tezuka?

Every year when these numbers come out, there is some bristling from the indie community (probably partially brought on by Hibbs’ taunting on the subject) on the fact that superhero comics appear to sell more in the stores measured by BookScan than indie/art comix do. On the surface it seems bad, but I assure you, there are lots and lots of books from Marvel, DC and book publishers that sell in numbers just as “bad” or worse. As mentioned above, everyone’s magic number of profitability is different. I’m not going to embarrass anyone, but you know who you are.

What needs to be understood by a lot of people (and this is something I myself have only begrudgingly accepted) is that not every comics “classic” is really a timeless classic that speaks to generation after generation. All of the reissues that come out in 2008 really proved that, but this is a subject I hope to return to shortly in a more focused manner.

And this hopefully concludes this year’s installment of The BookScan Debates. Until next time!

Let’s take a closer look at the five books, shall we? And, by “take a closer look” I mean, of course, “second-guess” and “nitpick.”
— J. Caleb Mozzocco on the “After Watchmen” promotion from DC.

§ At PW Comics Week, Ada Price surveys s bunch of comics retailers o see how they’re doing and the old “cautious optimism” line is used again. But “selectivity” may be the word we all deal with the most in these trying times.

Much like their customers, retailers are being very careful with ordering inventory. Thornton said that in the past he would order a book, “if it looked cool, I’d try it out. Now if I’m not 100% sure [I can sell it], I don’t order it.” Meltdown Comics’ Rosa said that rather than order 100 titles, now he only orders seventy to seventy-five. Furthermore he said he is “cautious of taking chances on new things,” so instead of ten copies of a small press book, Rosa said he will cut down and take five or six.

Forbidden Planet’s Ayers echoed the others. “I’ve tempered newer stuff and take less chances, stick to the stalwarts. I’m doing my job wrong if the store is left with lots of [unsold] stuff.” Rosa concurred. “I’d rather deal with a sell out than be stuck with an expensive product that I can’t sell.”

The entire article is really must reading, as it covers what is selling in a variety of locales.

§ And David Welsh has a tidbit about Diamond’s delisting a bunch of Viz manga. It appears this was not Viz’s idea, however:

The same source also stressed “these manga titles are still being published, and will still available through other substantial channels such as Simon & Schuster, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, AAA Anime and others.”

UPDATE: Brigid Alverson goes straight to the source:

MangaBlog: Are these volumes going out of print?
Evelyn Dubocq: No.
MB: What other retail channels will carry them?
ED: Simon & Schuster, AAA Anime, Baker & Taylor, Ingram among others MB: Some of these series, such as Bastard and Prince of Tennis, are still ongoing.
Do you plan to continue releasing new volumes of these?
ED: There are no plans at this time for discontinuing these series

Fantagraphics’ Jason Miles visits Un Regard Moderne, a comics shop in France.

Retailer Brian Hibbs comments on Diamond’s recent decision to impose a higher benchmark for products they carry — following fears that great comics will be strangled in their cradle. His viewpoint is somewhere in the middle of those commenting, and pretty much backs up our own feelings:

No, really, we don’t need your shitty zombie comic book. We don’t need your adaptation of some William Shatner novel, and we sure as fuck don’t need your half-baked superhero universe.

What we DO need is “the next BONE”, the “next” STRANGERS IN PARADISE, or CEREBUS or EIGHTBALL or GRENDEL or whatever title you want to fill-in-the-blanks with as a paradigm of slow-build-to-significance item.

Here’s the real problem: Diamond’s purchasing department. There are some really great guys working there, but they don’t really have a great aesthetic judgment. That’s not a knock, necessarily, but in 20 years of buying from Diamond I don’t believe that they’ve EVER had a year where they had the entirety of, say, the Eisner nominees in stock at or around the time of the nominations.

I don’t believe that Diamond would recognize the “next BONE”. Not from hatred or anything, but because they have policies in place to be “fair”, that for a decade or more essentially treats all projects as interchangeable widgets.

Diamond does have a bunch of procedures in place to screen material but some things do fall between the cracks. As we’ve stated here before, Diamond is a monopoly, no question, but it’s also a benevolent one — they could have done all the things that people say they are doing years ago but didn’t. Why?

But Diamond is also the gas that makes the direct market go. They’ve developed a system of such tremendous efficiency that a slight breakdown - the non-delivery of back-up copies of SCOTT PILGRIM #5 this week for instance — are a blow.

Like Brian, we don’t mind seeing less crappy zombie comics and William Shatner novel adaptations (have those EVER worked? They’ve been tried many times before!) But is anyone even interested in creating the next BONE? We’d argue that SCOTT PILGRIM is the newest comics sensation, and that succeeded in tankoubon format.

Continuing to develop.

We’re hearing that due to various factors, including Diamond’s warehouse move, many re-orders for SCOTT PILGRIM #5 — at least in New York — have been delayed. Tuesday’s midnight signing at Jim Hanley’s Universe was a complete sell-out and last night’s Rocketship signing was as well, with people lined up out the door in the cold night air to get an autographed copy.

How popular is SCOTT PILGRIM?

It’s currently at #356 on Amazon, but rising daily.

Tomorrow, as is customary, the NYCC pre-game kicks off with the expanded ICv2 Graphic Novel conference. The schedule is below, and the Beat will be bringing you all the notable quotables. All events take place at the Javits Center.

Morning Sessions (10 a.m. to noon) — Graphic Novels and the Web

Comics on the Web — Marketing Tool or Revenue Stream?
Are comics on the Web a way to build audiences for properties that can then be monetized by sales of collections and licensing, or a critical source of advertising, DTO, or subscription revenue on their own? Join our panelists as they discuss what’s working and what’s not in this potentially transformative arena.

* Eric Beaulieu—General Manager, Transcontinental Transmedia
* Stu Levy—Chief Executive, TokyoPop
* Dave Roman—Associate Editor, Nickelodeon Magazine
* Ira Rubenstein—Executive VP Global Digital Media Group, Marvel Comics

Comics and Social Networks
Publishers and creators are increasingly using social networks to nurture communities of readers. Hear from the most advanced practitioners of this new technique on how it’s helping them connect with their audiences in a deeper way than ever before.

* Scott Allie—Senior Managing Editor, Dark Horse Comics
* Joe Keatinge—PR & Marketing Coordinator, Image Comics
* Joe Quesada—Editor-In-Chief, Marvel Comics
* Filip Sablik—Publisher, Top Cow Productions, Inc.

Afternoon Sessions (1 p.m. to 5 p.m.)

Keynote Address: Art Spiegelman — “What the !@##*! happened to comics?!”
The only graphic novelist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize, Art Spiegelman has been a leader and innovator in comics and graphic novels for four decades, both creatively and in how his work reaches the market. Hear his thoughts on the changes in the medium, plus a Q&A session.
Art Spiegelman—Writer, Artist, Pulitzer Prize Winner

Literary Adaptations — Building on Success
Adapting prose novels into graphic novels has been one of the most successful areas of graphic novel publishing in the last couple of years. Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid moderates a discussion of what’s working, why it’s working, and where the opportunities are for the future.

* Jennifer Besse—Editor, Disney Book Group
* Les Dabel—V.P. Business Operations, Dabel Brothers Productions
* Sherrilyn Kenyon—Bestselling Author
* Betsy Mitchell—V.P./Editor-in-Chief, Del Rey Books

ICv2 Graphic Novel Survey Report and White Paper
This year, the ICv2 White Paper presentation will be expanded to include an exclusive look at the results of a major survey of graphic novel buyers from comic stores, bookstores, and libraries conducted by ICv2 with the support and help of Reed Exhibitions. The survey will give a look at the reasons for the trends reported in the numbers, making this session even more invaluable.

Graphic Novel Industry Summit
Executives from the largest comic and manga publishers, the largest book chain, the largest comic distributor, one of the largest direct market retailers and a representative of ComicsPro, the comic retailer association, and an important librarian gather to discuss the future of the graphic novel industry.

* Robin Brenner—Teen Librarian, Brookline Public Library
* Dan Buckley—President and Publisher, Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
* Liza Coppola—Sr. V.P., Corporate Relations & Partnerships, VIZ Media
* James Killen—Buyer, Barnes and Noble
* Chris Powell—General Manager, Lone Star Comics / mycomicshop.com
* Bill Schanes—V.P. Purchasing, Diamond Comic Distributors
* Moderator: Milton Griepp–President, ICv2

For more information on the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference, click here. For more information on the panelists for the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference, click here.

Transcontinental Printing Cocktail Reception (5 p.m.-6 p.m.)!
After the final session of the day, enjoy a chance to meet and mingle with fellow attendees, speakers, and guests, courtesy of event sponsor and major graphic novel printer Transcontinental Printing.

§ Chris Butcher finally weighs in with his thoughts on the Diamond changes and it seems we’ve reached the end of an era:

I have always argued this, and while my arguments haven’t fallen on deaf ears, exactly, many companies have made decisions that embrace a “streamlined” DM, to what I feel will be their eventual detriment… Once you eliminate the bottom, the middle becomes the new bottom. I’m having a hard time seeing how anyone is going to be renegotiating their exclusivity deal with Diamond from a position of anything approaching “strength” in the next few years. Diamond has just told you that they want the low-hanging fruit, and that fruit’s just gonna get lower and lower.

But even more importantly than that: Diamond is pushing content out of the Direct Market.

Let me say that again:

Diamond Is Pushing Content Out Of The Direct Market

We established this way up at the top there, “Diamond’s job is to serve the direct market.” So you tell me, by denying entry to creative people, by setting the minimums above what _all comics_ not in the top 300 can accomplish, and only ‘working’ with their core publishers, how are they serving the direct market?

For historical counterpoint, John Jackson Miller looks at the just-pre-Diamond era, and finds that about 2/3rd of the publishers of that era released four or fewer issues a year.

Using the shipping lists and cancellation lists from every week in 1997, the staff of Comics Buyer’s Guide and I calculated that Diamond had shipped 5,695 different comic books (not trades, but comic books); we also counted 391 different trade paperbacks. These are not Top 300 entries; this is everything.

Now, one of the interesting things about that calculation was the representation of publishers, and the number of issues they shipped. Those 5,695 comic books, we counted, came from exactly 500 different publishers, from A & T to Zub.

More than two-thirds, or 340 publishers, released fewer than four issues — not titles, but issues — in the year, meaning they weren’t even releasing a quarterly series. And more than one-third — 169 — of the publishers only put out exactly one issue in the entire year. More than 10% of the issues Diamond released represented publishers releasing three issues or less; single-issue publishers accounted for about 2% of all items.

We weren’t able to run market shares based on the whole 5,695-issue list, because we only had estimated sales for the Top 3,600 issues or so. We did find that the 32 publishers that only placed one comic book in the Top 300 all year accounted for 0.16% of Top 300 units and 0.23% of Top 300 dollars for the year. Some of those publishers probably also had issues under 300th place, but we can kind of see the numbers we’re dealing with; it’s possible that a third of the publishers Diamond was dealing with were producing less than 1% of its combined sales.

I’m torn. On the one hand, it’s easy to see that Diamond’s cost cutting in the present era is based on a similar principle — a disproportionate amount of manpower was directed at selling one percent of their product line.

On the other hand, there’s no saying that that one percent doesn’t contain the greatest comic of the year.

It seems to me that the more profound problem is that we, at present, have a system set up where it’s very feasible that the best comic of the year couldn’t be published in such a way that it would make $2500 at wholesale.

Thank about that one for a while.

There’s been a lot going on since Diamond’s new benchmark bombshell, with several alternative distribution sources cropping up, notably Ka-Blam and their Print-on-Demand ComicsMonkey. However, a much lower discount than retailers are used to might make this a less popular option.

A few more industry figures have commented, as well. Harris Comics’ Bon Alimagno writes about it on his LJ and Blog@ — it’s an interesting viewpoint from an established publisher which makes most of its money outside the direct market, but still has enough of a stake in that channel to be affected:

I’m not sure if it has sunk into the mind of the average comic shop goer what setting these rules mean. The new rules place a huge emphasis on initial sales, in a direct market largely resistant to anything different and new. A year from now it’s very likely what few non-superhero comic books you are used to seeing at your local comic book shop may disappear unless you frequent one that already features a wide ranging selection. The direct market is a vicious cycle: comic book shops are widely considered the best place to buy superhero comics, so most of the people who frequent these shops are people who read superhero comic books. Retailers who order comic books do so on a non-returnable basis. They have to place their bet on what comic will and won’t sell. If they bet wrong they are stuck with extra inventory that may never move. More often than not they’ll place their bet with a sure thing, something with a consistent track record or built-in fan base. Retailers then order mostly superhero books. Anyone looking for anything else will more often than not find a very limited selection appealing to their tastes, so they stop coming, leaving the store increasingly in the hands of superhero comic book readers.

Non-Big Four publishers will often find their books under ordered. In cases like that, they’ll hope that word of mouth and positive reviews stir interest in their titles and lead to reorders. Except now reorders are limited to sixty days, not that much time to grow an audience.

Creator James Owen also has some thoughts, which reflect his long time in the industry and shifting role:

I’ve had more than my fair share of disputes with Diamond over the years. Some were private, some were public, some were epic-level public - as I was one of the few publishers, along with Viz and Kitchen Sink, to sign exclusives with ‘the other side’, Capital City, during the Distribution Wars. But I want to point out - and I cannot stress this too strongly - the only times I had a conflict with Diamond was when they had dropped the ball on something they were actually obligated to do, and then tried to sweep it under the rug, or when the reps we were dealing with treated I or my colleagues in an unprofessional manner. Never because they weren’t doing something I simply wanted them to do, that they had no obligation to do. What this usually meant - and why I have a LOT of sympathy for all of the smaller publishers right now - was that one Diamond rep or another was sloppy and/or arrogantly dismissive of whatever issue I or my other small press friends were having. Books would be listed incorrectly - and options to remedy this were limited to a low-priority correction (read as: retailer packing papers), or a re-listing for the next month - which would devastate our projections and cash flow. Shipments would go astray, which might hold up payment - which could break a small press if it happened at the wrong time. Situations like those were anger-inducing because they were errors in the actual business Diamond was engaged in: solicitation and distribution of product.

Nothing about this is cut and dried — the other day, we mourned the loss of Kevin Huizenga’s OR ELSE, but Huizenga himself seems to be going towards the notion that little comics aren’t a viable option for cartoonists any more — and by modern alt-cartoonist standards, Huizenga is incredibly prolific. Sammy Harkham managed a slim 32 pages of material since 2006 in CRICKETS, and while excellence in any dose is always welcome, that definitely stretches the idea of “periodical.”

As readers, we’re more fond of the MOME model — a regular anthology of dependable quality that allows folks to stockpile material for eventual spine-out presentation. Is MOME a sales blockbuster? Probably not, although it doubtless sustains. The regular comics anthology has become an economic dead zone in the current superhero/Vertigo/WildStorm/Marvel marketplace and unless the Japanese model somehow catches on here, it seems likely to stay that way.

As Owen alludes, this isn’t a Diamond BAD/creator GOOD thing, or the reverse. The comics distribution system is much healthier than it has been, due to a steady supply of good product. We’re currently undergoing the worst worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression — Diamond is just another leaf in the storm and we’re all going to have to find new ways of doing business.

Bonus: Owen draws a parrot!

Only the New York Post seems to have picked up on this story, but it’s a biggie. Another major magazine distributor has joined Anderson News in raising its rates to distribute magazine copies to newsstands by seven cents — regardless of whether the magazines sell or not, according to the Post. Publishers have resisted, but now Source Interlink has also increased its fees. Together, the two distributors control half of the US magazine wholesale distribution network:

The remaining big distributors - Jimmy Pattison’s News Group, based in Atlanta and Vancouver, British Columbia, and New York-based Hudson News - have not sought a fee hike.

But if all magazine distributors follow suit, publishers worry it could sock them with an additional $1 billion a year in expenses at a time when they are contending with plunging advertising revenue and sagging newsstand sales.

Already, publishers predicted Anderson News’ price hike would cost them an additional $200 million a year.

“We’re in for it now,” said one worried publisher after he got the Source Interlink news. “It’s great to say, ‘Screw Anderson,’ but who are we going to get to replace them?”

Like Anderson News, Source Interlink claims it needs the fee hike to survive.

Ya gotta love the Post’s old skool reportage on this. Considering that magazine distribution is an old skool business with lots of ties to people who might appear in Martin Scorsese movies, it’s appropriate. We’re not too hep to the background ourselves, but our guess is that if this is remotely true, and these rate hikes go into effect, the magazine publishing world is going to look a little like central Florida after a Category 4 hurricane.

Diamond Distribution, the largest and practically only North America distributor of periodical comics, is in the process of rolling out a few new business processes, and the results could be a very different landscape for comics publishing. Or, as non Diamond-exclusive publishers told us in private emails (a sampling):

“It is going to be rough for us Top 20 publishers. It will be epic for anyone smaller. Lots of folks will vanish due to this, even some bigger guys.”

“I expect the new threshold to annihilate many of the smallest publishers and keep a lot of new ones out of Previews.”

“I suspect that this will put a severe crimp on what little remains of the B&W pamphlet field.”

and

“This is the single biggest event since Diamond became the monopoly that ruled comics.”

Hysteria or prescience? Read on.
(more…)

We know you are sick of that Obama & Spider-Man comic, but not only did the mere announcement of the comic make a lot of news, but news of the comic selling out has also made headlines everywhere. Atlanta:

And Oxford Comics, purportedly the only Atlanta retailer to carry the comic, was swamped with comic book fans and political history collectors who quickly bought out the 1,000 copies at the store, owner Mike VanHouten said.

“There were lines of 50 or more wrapped around the building,” VanHouten said. “People were happy to pay $45. This is the biggest thing since the death of Superman.”

And West Palm Beach, FL, Detroit, Orange County, CA,
Greensboro, NC:

“We were hoping we could get a copy,” said Lena Harper of Greensboro, who came with her 8-year-old daughter and stood in a line stretching onto the sidewalk. “But we should have known to show up hours early, like at a movie premiere.”

We hear it sold through St. Louis down to Missouri, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico, and Flagstaff, Arizona — and don’t forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, and San Bernardino.

Okay we thought those reports of how hot a ticket AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #583 was going to be might be a tad overblown — after all, it’s just a kinda dopey five-page comic book story. But it seems that crowds around the nation braved brutal sub-zero temperatures to get their copies.

The line outside Midtown Comics began forming before the store opened at 10 a.m. Bronko Spaleta, 38, and “frostbitten, but otherwise good,” stood at the front door, ushering those in line into the store, which can only accommodate about 20 customers at a time because of fire and building safety codes.

Each customer was allowed to buy only one copy of the Obama comic book (and one copy of the one without the variant Jimenez cover). “It’s one of each cover,” Mr. Spaleta told those waiting on line. “Please do not jump back in the line.”

Newsarama has a roundup of other local reports, and this hot ticket item definitely warmed up a cold day across the nation, with numerous sellout reports. In fact,, the second printing is sold out, but Marvel is rushing out a THIRD printing to meet demand. And yes, that is an actual picture of people lined up to buy a comic book.

Update: Joe Field sent us his own report from Flying Colors .

Technorati Tags: Obama!

The other day, we approvingly noted how much international press this week’s Spider-Man/Barack Obama team-up comic had gotten. Tons of press, appearances on everything from Drudge to CNN to Rachel Maddow, it’s all good, right?

Well, you’d think so, except that Marvel’s ordering policies on the book have retailers complaining that they won’t have enough to meet all the interest drummed up by the publicity. For a short version, here’s someone named “Williams” in a Comics Should Be Good! comment thread:

Oh what the heck I’ll tell you myself: Ordering an amount of Amazing Spiderman #583 equal to or greater than total pre-orders for Amazing Spiderman #575 qualified retailers to order the Obama cover of #583. Sales for Amazing Spiderman #583 would have been down from #575 (an anniversary issue to boot) so this created a situation where dealers were FORCED to buy unsalable product so that they could then spend more mioney to get quantities of the Obama cover. This, in turn, makes the regular cover version less salable than it would have been. This is is a waste of paper and money not to mention usurious behavior on someone’s (either Marvel or Diamond Distribution) part. Comic companies and distributors should not be in the business of manipulating the collectibles market. Remember: these are “dated periodicals.”

Brian Cronin stepped in to chide Williams for being a Debbie Downer, but other retailers shared some of his ire. The announcement of the Obama story went out in a fairly little noticed Marvel retailer mailing, and many were simply caught short or didn’t want to order extra copies of the “non variant” cover edition, fearing they’d be stuck.

With the flood of attention, however, Marvel must have realized that this could be another blockbuster issue and quickly announced a second printing, according to a Diamond alert:

To meet expected demand for this momentous issue, Marvel has now announced it’s heading back to press to offer the Amazing Spider-Man #583 Obama Second Printing Variant (NOV088096D), featuring a re-colored version of the original Obama variant cover drawn by Phil Jimenez.

This variant carries an FOC date of today, January 12, and is expected to ship on January 21. No order qualifiers apply, allowing retailers to order as many copies of this variant as they wish while supplies last.

This isn’t the first time that Marvel has had a hot ticket comic available in limited supplies due to retailers. Remember CAP #25? And it is undoubtedly true that many retailers like to complain about a thing, even as they are selling that thing in hotcake-like quantities. At the end of the day, the entire kerfuffle seems to have pointed up all the torsions in the direct sales market pipeline: Marvel’s usual method of an “ordering incentive” backfires when the item unexpectedly catches the eye of the “civilian” world, and retailers, already pressed to pay attention to countless “Trust us, it’ll be big!” promises, fail to note something that really can be big.

While it’s tempting to chalk the whole thing up to a lack of product confidence or trust at many levels, hopefully Obama won’t be caught receiving any special attention from an intern by his second day in office, he’ll remain popular, the second printing will arrive and many copies will be sold at cover price.

Ebay speculators are already more hopeful. We’ll see how that works out.

The LA Daily News profiles Earth-2 Comics in Sherman Oaks, and reports that sales are definitely down:

In the year leading up to its Black Friday post-Thanksgiving supersale, Earth-2 Comics owners said it suffered a 20 percent drop in revenue.

That means one in five buyers who had eagerly appeared each Wednesday to pick up such hot-off-the-press hits as “100 Bullets” were thumbing through frayed back issues instead.

Earth-2 Comics owners Jud Meyers and Carr D’Angelo remain hopeful those readers will come back.

“We open earlier now, and close later, because every hour counts,” said Meyers, of the upscale bookstore at 15017 Ventura Blvd. “It’s not that we’re in a downturn, but we’re in a holding pattern.

“But in a time of fear, people want entertainment. They’re going to the movies. And people still want to read comic books.”

The story also includes a chilling tale of a wife who wishes to sell her husband’s comic book collection to raise money — without his knowledge. This sounds like a potential ticket to Forensic Files, if you know what we mean.

Brian Hibbs , owner of SF’s Comix Experience, charts his store’s top sellers of the year — he can easily do this because he has a POS system, remember? You can read the whole list at his blog, but we’ll highlight the top 20 in periodicals:

1 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #13
2 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #11
3 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #12
4 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #14
5 DC UNIVERSE ZERO
6 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #16
7 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #15
8 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #10
9 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #17
10 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #18
11 SECRET INVASION #1
12 FINAL CRISIS #1
13 GIANT SIZE ASTONISHING X-MEN #1
14 SECRET INVASION #2
15 ALL STAR SUPERMAN #10
16 SERENITY BETTER DAYS #1
17 ALL STAR SUPERMAN #11
18 ASTONISHING X-MEN #25
19 ASTONISHING X-MEN #24
20 ALL STAR SUPERMAN #12

and books:

1 WATCHMEN TP
2 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 10 WHYS AND WHEREFORES
3 Y THE LAST MAN VOL 1 UNMANNED TP
4 Y THE LAST MAN VOL 2 CYCLES TP
5 WALKING DEAD TP VOL 08 MADE TO SUFFER
6 BUFFY SEASON 8 TP VOL 02 NO FUTURE FOR YOU
7 BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER LONG WAY HOME TP
8 FABLES TP VOL 10 THE GOOD PRINCE
9 THE FART PARTY TP
10 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 03 ONE SMALL STEP
11 LOVE & ROCKETS NEW STORIES #1
12 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 05 RING OF TRUTH
13 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 09 MOTHERLAND
14 BOYS TP VOL 02 GET SOME
15 Y THE LAST MAN VOL 4 SAFEWORD TP
16 FABLES TP VOL 11 WAR AND PIECES (MR)
17 LOEG VOL ONE TP
18 BATMAN THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL ED HC
19 JUDENHASS GN
20 Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 07 PAPER DOLLS

The book list for dollars is much different — lots of Absolutes — but for that you must go to the link. It’s hard to draw conclusions for this except to say that people who shop at Comix Experience are really into the whole Josh Whedon/Brian K. Vaughan thing.

BOOM! Studios sent along links to two videos talking about their promotions for HEXED, a new series which will have a retailer incentive, full returnability AND day-and-date release on MySpace. Here’s a transcript of some of the relevant portions:

On January 7th HEXED #1 hits comic shops across the nation, at the same time, you’ll be able to read it on MySpace Comic Books for free. Each issue after that will be in stores and online on the same day. To the comic fans out there who have never read a BOOM! book before? This is the one for you. We encourage you to try it before you buy it with HEXED #1, we encourage you to try it online, and if you like it, we want you to go into comic shops and buy a copy.

Now to our retail partners: we listened to your feedback on the NORTH WIND promotion. With that in mind we’re making HEXED #1 completely returnable. We’re doing this promotion because we really believe in this book. We’re taking this risk because we really believe in this book. Join us for a different kind of comic book event.

Here’s a second video in which Waid addresses retailers, since they were somewhat vexed the last time BOOM! tried a MySpace release, for North Wind earlier last year.

And in case you’re wondering, here’s a cover, by artist Emma Rios.

Technorati Tags: Boom Studios

Prominent comics blogger Tom Spurgeon had a series of pertinent questions about the industry over the weekend. All deserve continued contemplation, but we’ll take a crack at a few.

Why Don’t Alternative Comic Books Sell Better In Comics Shops?

Fifteen years ago it was conventional wisdom and strongly supported in anecdotal fashion that comic books ranging in popularity from Eightball to Artbabe sold the vast majority of their issues in a tiny, tiny handful of stores. Since then we seem to have seen a significant proliferation of stores like those stores. Why hasn’t there been a corresponding surge in alternative comics sales?

Perhaps the reason is that nobody publishes alternative comic books any more. Everybody publishes alternative graphic novels, and the odd issue of TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE or PALOOKAVILLE slips out once every 12-18 months, but periodical publishing is no longer the engine at the front of the train. Plus, indie audiences are trained to look for the CD, not the single.

The question 4. Why Have Sales Gone Up On The Lower Part Of The Top 300?actually seems to contradict question #1.

The comics at the bottom of the sales estimates have apparently gone up even as the top of the charts remains locked into a successful top ten to twenty followed by a slightly steep slide into the second-rung performers paradigm. I’ve seen plenty of people note the bottom-chart success, and some stick their chest out about it, but I have yet to see a convincing explanation for it. If you’re going to ask me to believe that it just means that market is healthier than previous thought, I want to know why it is right now in that specific way when it wasn’t before.

Maybe….it is because there are more stores, as surmised in question #1?

That answer may seem flip, but it would take a small number of new stores to boost the levels of those that order non-Marvel and DC comics. We’d guess that more people are buying more kinds of comics, to some extent as well. The bottom 100 includes comics from Archie, Bongo, IDW, Image, Dark Horse, Red 5, Avatar, Dabel Brothers, Dynamic Forces and Zenescope, among many others. It’s not a complete epic poem of genre diversity, but there are kids’ comics, horror, humor, SF, fantasy, Westerns, war comics, and so on…different stuff. Perhaps the ginormous PR campaign undertaken by comics in the last five years or so, as well as the victory of nerd literacy simply means…more people read comics. Not on the order of MILLIONS of people, mind you, but hundreds.

We’d agree, though, this is a ripe topic for exploration, especially with ruin facing the world’s economy.

In a few posts, we’ll show all the information that people sent in response to our “call for entries” at SPX, but we noticed something interesting this time out. We’ve been doing this kind of thing for years and years, and never got such a big response (over two dozen cartoonists and publishers) but everyone did just what they had to do: send a cover, a link, a brief description.

It sounds like falling off a log, but we know from that experience that people don’t read instructions, people don’t send pictures, etc., etc., etc. We always try to look up info that isn’t provided, but the more we have to look up, the longer and more arduous a process it is. This time, even with the size, it was pretty easy.

Why are we mentioning all this? Because it shows something we’ve been suspecting for a while: even indie cartoonists are getting much more professional and savvy about marketing their stuff. Maybe it’s just a by-product of the MySpace generation, but everyone knows now that you need a blog and pictures and links and so on. When everyone has a blog, it makes work a lot harder for someone like me, but I ‘m glad to see that so many people “get” it and are showing more savvy.

Yesterday, we had a asterisk next to the phrase “colon comic,” but tragically, that colon never paid off, distracted as we were by Lex Luthor’s takeover of AIG, and Roxxon’s buying the Lehman Bros. building. Here’s what we MEANT to say:

*”Colon comics” is ©Tom Spurgeon as evidenced in this review of FINAL CRISIS: Legion of 3 Worlds #1:

These are colon series — not colon as in being full of crap, but colon as in they’re frequently named as derivatives of the bigger series. Thus, “Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds.” For those of you further unaware of this particular event brand, the series that DC designates with the term “crisis” tend to be reality-bending armageddons that posit the central importance of DC Comics icons in nothing less than the meaning of life itself.

Of course Marvel has a bumper crop of colon comics, too: DARK REIGN: NEW NATION and SECRET INVASION: REQUIEM #1 and so on. But the idea of a “Colon Crisis” gives rise to many allusions and ideas!

We’d also like to salute Sean T. Collins for this:

Can we at least agree that people who are serial ruiners-of-companies–these nightmarish Bizarro Mariano Rivieras who never fail to close down their own ventures, in the process lying and robbing and sucking up as much cash for themselves and their cronies as they can and leaving others holding the bag

We call these can’t-stay-deaders entrepreneurs “Zombies” ourselves, but “Bizarro Mariano” is much better,

Of course, even Mariano isn’t Mariano any more, but that’s a whole other blog…

If you were wondering whether some retailers might just not destroy their copies of ALL-STAR BATMAN #10, but rather dip a toe into the eBay waters, well, you may look no further. There are, as of this writing, some 179 results for the book on eBay, with bidding over $100 on a few of them. Buy-it-now movement has been brisk, with copies typically going for $39.99 to $59.99.

While most of the copies probably came from stores (retailers in the East and Midwest got their copies from Diamond, while Western stores did not), some stores are selling them through personal accounts to avoid whatever steps DC or Diamond may take to shut down the sales.

Retailer Robert Scott has his own response to Robert Kirkman’s call for more creator-owned concepts:

Well, I’m not sure how folks like Lea, Ellis or even Kirkman have missed it for twenty two years but Marvel, DC, WFH or retailers have not damaged the industry nearly as much as creator owned work (and the publishers who love them) has. OK to be fair it’s not the work but the lack of professionalism surrounding the work that is the culprit.

From unprofessional and nonviable work by folks with to much cash in hand to fantastic work with untenable publishing schedules and utter lack of business/marketing savvy, this work leaves not only a frustrated consumer with no lack of alternative entertainment options but a also a line of business partners (distributors & retailers) who become increasingly gun shy over such product because it cannot be counted on to pay the bills and not to actively piss off their customers (and to be fair, the Big 2 share some of these same problems).

D&Q, Fantagraphics, Slave Labor, Top Shelf… all produce a staggering amount of creator owned work. Warren Ellis touted both financial and critical success of Fell. And yet the aforementioned publishers have had to go begging hat in hand and must fight retailers for sales at conventions because the work isn’t selling as well as needed and who knows if or when Ellis will reward us with more Fell, which now seems to be on an annual schedule.

Just as a reminder, this panel on Friday is a must attend:

Remembering Rory: The Rory Root Tribute – 3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. Room 22

When Comic Relief owner Rory Root passed away in May, a huge void was left in the comics’ world. Please join us as we pay tribute to a man who helped everyone in the world of comics – from publishers to creators to aspiring artists to retailers. Rory left a lasting legacy, so we hope you can join Joe Field (Flying Colors Comics), Bob Wayne (DC Comics) and Jim Friel (Comic Relief) for stories, anecdotes, and memories of perhaps Comicdom’s most ardent supporter and best friend.