Later than Advertised

We all hate waiting. Noon appointment? Doctor didn't see you until 12:30, though, what makes his time so much more valuable (besides the medical degree and the possibility that she's making a diagnosis that could save or end someone's life)? We love the fast food, instant gratification, new episodes of Lost. We hate the line outside the restaurant, anything that delays our wish fulfillment and summer reruns.

In comics, though, there's something of a generally resigned notion that some comics are going to be late. More than that, it's almost a given that high profile books are going to be inordinately late. The complaints usually come from fans, disgruntled that the delivery of the next piece of the never ending story isn't delivered as promised. Tom Brevoort discussed Marvel's improvement in this area, which led Johanna to do some research in a post of her own. To which I can only say, thank you for saving the me the time of doing said research myself so that I can use that time to compile this woefully late post of my own.

Complaints from retailers, though, are based not so much on the merits of story but on the merits of sales. Late shipping hurts sales, or so I've been told. I will note that outside of Civil War and Infinite Crisis, our highest selling single issues of any title are Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #1 & 2, so we'll have to see what the impact on sales of #3 are (I'm guessing not much). Ultimates sells really well as does Astonishing X-Men. Then again, Green Lantern has just about died here after hitting an all-time high with the first One Year Later issue. I don't have any way of quantifying how lateness affects sales, but from the perspective of those readers that Brevoort seems to be addressing, it would certainly be easier to wait longer if the reader was getting a bigger chunk of the story. The sales of Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness certainly don't seem to have been adversely affected by that books delay. Which is all a long-winded way of saying that, as with many other complaints, quite a bit could be easily solved by shifting some titles to a serial trade format (or if they absolutely must be published first as singles, keeping them off the schedule until the work is completed). A model akin to British television series may not be out of order.

Hope Springs Eternals

So I'd seen quite a bit or trepidation regarding Eternals, from retailers regarding how well it would sell and from readers regarding how well it would read. Most of the concern stemmed from Gaiman's last Marvel book 1602, which has (somewhat retroactively) come to be considered something of a low point for Gaiman. From a retail shop perspective, I have no problem with 1602, particularly because it sells surprisingly well to lapsed comic fans who enjoy the high concept coupled with pseudo-familiar superheroes. Plus, it's a essentially a complete story (which is a big plus for lapsed and new readers). Apparently many retailers saw sales of the singles drop off pretty dramatically as the series progressed which, when coupled with lukewarm reader response, left store owners less than convinced they had a sure seller with a much less "name brand" superhero book like Eternals. According to several other retailers there was also a distinct lack of pre-orders to help gauge demand.

That said, it was our best selling title last week and seems to have sold really well off the rack after a quick glance through at the shop. On top of that, its getting great coverage and reviews in places like Entertainment Weekly's Must List. I really enjoyed the first issue myself and I like that it has a tangential connection to the Marvel universe but one that really doesn't require much (if any) knowledge for a new reader. I expect this to be a title that will sell really well in collected format but may also surprise a few people with its ability to sell in single issues as well.

We'll Give You the First One Free

DC announced that they'll be releasing a $.25 issue of Fables #1 to coincide with the release of Fables: 1001 Nights in the fall. Now this is the kind of news I love to hear. There are some books, particularly from Vertigo, that sell well in trades but have such great first issues that they should really be kept in print if only to be used as promotional tools. James Sime wrote a piece a few years ago extolling the virtues of the first issue of Losers as a promotional tool (one that I'm having difficulty tracking down, so if anyone remembers it, let me know so I can add the link) and I would say the same thing about books like Fables and Y: The Last Man. It's one of the reasons I love the Vertigo First Taste and Vertigo First Offenses books, because they offer the chance to sample these stories at a low cost (and potentially create a serious addiction to stories that run for several books).

It's the age old marketing ploy of giving just a little bit for free (or in this case $.25) and hoping to reel them in for the long haul. And the great thing about offering an entire first issue is that it's much more of a full story experience than a few preview pages. On top of that, it also promotes the (theoretically) standalone Fables GN that, judging by their fall catalog, DC is making part of their fall bookstore push (along with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier and Pride of Baghdad).

There's nothing new about $.25 preview issues, but they're usually #0 preview issues for new series, released shortly before the first issue to create more interest and demand. Promoting a long running series that sells (and often reads) better in trade format through what at MacGuffin will be a free sample of the very beginning of that story is much more effective. This the equivalent of a Free Comic Book Day title, only its actually cheaper than any of those. Even better than most FCBD books though, this is a title with significant mainstream appeal that we can use to help show that comics aren't just about superheroes.

We'll be giving them away because if we sell even 1 trade paperback for every 40 we give away, they will pay for themselves (and just about anyone who buys the first trade will be back for more).

Abadazad's Magical Budget

Continuing our theme of commenting on stories from ICV2, we have an interview with Jennifer Zatorski, Associate Publicity Director for Disney Publishing worldwide about their promotional efforts for former comic, now prose/graphic novel hybrid Abadazad. Abadazad had a HUGE presence at BookExpo and it's clearly a book that should be able to make some headway with young readers.

Interestingly, though, the initial ICV2 story indicated that $200,000 would be put into the campaign (as referenced by Kevin Melrose). Likely just a typo, and $100,000 is certainly still a significant budget, but not quite what it initially seemed. Its nice to see Disney putting some muscle behind their promotions, but this is a book that's target audience, I think, is going to be libraries. Its size and binding seem tailor made for the children and young adult sections of libraries. In fact, we've already sold copies of the first two volumes to a local elementary school. The point being, a significant chunk of that $100,000 has probably already been spent to market the book to libraries and bookstores (particularly those that specialize in children's books) and I'm sure it wasn't cheap to get the sort of placement it had at BEA.

As for the books themselves, their hybrid format will probably help them appeal to both kids and adults, while the format itself seems to hinder the storytelling. The scenes chosen for illustration aren't always the first to come to mind and unfortunately Ploog's artwork doesn't hold up nearly as well in the smaller format (compare on of the books to the beautiful Stardust Kid that hit shelves today). Whereas I enjoyed the one issue of Abadazad I read as a straight comic, the books (and the prose sections in particular) seem a bit too watered down to appeal to adults with fond memories of Oz and Wonderland.

Over-analyzing ICV2's Analysis

ICV2 released their monthly reports and analysis for May based on the Diamond indexes released last Friday. As I predicted in my last post, the three key items pointed out in these stories are based on massaged numbers. Without anything more than the most anecdotal sell through data, there's almost no way to have any idea if Civil War and 52 deserve those spots on the chart (see the comments from Jason @ RIOT and myself on that last post for some idea on how far off these numbers could be).

Then again, that's not to say that either series is a failure, rather this is simply another opportunity for me to belie the industry's lack of any real metrics to judge the financial success or failure of books in the direct market. From what anecdotal evidence I have gathered, sell through on Civil War #1 thus far is somewhere above 50% but well below that magic 85% I mentioned last time. That said, most stores are making money on the book (I've mentioned before it's our best seller to date) and the general idea should be to keep the first issue in stock for the life of the series, so we wouldn't want to see 100% sell-through yet. Most important, however, was Marvel's decision to significantly overprint the first issue (well above what they normally would from what I've been told), to the point that I can still reorder copies of Civil War #1 from Diamond at this moment. Apparently #2 received a similar overprint but it's long gone at Diamond, another result of the massively out of proportion numbers on #1.

Meanwhile it's likely just a matter of time before we see a press release touting the best selling graphic novel for the months of May, despite its format as a magazine and price point of $6.95 (then again, that's only $1 less than Naruto, volume #10 of which somehow only sold 2403 into the direct market for the month whereas is managed to sell through 1234 copies in bookstores in its first week).

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On a side note, it seems that our inventory search feature is not updating properly -- I'll see what I can do about that.

Inflation

Diamond put out their monthly sales index of the top 100 comics and graphic novels for May, numbers that I've been curious to see since May featured the beginning of two events and the finale of another. What we learn from looking at those charts is fairly dubious, but it does indicate a couple of things:

#1- Marvel and DC are going to be able to brag that they've sold ridiculous numbers of comics. Civil War #1 will almost definitely have the highest single issue sell-in of the year. That's due in large part to order incentive variants of both the 1:25 and 1:75 variety. Neat trick that, wherein some retailers order 5 to 10 times what they can actually sell because they have guaranteed sales on those variants to customers who will pay a premium. I know of several stores that ordered hundreds of copies because they had regulars who were willing to pay $75-100 for the variant covers. Those stores had paid for every copy they ordered just with the variants. Every regular issue they sold after that was pure profit. Which means that, while Civil War sold like crazy for us and many other stores, overall sell through was nowhere near 100% (or likely even the 85% that most stores require to actually make a reasonable profit on a single issue). Meanwhile DC's decision to offer the first 12 issues of 52 with limited returnability allowed most retailers (including MacGuffin) to order much larger numbers than we otherwise would have in an effort to find the title's sales ceiling. The "true" sell-in numbers for 52 can't really be known until retailers are allowed to return unsold copies and those are subtracted from these numbers. Those numbers should be much closer to the sell-through numbers of the industry than Civil War's, though.

#2- Devil's Due will be able to lay claim to having the number one sell-in graphic novel, even beating out perennial trade juggernaut Y: The Last Man. Nevermind the fact that Family Guy's classification as a graphic novel is completely arbitrary. It's price point is $1 higher than Batman: Year 100 which sold over 50% more units (Family Guy wouldn't have made the Top 100 comics). This is another title that has done well but its success will be blown out of proportion simply by manipulating the statistics.

Revisiting Our Format (and BEA)

I'm going to modify my approach to this blog since my current rate of postings leaves quite a bit to be desired. I tend to ramble on at length about topics, something I rather enjoy but which takes quite a bit of time. While I will continue to do so, I really only have time for that length of post about once a week (as I'm sure you've all gathered by now). Instead of doing a Quick Hits post each week, the blog will now feature that sort of short, stream of consciousness post on roughly a daily basis with a longer, more considered post once or so a week. We'll see how this works until I have even less time.

For today I'm going to mention two stories that came out of BookExpo but didn't get much (well, and really) mention until ICV2 ran stories on them. The first is the addition of Comics to Houghton Mifflin's Best American series (you know, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Travel Writing etc). Coupled with Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, it makes for a nice step into comic literature, especially since it will be edited by Harvey Pekar. While it will sell here (I'm expecting roughly on par with McSweeney's #13), this isn't a book that is intended for the direct market at all. It should act as an excellent gateway book, however, especially since it will fit in nicely in those Best American displays that POP up at chain bookstores (wow, retail puns, I really am running low on intelligent thought).

The second story discussed a new graphic novel line from Osprey Publishing. I picked up an advance copy of Gamble for Victory -- Battle of Gettysburg at BEA and I'll have to dig it out of the stack of books I picked up there and have yet to sit down and read. It's written by Dan Abnett (of Abnett & Lanning, who wrote Legion before Waid's reboot and just finished up Majestic) and if I recall correctly is something of an amalgam of comic and historical reference. I do remember thinking it was a good idea and several people over at the Engine seem to agree (though quite a bit of that thread is an entertaining, if tangential, disagreement between Ellis and Colleen Doran regarding Boadiccea). I'm all for variety and had an elementary school history teacher in the other day asking about history comics in general and (non-Marvel) Civil War comics in particular so I certainly see a market for it. I do think it might be beneficial to publish them in a hardcover format as well, though, since there would certainly seem to be a market for them among school libraries (and in my experience, if there's one thing that librarians hate, it's the lack of durability that come with paperbacks).

Quick Hits 6/11

*Elks Run landed at Villard, an imprint of Random House last week (I have no idea who had the news first, so I'm linking to the creator's website). It's a nice success story, moving from a publisher that's gone out of business to a division of one of the biggest book publishers in the country, but it makes for an even more interesting example of the growth of comics in the mainstream. Not to blow things out of proportion here, but this book seems to be a perfect example of how an independent book with truly mainstream appeal can turn incredibly positive word of mouth into a book deal with the potential to be distributed to many more sales outlets. In fact, the biggest criticism I'd heard about Elk's Run up to now was that it was almost impossible to find. It got to the point where the only option was to track down the bumper edition reprinting the first three issues. The deal with Villard should take care of that problem. It also, however, raises the question of whether the book will see less support from the direct market since it will presumably only be offered through Diamond at an H discount (40% of retail). Will fewer shops take any sort of inventory position on the book because of the discount, or were those shops going to ignore the book in the first place? Or better yet, will those shops order Elk's Run through another channel, either from Random House itself or via a book wholesaler?

*Over at Comics Worth Reading, Johanna points out some questions surrounding "indie" sensation Zoom Suit. We had some reservations of our own about the title, though considering its success thus far, we can't fault the book's marketing. That said, Zoom Suit has pretty much sat on our shelves. Spinning out of that post, though, was a conversation in the comments section that gets into the semantics of collecting versus speculating. It's an example of a trend I've noticed in several places recently, namely a desire to create a distinction between collecting comics for the purposes of reselling them later at a higher value and collecting comics as a hobby from which one derives satisfaction simply from the accumulation of the items themselves. The next to last word there, items, being the key. The whole conversation seems to be the result of a desire to affect the value judgments placed on each term. The word speculator has become incredibly taboo in the comics industry due to its role in the great nineties implosion (though of course there were many factors beyond speculation at fault). To separate collecting from speculating is semantically correct but also rewarding to those who collect comics for the joy of discovering the item. They can still value the item itself while avoiding the negative connotation that has been attached to speculating. Yet, there remains a distinction between an comic's value as entertainment to be consumed and the same comic's value as part of a collection of similar items. That there is a role for both values in this industry goes without question, but as with books, dvds or any other item that can be valued in both ways, the primary focus of the industry (assuming it is interested in growing its sales) should be on the casual consumer rather than the collector.

Engineering Comic Shops: Part One

Those who frequent The Engine likely noticed a somewhat lengthy thread that began with a premise involving taking comics creators hostage in an effort to improve the quality of comics in general. Things quickly devolved from there until Ellis stepped in and ordered everyone to stop repeating themselves, leading to the best post I've seen over there in awhile (which was then topped the following week, but more on that later): Tom Spurgeon laid out a 12 point plan for how specifically creators, but really the industry in general, could make a significant difference in the comics landscape. Go read that post and guess which part I'm most interested in. Here's a clue:

3. Work with a retailer group to study and isolate a small-store model that works, and advocate for loans and business guarantees with the goal of creating 1000* new comic book shops in the next ten years on that model, with a further goal that half be owned by women. Different locations bring with them different sets of incentives, with an eye towards getting stores into places stores aren't or where they suck.

Now this is what I'm talking about. There are several huge hurdles to this idea involving everything from organization to implementation, but Spurgeon is right in his belief that allowing the direct market to flounder in pursuit of bookstore markets would ultimately be damaging to the industry. Cultivating both markets as compliments to one another presents the healthiest option for growth, but then, that will require cooperation. And there's our first hurdle. Getting retailers to agree on anything is far from easy, but getting them to agree to help develop what would theoretically be competition would not sit well with many. That's not to say there aren't a large number of retailers who see the need for more direct market shops and I think a key part of Spurgeon's idea is to focus on areas that could support a shop but at the moment don't have one. But getting agreement even within a retailer trade group like ComicsPro isn't always easy. Add in an organized group of creators and you've got the potential for years of talking in circles.

That does not mean, though, that Spurgeon's idea should be ignored. It may be a difficult project to get off the ground, but that doesn't mean it's not feasible and it certainly doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. What will be required, though, is someone (be it an individual or an organization) to spearhead the effort. The two most intimidating elements of opening MacGuffin were financing and location, two burdens that a project like this could ease significantly. The Small Business Administration generally looks for a new start-up to provide at least a quarter of the initial capital before applying for a loan with the rest covered by collateral (generally in the form of a personal guarantee and/or real estate, etc). According to our loan officer, we pretty much maxed out what we could safely borrow and invest ourselves at approximately $65,000 in capital, less than we would have liked but more than enough to get the doors open. The problem of course being, what happens, then?

More small business failures are blamed on undercapitalization than any other factor, though in reality that ends up acting as a catch all for a variety of issues all of which ultimately come down to poor planning. A big part of that planning is where to locate the store. We went with a small, upscale strip mall on the third most traveled road in Newport News situated between a popular restaurant on one side and a Starbucks and SuperCuts on the other. Very high visibility, which of course comes with a very high price tag. We spent about a year and half researching various locations and it would have been invaluable to have a low cost resource to help point us in the right direction (especially since I still question whether the rent we're paying is worth it, though thus far it seems to be). Help with these two factors alone would be a huge step in making it easier to get more comic shops open.

Which is not to day that simply opening more comic shops is going to help much, especially if they're in the mold of so many shops that those on the internet love to complain about. Just opening a comic shop is surprisingly easy. What's not so easy is opening a good one. That takes planning, foresight and an approach that is both innovative and fiscally responsible. Which means the most crucial element of any plan to open new stores is one that I'm leaving for a future post: developing a successful model for these stores.

Building a Better Mousetrap

I mentioned Alison Bechdel's memoir graphic novel Fun Home during my BEA recap a couple of weeks ago and having now read it, I'm even more convinced that this is going to be a huge hit (Tom Spurgeon beat me to the punch on that assessment this morning). Comparisons to Persepolis are already being made, and in that both are memoir graphic novels by women featuring not dissimilar art styles, I can see the comparison. But what I found intriguing in Fun Home is its narrative structure, specifically Bechdel's decision to build the narrative around a thematic examination of her relationship with her father rather than following a linear plot. The most obvious approach would be to build up to her father's suicide as the climactic event of the story, but Bechdel instead chooses to use that event as an axis around which to spin her narrative, building layer upon layer until the reader is left with a nearly perfect picture of her family. My favorite section is Chapter 3, in which Bechdel repeatedly compares her family and their lives with literary figures (both fictional and historical), creating one more layer of subtext. Yet, the chapter also functions as something like foreshadowing, as we later learn that it was through the language of books that Bechdel was able to connect with and to some degree decipher her father.

As compelling a read as this book is, its success will be predicated primarily upon Houghton Mifflin's ability to get it into the hands of readers. Thus far I'm confident that they'll be successful, with a starred review from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist, articles in Entertainment Weekly, USA Today and Salon as well as an aggressive marketing campaign that includes both general bookstores and the direct market. The book had a significant presence at BookExpo America, including advance copies for booksellers, a fantastic "Making of" DVD that I'll talk about more in the next week or so, and an appearance by Bechdel on the "Pictures of a Life: Comics and the Memoir" panel as well as an autograph session. Meanwhile, Houghton Mifflin was good enough to send us an advance copy as well as a few of the "Making of" DVDs that we're using to promote the book. Thus far it seems to be working, as Fun Home currently ranks at 144 in Books at Amazon.com and buzz only seems to be building.

You'd think that other comic publishers might take note of the kind of success such an approach can have, but it seems Marvel is oblivious. Entertainment Weekly called them out recently about their refusal to provide advance review copies of anything. What possible reason could there be not to provide advance copies? Oh wait, there are three possible reasons: #1, the material is awful and sales on it are vulnerable enough to abysmal advance reviews that it needs to be protected (as movie studios do with bad movies that are not screened for critics). #2, Marvel sees sales on their titles as closely linked to plot surprises -- which makes sense when considering the way Marvel solicits titles, but less so when one considers the way they try to leak spoilers shortly before a book hit shelves. #3, it'd cost too much, which is completely ludicrous since increasing a print run by the number of copies we're talking about is less than peanuts (we're talking something like a quarter a copy from what I understand). It would seem that a the free advertising that comes with a review of said comic in a general interest magazine like Entertainment Weekly would tend to offset those minor costs. And it's not like Marvel isn't set up to send out advance copies of some books anyway since they provide Sneak Peak packs to retailers (for a price of course) with copies of select titles being released the following week. This inability to change their approach to how things are done (a problem that goes far beyond Marvel), an unwillingness to learn from the experience of similar industries is as big a factor as any in limiting the growth of comics.

Meanwhile, Top Cow is taking suggestions on how to improve themselves over at The Engine. Quite a few good ideas there that just about any publisher could and should implement. Most impressive, though, is simply Rob Levin's willingness to take suggestions and (hopefully) implement change.

Quick Hits 6/4

*I was at a bit of a loss Friday when I checked Amazon.com's Graphic Novel bestseller charts. Five of the top ten spots were occupied by various volumes of Y: The Last Man for no obviously discernable reason. The Beat was nice enough to solve the mystery for me: apparently it's all NPR's fault. Seeing a quality book like Y get exposure is always nice and I'd be curious to see some Bookscan numbers over the next few weeks, but I don't know that we could do much to leverage the additional attention at MacGuffin. Media exposure like this is what can draw completely new readers into comics, and Y: The Last Man is a great book for that, but realistically those readers are going to go to a general bookstore to find the books, not a comics specialty shop (there's even a brief bit in the audio clip about being uncomfortable to ask for the comics section at a bookstore). What we need to be ready for is when someone who enjoys the series after hearing about it on NPR is waiting for a table at the restaurant next door and wanders over to kill some time. What direction do we point them in next?

*AIT/PlanetLar sent out a press release this past week to let retailers know that, for the next few months, they are going to pick up the 3% penalty that Diamond charges on reorders. Larry was nice enough to ask for my thoughts on the idea and include a quote in the press release. As I said there, it makes it much easier for me to decide where to get AIT/PlanetLar books from for our weekly reorder and it's a step that I'm surprised more publishers don't take. Unfortunately, ours is an industry that encourages retailers to take a strong initial position on inventory, one side effect of which is some retailers' tentative approach to less obvious hits. Since shops are ordering non-returnable with almost no upfront information, you can only blame a retailer so much for sticking with what they know will sell (and exactly how much they know will sell). Beyond just familiarity, though, discount plays a big part in how much of an inventory position a retailer will take. It's understandable to order more Marvel and DC product if you're getting them at 52% off and AIT/PlanetLar at 42% off. While that extra 3% will be nice for MacGuffin, a store that doesn't stock AIT/PlanetLar in the first place isn't likely to start because of 3 points of margin. Yet one more factor that leads to the industry's stunted growth patterns.

Movie Marketing: One More Time

As if to emphasize my recent posts, Mike Marts, editor of Marvel's X-Men comics, spoke to Publishers Weekly about the company's movie tie-ins.

One thing that gets hammered home throughout the piece (either by Marts or by how he's quoted) is that Marvel tries to keep their monthly comics accessible to new readers -- which is both tough to believe and tough to believe is worthwhile when the latest issue of New X-Men features Reverend William Striker utilizing Nimrod to attack the school. Even I'm confused (especially since we're dealing with two villains whose heyday was roughly 20 years ago). How often does someone pick up one of Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries, flip to the middle of the book and start reading without getting lost? Sure it may be possible to figure out what's going on, but is it necessarily worth it? The idea shouldn't be to make monthly comics more accessible, it should be to create obvious jumping on points every so often in the form of trade paperbacks through which readers can catch up with the monthly series (hey kinda like how DVD box sets are released just before the new season starts on TV). Then, publicize the fact that these are a great place to jump into the comics, with particular focus on the bookstore market.

The best line in the story, though, provides some insight into Marvel's general approach to using comics and films to cross promote one another:

But how would potential new readers know enough to start out with Ultimate X-Men rather than with Uncanny X-Men, which still builds upon the continuity
that began in 1963? Here, Marts says, Marvel relies on its "relationship with the retailers. They know enough to suggest the Ultimate books as the entry-level, ground-level books."

Therefore, it's up to retailers to understand how to point someone who enjoed the movie towards these books. No, I'm pretty sure that Marts is talking specifically about direct market retailers here, and, as one of them, I do tend to direct people interested in jumping into Marvel towards the Ultimate imprint. Then again, the majority of potential new readers aren't necessarily walking into MacGuffin after watching the movie. But, as Marts himself points out (and as I did a few days ago), the first volume of Astonishing X-Men and "The Dark Phoenix Saga" are the most likely candidates for crossover appeal since they are the storylines cribbed for the movie. The question becomes, why didn't Marvel make a big push to get specifically these two books in front of as many eyes as possible? It's not like DC's consignment sale is a secret, so a program like that for the Direct Market should just as well for Marvel. And certainly some sort of program or advertisement could have been worked out with the chain bookstores to get as much face time for these two books as possible. Instead, Marvel will almost certainly miss out on some potential sales of both books.