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.
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.
posted by Sam Hobart at 7:50 PM
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