Counting the Ways

DC finally announced what we all new was coming, Countdown, a weekly series follow-up to 52. I will give them credit for a creative numbering gimmick (starting at 51 and counting down, presumably to either zero or #1 of Crisis Management or whatever they call their next event series). And, while I don't know that another weekly series is necessarily the best idea, it does give editorial the chance to apply some lessons learned to improve upon the lackluster storytelling 52 occasionally suffered from.

That said, the fairly spectacular sales of 52 will not necessarily be easy to duplicate and that's not necessarily a bad thing. First, in order for DC to do this correctly, they need to make at least the first few issues returnable (something of a theme lately), if not the first 12 as they did with 52. By all accounts there were a fairly small percentage of issues of 52 returned to Diamond, yet I'll guarantee that no retailer would have taken nearly the chances they did on 52 if not for the option to return what didn't sell. And on a weekly series like this, it's important to hit as high of a ceiling as possible as early as possible, because despite the relative stability of 52's sell in numbers, they have been in steady decline. At the moment it appears that DC is content to assume that retailers will treat Countdown as an extension of 52 and order accordingly. If that remains the plan, then DC is pretty much setting the ceiling of Countdown at whatever minimum sales level 52 ends up at and setting themselves up for a series of diminishing returns when they do arrive at their next big event.

A larger problem, however, is the damage another weekly series could potentially do to DC's mid-list. Marc-Oliver Frisch (among others) has put forth a theory over at The Beat that the dwindling sales of DC's mid-list is at least partially due to those sales shifting towards 52. On an anecdotal level, we can't sell an issue of Hawkgirl or Green Arrow to save our lives and judging from Diamond's sales charts we're not the only ones. While I don't think it's a conscious decision by most consumers to stop buying a title like Nightwing in favor of 52, I do believe that it becomes much easier to stop reading a monthly title of middling quality or interest when $10 a month is being eaten up by a weekly series that purports to be critical to the overall universe and has a much stronger grip on the reader simply by virtue of offering a new piece of story every week.

Whether the thinning of the midlist is a good thing or not is open to debate, but if DC isn't careful, they may end up losing some sales without making up for them with a high selling weekly title. Hopefully we'll see an announcement soon about returnability on the early issues of Countdown, allowing retailers and DC to see the best possible sales and offsetting any damage that may be done to the bottom half of the sales charts.


UPDATE: Rich Johnston has the news that the first twelve issues of Countdown will be partially returnable (about halfway into the column). Good news, but it would be even better if retailers actually got this information with the solicitation copy -- or at all.

Returning to Minx

In the interest of actually posting something besides weekly release lists in the month of February, I'll point out that this is the sort of thing I like to see:

According to a weekly e-mail distributed to retailers, DC Comics is extending the sales incentive offered on their first Minx title, Plain Janes, (the possibility of full returnability) to the entire 2007 Minx line.

This isn't the first time DC has taken on the majority of the risk when it has faith in a product (the first twelve issues of 52 were almost fully returnable). The economics of the comic market, though, are built on non-returnable sales by a publisher or distributor (i.e. Diamond) to retailers at a healthy discount. A publisher offering the same discount along with up front returnability (assuming some very shallow order minimums are reached) is still a fairly unusual practice in comics (so much so that I couldn't tell you the last time anyone other than DC offered anything comparable).

Now, when it comes right down to it, returns are not a great thing, since they cost both the retailer and publisher money. Limited examples of returnability, however, are a great thing because they allow retailers (who generally order conservatively because whatever doesn't sell turns into dead money) to take a much bigger chance on a new release than they otherwise might. This is particularly important because the one thing that will absolutely kill any sale is lack of stock on hand. I can't very well sell anyone on a title if I don't have any copies available to sell. Which leads to unfortunate events like the last two weeks, when we first sold out of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man #17 on Thursday afternoon (after doubling our standard orders on the title) and then sold out of Sensational Spider-man #35 (after doubling our Friendly Neighborhood orders) on the following Thursday.

The Minx line may be a completely different type of product, but with very little clue as to how much demand there will be for these titles, it becomes a complete guessing game to order these books. We could easily sell out the first day if we order too few, or be stuck with a hundred dollars worth of unsold books if not for returnability. Now I won't worry nearly as much about the number I'm sticking into the order form because I can err on the side of optimism.

On side effect of all of this is also one of the reasons that I suspect trades and graphic novels will continue to see much more sustainable growth than single issue comics: when dealing in backlist, returnability isn't worth nearly as much as discount. Most backlist gets stocked one or two copies deep unless sales data indicates that they're likely to sell more in the space of a week. Any copies that do sell can generally be replaced within a few days or a week, so ideally there's always at least one copy on the shelf but not so many that it's dead money just sitting there.

When dealing with new releases, however, the calculus changes. I don't know any smart business owner that wouldn't be happy to sell 100 pieces they've purchased at a 40% discount versus 50 pieces at a 55% discount. Thankfully, DC has enough confidence in the long term sales potential of these books that we won't have to choose.