The Sales Thread

[Gothos]

To the subject of the OP: I'm possibly in the minority here, but I don't think there's an Iceman's chance in Hell that our beloved medium could ever make a return to newstands in the pamphlet format. There might have been some small chance to regain a toehold for serial comics in bookstories, had the Big Two pursued the TPB format for original comics; the equivalent of how the Japanese compile ongoing serials into the *tankobon* format. But they didn't.

I've encountered any number of fan-writers asserting that what killed the rep of comic books with big distributors by the 1970s was the fact that the majors reduced page-count in the 1950s to keep prices low for their juvenile fan-base. (The JOURNAL even devoted a whole issue to the topic in the late 90s; anyone recall it?) By the time the 1970s rolled around, the price-point on comics was no longer competitive. It wasn't even worth it to distributors to bale a few comics in with their usual stuff, because the comics yielded so little profit for the distributors.

Part of what we're dealing with is perception. People expect candy bars to increase in price; if one wants a candy bar, one pays the current price. But outside of hardcore fans, I don't think the average "comic browsers" were willing to pay more for what comics offered. As long as the pamphlet cost under a $1.00, it was still feasible junk-reading. Past that point, most people didn't care for comics enough to pay the going rate. A lof of people who might've once bought comics migrated to videogames, which offered more continuous bangs for the buck.

Yes, it's a dirty shame that comics-fans focused so hugely on the superhero. But without that concentration on one genre that you couldn't get from other media with any consistency, the fandom of the burgeoning DM might have drifted away and found other toys.

And the form of comic books might have fallen into the same disuse as Big Little Books.

[Scott Harris]

As a couple of us were discussing over in the What Have You Bought thread, it might be time to revisit my original post in this thread, because things have significantly changed since I posted it just last year.

My original post was looking at sales figures for books published in 2011. The implication I derived from the numbers was that a return to newsstand distribution might help reverse the downward sales trend facing comic shops. This was based on the fact that Archie's digest titles, which were almost exclusively newsstand, were reaching numbers equal to or greater than many of Marvel and DC's top sellers.

A year later, though, things have changed drastically, as shown by Archie's digest sales in 2012. We can see just how drastically if we also add in numbers for Archie's digest titles from 2010, when they were selling even better. Here's a look courtesy of this here blog:

numbers are for 2010, 2011 and 2012

Archie Double: 95236 70860 45641
Betty & Veronica Double: 80307 67719 47600
Archie & Friends Double: 70806 57188 38855
Jughead Double: 70927 55651 37812
Betty & Veronica Friends Double: 51099 50512 38278
World of Archie Double: 62822 57850 39936

As you can see, the figures I posted previously for 2011 were actually down significantly from 2010. And in 2012, they dropped even more, falling off the map to the point where most of the titles are now selling just 50-60% of what they were only two years ago.

Why?

Well, that's a darn good question, but (and a lot of this is speculation on my part) it seems to stem at least in part from Archie themselves also scaling back their newsstand distribution in favor of digital.

Simply on an anecdotal level, I noted in the other thread that two years ago my local grocery stores all had Archie digests for sale at their registers. Now none of them do, and further, they don't carry Archie at all. I've done a little looking around to find out why and what I've learned is that those point of sales digest slots at stores are actually sold to publishers and distributors. They basically pay for the privilege of having their titles promoted up front where everyone can see them.

My guess is that this was driving sales for the Archie digests but also was not longer cost effective for them for one reason or another. And when they scaled back their promotional efforts - and stopped paying to have stores carry their titles - sales dropped dramatically as the books were no longer readily available to their target audience.

This goes hand in hand, though, with Archie becoming the industry leader in terms of digital innovation and sales. They were the first company to offer their digital comics day-and-date and last year they also became the first to have their digital comics available through Facebook (which you can read about here). Perhaps more significantly, they are now publishing new titles that are digital only. The New Crusaders series I was pumping in another thread a while back was original digital only and was only published after the fact. And when the print version of Jughead was canceled last year, it was replaced in their lineup by Reggie and Me - which is exclusively digital, with no print copies at all.

In fact, beyond the mostly-reprint digests, Archie is now down to just three ongoing print titles in the classic Archie universe - Archie, Betty & Veronica and Kevin Keller. And the latter two of those series are both perilously close to cancellation, as they are now selling under 10k copies a month, which is the threshold at which Jughead and previous casualties were canceled.

Just how well Archie is doing digitally is, of course, unclear since they don't have to reveal their figures. But it seems that, instead of embracing past distribution methods as I had originally thought might be an avenue for growth, Archie is going completely the opposite direction by moving towards a digital first distribution system.

That's not to say that I think all Archie comics will vanish from the physical realm. My guess is that their flagship title, Archie, will continue to be published even if their other books are moved to digital only. But there has been speculation that Archie could move to reprint only in terms of their physical printing, as they have 70+ years of mostly interchangeable backstock they can republish at will, which could significantly reduce their operating costs and keep their digest format profitable.

It should be interesting to see what they do.

[Scott Harris]

One more note on this: The other major thing that has changed in the past year are the sales figures from DC and Marvel. DC, of course, was already up some when I posted my original thoughts, due to their then-recent New 52 relaunch. In the past year, sales have remained strong for DC, but Marvel also experienced a large boost from their non-relaunch Marvel Now. As a result, sales in 2012 were up across the board for comics in general. In fact, comics had one of their best selling years since the bubble burst in the mid-90's, and their best year ever in terms of dollar amount (which is partially because of inflation and higher prices and partially due to TPB sales).

Additionally, Image is emerging once again as a possible sales force. Not only has Walking Dead established itself as a top ten book over the last year, but the first issue of Mark Millar's new comic Jupiter's Legacy, sold over 100k copies last month, giving Image two top ten titles for the first time in god knows how long.

So for the first time in a long time, comic sales are actually looking up. Which is a nice thing to be able to say for once.