Looking at sales trends in Part 2 (Part 1 here), we saw that virtually every comic has a month-to-month sales drop between 1.5 – 3.0%, which over the course of a year can mean 10 – 25% of your total sales. That figure holds true across the entire comic industry, but particularly among “The Big Two” (Marvel and DC Comics – which account for 70% of all North American comic sales).
The number of comics they’ve released in the last decade that have actually gone UP in sales, I could probably count on one hand. And while the same diminishing sales trend happens for indie comic publishers (basically everyone NOT Marvel or DC — Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Top Shelf, Oni, Dynamite, BOOM! etc.) you can find dozens of examples where their sales actually ROSE over time.
When you think about it, a new series from Marvel or DC has the maximum visibility possible for a comic before its release. Whether it’s a new title from one of their big franchises, like the new Wolverine and the X-Men #1 (coming in Oct), or a less well-known mid-list series like Marvel’s new Legion of Monsters #1 (coming this month), by virtue of them being Big Two books, every single retailer is going to SEE them in the previews catalog and at least CONSIDER ordering them for their customers.
And that’s not something that most books outside the big two can say. Many retailers only pay attention to the Big Two, or if they’re lucky, they go through Diamond’s “Premier Publishers” (Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse and IDW get preferred status in the catalog and have their work listed before all the other publishers every month). So the vast majority of comics outside Marvel and DC are never even considered for purchasing by a great many comic shops.
But no retailer is going to say to his customers, “Oh, I didn’t know that new X-Force series was coming out from Marvel, sorry I didn’t order any for you guys.” That’s their bread and butter. Selling those Big Two comics is what they make their living off of, so they’re not gonna miss a single opportunity.
Since books from the Big Two have maximum visibility when they’re solicited — virtually everyone who might want it, knows it’s coming out — the book launches with the highest sales figure the series is EVER going to have. There is really no audience out there for it to find a few months down the road that doesn’t already know about it.
Sales have nowhere to go but down.
And I’ll freely admit this a pretty simplified view. The Big Two publish so many comics nowadays (if you include the ICON line, Marvel solicited an even 100 comics and DC 84 for November 2011) that it’s impossible to keep up on ALL of them. So some readers are bound to miss a new book they might be interested in and pick it up a couple issues down the road. But I think the numbers clearly show, these late-comers are so small a percentage, that they don’t counterbalance all the people dropping the book that account for the standard monthly sales drop.
On the other hand, since we established that many retailers don’t pay as much attention to publishers outside of the Big Two, a new indy comic launch is really only reaching a fraction of its potential audience. The vast majority of fans and retailers have NO CLUE the book even exists. And to be fair to retailers, these indie books almost always have up-and-coming, unproven creators on them, which makes it more of a risk to order the books.
So if it’s a quality book and buzz starts to build around it, you often see the numbers on the book rise over a period of time. They’ll climb pretty steadily while the book find’s its audience, but at a certain point, they all pretty much level out — Walking Dead, Invincible, Kick-Ass, Nemesis, Scarlet, Casanova, Locke and Key, Morning Glories and Chew (some of the more popular indie books right now) have all followed that pattern.
I often wonder whether another contributing factor to this standard monthly sales drop is the very nature of what Marvel and DC do. As creators like Warren Ellis and Jonathan Hickman have pointed out, the Big Two are in the trademark servicing business. Trying to maintain and increase the value of their existing trademarks/intellectual property to take maximum advantage of them in business world. And I have no doubt you can service a trademark and still tell exciting, entertaining and meaningful stories. But part of servicing that trademark is perpetuating it over the years and thus there are certain things that the creative teams are just not going to be allowed to do — like, say some of the gender-bending stuff Matt Fraction did in the second Casanova story arc. So in a certain sense, a story from the Big Two is only allowed to be SO unpredictable.
The fact that ANYTHING can happen (and often does) is one of the most entertaining aspects of comics like Walking Dead, Invincible, Savage Dragon or properties like Game of Thrones and The Venture Bros. Both the Big Two and the indie guys are trying to tell entertaining stories, but only one group is really worried about maintaining their trademark’s value. Hell, Kirkman and George R.R. Martin can’t kill their characters fast enough!
In closing, I guess when it comes right down to it, there are really only a handful of reasons why the sales on a series go up or down.
Why do sales on a series drop one issue to the next — say issue #43 to #44?
1.Reader decided they just don’t’ like the book anymore
2. Reader missed an issue and decide to drop series or wait for trade
3. Reader couldn’t afford comics that week/month
4. Book has a fill-in artist they don’t care for.
Why do sales on a series rise?
1. The story itself took some massive twists and turns that got people talking about its plot, creating a buzz
2. The book slipped in under the radar upon release and fans of the book have been championing its quality or premise, creating a buzz.
Chime in if you’ve got any differing points of view. I’d love to hear you guy’s thoughts on the subject.
