Category: Making Comics

Indie Comic Sales: Standard Monthly Sales Drop

Filed Under: Making Comics by Gabe — 2 Comments

9.15.11

In Indie Comic Sales part 2 (part 1 here), we’re going to look at what sales on an average comic book do on a monthly and yearly basis. Before we start, time for the usual credit and disclaimer. All the numbers for these examples come from ICv2. For the acknowledged inaccuracies and why the numbers are still valuable, see part 1.

On a month-to-month basis, sales on the average comic book series generally fall -1.5% to -3.0%. That number is pretty consistent across the industry, even with the top-selling superhero books from “The Big Two” (Marvel & DC). While that’s not a huge drop in sales from one month to the next, if you multiply that by 12 months, you usually end up with a -10% to -25% drop in sales over the course of a year.

To illustrate, here’s some numbers for Brian Wood’s DMZ series from DC/Vertigo and the consistent top-ten selling Avengers by Brian Bendis and John Romita Jr from Marvel. In the DMZ numbers, you can see the standard monthly sales drop in effect. On Avengers, if you compare sales on #1 to the most recent issue, #16, you’d see sales have fallen -66%. That’s not an entirely fair measurement though, as first issues are always ordered much higher than subsequent ones. If we look at a twelve month period, from September, 2010 to August, 2011, we’d see a drop of -28%. Which is about standard.

DMZ
#51 $2.99 6,840 Mar 10
#52 $2.99 6,826 Apr 10 (-.0.2%)
#53 $2.99 6,759 May10 (-1.0%)
#54 $2.99 6,661 Jun 10 (-1.5%)
#55 $2.99 6,581 Jul 10 (-1.2%)

Avengers
#1 $3.99 163,867 May 10
#2 $3.99 98,788 June 10
#3 $3.99 87,410 Jul 10
#4 $3.99 87,333 Aug 10
#5 $3.99 82,411 Sep 10
#6 $3.99 73,409 Oct 10
#7 $3.99 89,758 Nov 10
#8 $3.99 67,840 Dec 10
#9 $3.99 64,867 Jan 11
#10 $3.99 63,924 Feb 11
#11 $3.99 66,618 Mar 11
#12 $3.99 63,441 Apr 11
#13 $3.99 68.086 May 11
#14 $3.99 64,057 June 11
#15 $3.99 62,580 July 11
#16 $3.99 60,295 Aug 11

Even the most well crafted story-arcs see their sales decline. Generally there are two cases that will cause a book’s sales to stay the same, or actually rise: the story itself took some MASSIVE twists and turns that got people talking, creating a buzz about the story – or – the book slipped in under the radar on release and the fans of the book have been championing it’s quality, creating a buzz about the book.

If sales drop 25% over the first year, you can imagine what kind of trouble your book will be in by the end of the second — down 50% overall. To counter this sales decline and reset the starting point the numbers are going to fall from, the Big Two do something like this:

1. Relaunch book with a new #1
2. Sales drop off
3. Change roster of characters in book
4. Sales drop off
5. New creative team takes over book
6. Sales drop off
7. Kill character
8. Sales drop off
9. Bring a character back from the dead.
10. Sales drop off
11. Start cycle over (possibly mixing up the order)

Obviously with the new DC Comics relaunch, many of these things apply to their books, but think about how many also apply to Marvel at the moment — Ultimate Spider-Man (kill character, new #1, change roster), Daredevil (new #1, new creative team) Fantastic Four (kill character, new #1), Wolverine and the X-Men (new creative team, new #1, new roster), Avengers (new roster, new artist) and Captain America, which has done every one of these in the last few years (brought Bucky back from dead, killed Captain America, changed roster with Bucky being lead during Cap’s death, brought Cap back from dead, killed Bucky and relaunched a new #1).

Again, that’s no knock on those stories or the creators telling them, just an observation on tactics used to keep sales high. And I can’t say I really fault the companies for this strategy. As far as sales trends seem to show, it’s virtually inevitable that sales will drop and you’ll have to take action to raise them up.

Expect at least another two or three parts in these series. More next week.

Tags: Comics Business

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Indie Comic Sales: Robert Kirkman and The Walking Dead

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9.7.11

As a someone who is looking to launch a creator-owned book and obviously wants it to be as successful as possible, I think it’s absolutely essential to know as much about not only the craft of creating amazing comic books, but the marketing, distribution, sales, etc. You have to have realistic expectations and know what you’re getting yourself into, or you’re doomed to failure. A huge part of knowing what you’re getting into is how many copies can you expect to sell. Along those lines, I track independent comic book sales to better understand the landscape of the marketplace and where my book, The Happy Samurais, might fit in.

In future posts, I’ll talk about some of the recent creator-owned comics that have launched to strong sales — books like Morning Glories, Chew, Nonplayer, Witch Doctor and Red Wing — but today, I’m gonna start at the very top, with the biggest creator-owned success story of the last decade, Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead.

Years before Kirkman became a best-selling creator and partner at Image Comics, he published comics through his company, Funk-O-Tron. He met Tony Moore in the 7th grade and together they went on to create Battle Pope in 2000 for Funk-O-Tron (which lasted 14 issues). Kirkman self-financed all his early work, racking up $40,000 in credit card debt at one point. He started doing work for Image Comics in 2002 with Tech Jacket and Super Patriot: America’s Fighting Force and later launched Invincible #1 in January of 2003 with sales of 9,975 and Walking Dead (again with Tony Moore) in October of 2003 with sales of 7,266.

As of August 2011, each issue of Invincible sells about 16,000 and Walking Dead about 34,000. Digital issues of both comics have been available day-and-date (meaning the digital copies are released the same day as the print copies) since July, 2010. According to Kirkman, each digital issue of Walking Dead sells about 3,000 copies the day of release and then additional sales over the following months. How has the digital day-and-date affected print sales? They haven’t dropped one bit. Since the Walking Dead tv show came out on AMC last fall, there’s been a nice boost of 5,000 extra print copies a month sold. Not bad, but not a game-changer either. The real impact of the tv show seems to have been in sales of trade paperbacks, which sell at a staggering rate.

Before we look at the Walking Dead sales figures I’ve compiled below, I want to take a second and talk about the source for these numbers. Diamond Comics, the sole distributor for all new comics released in the US, doesn’t release exact sales figures. Instead, they release a “sales index”. They assign Batman (a book chosen at random) an index of 100.00 every month. All other sales figures are given in relation to that Batman index. If you know the sales for any one book on the list, you should be able to plug it into the index and calculate the sales for the Diamond Top 300 that month. So if Batman #712 has an index of 100.00 and Uncanny X-Men #540 has an index of 111.33, and we know the sales for either book, we can figure out that Batman sold 51,385 and X-Men sold 57,206.

This is what websites like ICv2 do every month when they list their sales figures for issues and trade paperbacks. They do their best to get the numbers as accurate as possible, but creators (who are privy to the ACTUAL sales on their books) complain that they’re constantly off. Apparently, the numbers that Diamond puts out don’t include all last minute orders, or maybe reorders of a book placed the following week and really only reflect the North American comics sales.

That said, they are usually CONSISTENT in how far off they are. In the infamous “Bendis vs. Kirkman” panel at the 2008 Baltimore Comic-Con (this was after the “Kirkman Manifesto” video and the two sat down to debate aspects of creator-owned work), Kirkman put together some slides to show his sales figures. One of those slides (seen below) showed the “actual” vs. “internet” sales figures (top set of lines relate to actual vs. internet on a Bendis related Marvel book, bottom lines relate to Walking Dead). You can see that numbers are definitely off, but they’re off by the same ratio every month, so the overall shape of the graph (the trend) is still the same.

Another important thing to take note of is that the Diamond/ICv2 sales figures for trade paperbacks ONLY show sales to the direct market (comic shops). They don’t take into account sales to bookstores, Amazon etc. So the trade charts only represent a fraction of the actual sales on that book.

Point being, all my numbers below are close, but definitely not 100% accurate. Without further adieu…

Walking Dead Sales

October 2003 – Walking Dead #1 7,266
August 2011 – Walking Dead 34,000 (average copies per month)

March 2011 Walking Dead books:

Walking Dead #82 31,174
Walking Dead #83 33,686
Walking Dead Weekly #9 5,773
Walking Dead Weekly #10 5,614
Walking Dead Weekly #11 5,325
Walking Dead Weekly #12 5,359
Walking Dead Weekly #13 5,261

March total sales = 92,192

- The Walking Dead Weekly books are new reprintings of the original issues, released, as the name implies, one issue per week. No new content or extras. It is reprints of existing material, not a spin-off book or new mini-series and is selling 5,000 copies a month.

- When you factor in how the ICv2 numbers are always a bit lower than the actual numbers, I would say the cumulative Walking Dead probably did reach 100,000 copies in March!

- For March, 2011, only ONE book sold over 100,000 copies. Fantastic Four #1 with 114,472.

- I know a SINGLE issue of Walking Dead didn’t actually sell 100,000 copies, but however you slice it, those are amazing numbers.

April 2011 Walking Dead books:

Walking Dead #84 31,930
Walking Dead #83 reorders 6,252
Walking Dead Weekly #14 5,003
Walking Dead Weekly #15 4,922
Walking Dead Weekly #16 4,956
Walking Dead Weekly #17 4,388
Walking Dead Survivors Guide#1 16,158

April total sales = 73,609

May 2011 Walking Dead books:

Walking Dead #85 37,552
Walking Dead Weekly #18 4,708
Walking Dead Weekly #19 4,619
Walking Dead Weekly #20 4,547
Walking Dead Weekly #21 4,507
Walking Dead Survivor Guide #2 13,419

May total sales = 69,352

June 2011 Walking Dead books:

Walking Dead #86 31,325
Walking Dead Survivor’s Guide #3 11,479
Walking Dead TPB v14 20,397
Walking Dead Weekly #22 4,000 (approximate)
Walking Dead Weekly #23 4,000 (approximate)
Walking Dead Weekly #24 4,000 (approximate)
Walking Dead Weekly #25 4,000 (approximate)
Walking Dead Weekly #26 4,000 (approximate)

June total sales = 83,201

- Diamond only lists sales figures for the top 300 books every month.
- The #300 book for June sold 4,427 copies.
- So I don’t think Walking Dead Weekly #22-26 made the cut, but based on their May/July numbers, all probably sold in the neighborhood of 4,000 copies.

June 2011 Walking Dead trade paperbacks:

Walking Dead volume 1 3,131
Walking Dead volume 2 1,735
Walking Dead volume 3 1,335
Walking Dead volume 4 1,123
Walking Dead volume 5 1,080
Walking Dead volume 6 1,001
Walking Dead volume 7 967
Walking Dead volume 8 877
Walking Dead volume 9 1,094
Walking Dead volume 10 999
Walking Dead volume 11 1,000
Walking Dead volume 12 1,131
Walking Dead volume 13 1,525
Walking Dead volume 14 20,397
Walking Dead Compendium v1 499 ($59.99)
Walking Dead volume volume 1 Hardcover 496 ($34.99)

June 2011 sales of backstock (not counting new volume 14) = 17,993
June 2011 total trade sales = 38,390

- In June 2011, all 14 of the Walking Dead trade paperbacks were in Diamond’s top 300 Graphic Novel sales chart.

- As mentioned previously, these trade numbers only reflect sales to comic shops, not book stores, amazon etc., so don’t be unimpressed by the apparent small number for the backstock.

- The number for volume 14 trade sales is MASSIVE though. It’s actually the biggest trade debut sales I can find for the last few years. Numbers below for it and a few other big releases to give some context:

- average sales for top #1-5 trades per month = 2,000-3,000
- #1 trade for June was Walking Dead v14 = 20,397
- #2 trade for June was Buffy Season 8 v8 = 6,804
- Walking Dead v 13 = 19,324 (November 2010)
- Walking Dead v12 = 16,627 (July 2010)
- Superman: Earth One = 16,260 (Oct 2010)
- Scott Pilgrim v5 = 10,959 (May 2009)
- Scott Pilgrim v6 = 21,305 (July 2010)

- Yes, new Walking Dead trades sell phenomenal, but I’m more impressed with how amazing the backstock sells month in, month out.

- I’ve tracked Walking Dead volume 1 sales since its initial release and it sells 1,500-2,000 copies a month in the direct market, without fail.

Walking Dead volume 1 sales:

May 2004 5,374
May 2005 2,079
May 2006 1,630
May 2007 1,803
May 2008 1,324
May 2009 1,461
May 2010 2,303
Oct 2010 10,263 (launch of tv show)
Dec 2010 6,410 (xmas spike)
May 2011 2,155

The vast majority of the information in this post came from interviews with Kirkman on iFanboy and WordBallon with John Siuntres podcast. Both are highly entertaining and informative, so definitely check them out. And here is a link to the video of the Bendis vs. Kirkman panel at the 2008 Baltimore Comic-Con. A must see.

Tags: Comics Business, Invincible, Robert Kirkman, Walking Dead

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Is My Idea Ingenious or Idiotic?

Filed Under: Making Comics by Gabe — 1 Comment

9.4.11

You come up with a ridiculous idea that you think MIGHT be brilliant. You IMMEDIATELY want to call a friend so they can pass judgement on the idea and confirm (or deny) its quality. It’s AGONIZING wondering if an idea is genius or utter shit — and that line is much finer than you’d imagine.

“If an idea is any good, it’s on the verge of being stupid.” – Michel Gondry

That’s probably my favorite quote on creativity, ever. Seriously. That’s basically my litmus test for an idea. When I think back on their conception, all my best ideas made me laugh out loud. Because they were ridiculous and they were awesome. And that’s how I’d hope that people would describe my work. Ridiculously awesome. Which in my mind, ridiculously awesome = fun.

Truth is, you’ve got to let your “brilliant” idea rattle around in your head (and subconscious) for a few days. I like to print a cliffs-note version of my idea out on a piece of a paper and leave it around everywhere (in the studio, bedroom, copy in the car) so it’s constantly confronting me (not even making that up). Be patient and sleep on the idea for a couple days. Come to your own conclusions, THEN call your consigliere (in my case, Ben Dale) and bounce the idea off them.

Opinions of your inner-circle are invaluable, but if you call on them too soon, the idea (and your ego) are too fragile to get true assessment of the idea’s worth.

So, Ben, expect a call in couple days, cause this one just might be brilliant.

Tags: Ben Dale, Philosophies, Quotes

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Introducing… Pink Dragon Dirt Bike

Filed Under: Making Comics, The Happy Samurais by Gabe — 3 Comments

9.1.11

Here are the character designs for The Happy Samurai’s rival band, Pink Dragon Dirt Bike. The overall design theme was “sci-fi glam”. Darth Vader meets David Bowie. We’ve got Red Nozaki, the brilliant guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. Goken (literally translates to strong fist) on drums. Fastest guitar player in Tokyo, Uzi Suzuki plays lead. And Lady Blitzkrieg locks down the low end on bass.

Tags: Character Design, Pink Dragon Dirt Bike

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Wacom’s Inkling

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8.30.11

From Wacom’s Press Release:

“Today, Wacom® introduces Inkling, a new digital sketch pen that captures a digital likeness of your work while you sketch with its ballpoint tip on any sketchbook or standard piece of paper. Designed for rough concepting and creative brainstorming, Inkling bridges the gap between paper sketching and digital drawing by giving users at the front end of the creative process a way to rough-out ideas with real ink on paper and capture their concepts digitally so that they can be later refined on their computer. Inkling even allows users to create layers in the digital file while sketching on paper in the following creative software applications: Adobe® Photoshop®, Adobe® Illustrator® and Autodesk® Sketchbook® Pro.”

More info at Wacom’s Inkling page.

Tags: Tools

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Video: Sara Pichelli inks Ultimate Spider-Man in Photoshop

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8.25.11

Super-interesting video of Sara Pichelli inking the new Ultimate Spider-Man in Photoshop.

Tags: Sara Pichelli

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Desk Shot 8.22.11

Filed Under: Making Comics, The Happy Samurais by Gabe — 2 Comments

8.22.11

The reference madness that goes on in my studio while working. That’s all for one building!

Tags: Desk Shots, Production Design, Work-in-Progress

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Do It as a Comic

Filed Under: Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA), Making Comics by Gabe — 4 Comments

8.22.11

Last October, I had the pleasure of attending an Atlantic Center for the Arts residency with Paul Pope, Craig Thompson and Svetlana Chmakova (see previous ACA posts – part 1, part 2, part 3, & part 4). One afternoon, I went over to see what was going on in the Craig Thompson group studio. There sitting on the table was a stunning new comic page by Craig. It was his introduction to Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Daytripper trade.

I was utterly enthralled with the piece. First, it was an original piece of Craig Thompson’s art in my hands!! Second, it was such a gorgeous page, I got lost looking at Craig’s lush brushwork, patterns and hand lettering. Third, I found what Craig said in the page to be a very insightful. But more than anything, I was mesmerized by the idea that Craig had done the introduction as a COMIC. Now maybe doing an intro as a comic isn’t a groundbreaking idea to everyone, but it was to me. It hit me hard and I began to think or rethink lots of different possibilities. You could take virtually anything and “do it as a comic”. I was so captivated by the piece, I actually stood there and drew it in my sketchbook (see below) so I could have it for inspiration until the Daytripper trade came out. After I got done staring at the piece for an hour and a half, one of the artists in Craig’s group, the amazing Jake Wyatt, told me that Craig was really worried the introduction wasn’t any good and that he hadn’t actually “said anything” with it.” Over dinner that night, I got a chance to tell Craig how amazing and powerful I thought it was. I worry he was too humble to accept my sincerity.

I was reminded of that Craig Thompson story because I’ve recently seen a couple creators do promos/ads for their projects as a comic instead of just the typical static illustration or poster. And I LOVE that idea of just “doing it as a comic.”

Jay Faerber and artist Simone Guglielmini have a new series coming out from Image Comics called Near Death. To promote the comic, Image did a sweet poster of the cover of issue #1 by Tomm Coker. Doing a cool promo poster is always a good idea (especially when you have someone as amazing as Tomm doing it), but it doesn’t really get the logline of your average series across. So Jay and Simone did a 3-page promo story that spells out the premise of their book. The promo straddles the line and is basically a comic and an ad at the same time. They’ve even managed to work in testimonials from Brian K. Vaughn and John Layman. The idea and execution is absolutely brilliant! And extremely effective as well. I’d be way more inclined to pick up Jay’s book after reading the promo comic than if I’d just seen the cover to #1 (and I don’t mean any offense to Tomm Coker with that remark).

Another example of “doing it as a comic” I’ve seen recently was for Shane and Chris Houghton’s comic Reed Gunther. I think Shane and Chris felt Reed Gunther was being unfairly categorized as an “All-Ages Kids Book”. But instead of just slapping a blurb on their book saying, “A comic for everyone” or something like that, they did 2-page comic explaining the idea instead. And I think it turned out great. It honestly made me take notice of the series more than any of the other promo images they’ve done.

And the last example I thought of is some of the promos that J. Scott Campbell did for Danger Girl and Wildsiderz. The Danger Girl promo was a fun little 2-page comic that not only got the series premise across, but also showcased it’s fun factor and sense of humor. With Wildsiderz, Jeff pushed things quite a bit more and basically did a 10-page comic trailer for the series.

Now I’m sure I’m missing some really obvious ones, so help me out if you guys think of any and mention them in the comments.

Tags: Craig Thompson, Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba, Friends, J. Scott Campbell, Jay Faerber

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Marvel’s E-I-C Axel Alonso on Event Comics

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8.19.11

From Axel’s recent interview with CBR:

“What do readers want from an event? Huge stakes, a satisfying climax that brings about some sort of lasting change to the status quo and a few loose threads to keep them guessing where the ongoing story is headed. And let’s face it, usually those threads come in the form of something bad looming on the horizon. If there’s one certainty in comics, it’s that victory always comes at a price. It’s our job to find ways to keep the inertia going 24-7, to keep the pressure on our heroes.”

I couldn’t agree with Axel more. The comics I find really entertaining are ones that change up the status quo, explore that new situation to the fullest, then change it up again. The catalyst for the changing of the status quo doesn’t necessarily have to come from an event or crossover though. It can just be a regular arc of the book. Either way, Marvel is on the right path with their event comics. It’s about what stories they can tell. Not what gimmick people will buy. That’s a lesson DC has still failed to grasp.

Tags: Philosophies

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Walt Simonson’s: Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition

Filed Under: Inspiration, Making Comics by Gabe — 2 Comments

8.19.11

You know that feeling you have when you get a new page of original art? You just bask in the glory of it. Savoring every detail. Memorizing every nuance. You develop a personal relationship with it. It’s amazing what that single page can make you feel.

Now multiple that feeling 176 times (one for every page) and you MIGHT begin to understand just how staggeringly awesome IDW’s Walt Simonson’s: The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition is.

The first thing you notice is just how massive the book is. At a full 12′x17″ it dwarfs even the tombstone-sized Alex Toth: Genius Isolated book — though it’s not nearly as thick (photos below show scale compared to regular comic and against a DC Absolute Edition). The book features seven full issues of Thor Walt wrote and drew (Issues #337-340 & #360-363). Walt hadn’t sold any of the pages, so they were able to scan the original art, all in full-color, so you could see construction lines, paste-ups, whiteout etc. Plus, all the pages were lettered by the brilliant John Workman, so you can actually read the story (and study John’s work).

Walt is in my personal pantheon of creators. Of course his work on Thor was legendary, but I hold his X-Factor, Fantastic Four and Orion work in the same regard. All of what makes Walt such an amazing artist is just bursting out of these pages. The power. The energy. The storytelling. The unbelievable draftsmanship.

Owning his full-size pages and getting to really study them is such an amazing opportunity, I can’t even put it into words. What I can tell you though, is this book has already had a profound affect on how I’ll approach all my future work.

After one day, Walt Simonson’s: The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition is already one of my most cherished books.