Marvel Comics Falsly Inflating Their Sales Numbers?

[bralinator]

Any other comic retailers experience anything like this from Marvel?

Full story: http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/marvel-co ... -retailers

[JohnMayo]

These sorts of inflated sales can often been seen by the lower than expected retail ranking on the Diamond lists.

I'm not sure why Marvel is overshipping. Generally speaking, it doesn't seem to be an effective sales tool.

[bralinator]

Do you think they hope retailers will give the copies away to people who are only there to purchase something else? As in a customer comes in for 4-5 books and at the counter the shop owner says, "hey, have you checked out Mosaic yet? Have a copy on me!"

Might be effective.

[JohnMayo]

That seems to be the expectation. A while back DC experimented with over-shipping various titles in a much more control basis. While they never publicly shared the results of those experiments, DC never executed an sort of over-shipping initiative either.

Many of the titles Marvel is over-shipping are so amazing that giving away the first one free will drastically increase sales in the long run.

[MisterFerro]

Just released: Marvel overships titles to retailers by 10% in January

10% EXTRA FOR FREE ON MARVEL UNIVERSE JANUARY SHIPPING TITLES!
As a thank you to Retailers, Marvel will be sending an additional 10% of FREE copies for all of January shipping Marvel Universe titles! For all orders made by FOC, Marvel will be sending 10% extra at no cost to Retailers!

Comicsbeat "updated" to say that

UPDATE: I have been told by a Marvel spokesman that this 10% will NOT be counted in Diamond’s number. That is consistent with how Marvel handles overships on other product launches. 



which is particularly bad of Marvel to say considering that the free copies DO get counted in the Unit Share, just not in the Retail Share.

[JohnMayo]

Comicsbeat "updated" to say that

UPDATE: I have been told by a Marvel spokesman that this 10% will NOT be counted in Diamond’s number. That is consistent with how Marvel handles overships on other product launches. 



which is particularly bad of Marvel to say considering that the free copies DO get counted in the Unit Share, just not in the Retail Share.

I suppose it is possible Diamond could be changing the way the report over-shippings. It would be nice if they also did that for bulk purchases like LootCrate items and massive specific retailer exclusive variants.

[bralinator]

It also may be more about the ad rates, which are in part based on circulation – Marvel has just boosted their circulation up 10%, which justifies an increase in ad-rates.

Same reason magazine subscriptions tend to be so cheap. Thoughts?

Wouldn't it be great if, instead of giving out free copies every month, Marvel just dropped prices back down to $2.99? I'd probably pick up more books from them, even with double-shipping. Then again, I've been so 'meh' about most of their current output, I might not.

[MisterFerro]

Comicsbeat "updated" to say that

UPDATE: I have been told by a Marvel spokesman that this 10% will NOT be counted in Diamond’s number. That is consistent with how Marvel handles overships on other product launches. 



which is particularly bad of Marvel to say considering that the free copies DO get counted in the Unit Share, just not in the Retail Share.

I suppose it is possible Diamond could be changing the way the report over-shippings. It would be nice if they also did that for bulk purchases like LootCrate items and massive specific retailer exclusive variants.

According to John Jackson Miller in a comment he posted(@ comicsbeat) on the 6th, Diamond is not changing their policy on over-shipments.

EDIT: Newsarama posted a new article confirming what JJM posted in the comicsbeat article. Marvel Giving Retailers 10% Extra of January Books FREE - And How It'll Affect Sales Charts

"When publishers ship extra books to retailers at no charge - which is done by more than Marvel - we’ll add it to the unit share of the charts, but not the dollar share," said Diamond's Michael Moccio.

[drew]

so if that is true then: if I ship 50 copies of "Drew's Super Team #1" through diamond to all 2000 comic shops for free - the numbers will report 100,000 units shipped to retailers and give me a top 5-ish book for the month...hmmmmmm

[MichaelCastle]

Why any "crate" issues are counted as sales is so beyond me that any company that does it is truly inflating their sales way more than overshipping does. Marvel and the other retailers are starting to rely on variants and variant shenanigans to get an influx of cash. Even the super small publishers are doing it and it will be very interesting to watch what happens when the variant market stops being profitable. Maybe retailers have figured out a way for it to work for everyone carving out a niche in the marketplace that the bottom won't fall out.

[doctormo]

Now numbers for December are out Bleeding Cool has provided some examples of how overshipping impacts the unit sales chart - https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/01/13 ... mber-2016/. I look forward to John and Sam discussing Marvel and over-shipping on the next episode of the Mayo Report. Unfortunately this business makes a murky pool even murkier.