Mayo Report 2009-05 Comics

[jlshank007]

Great stuff. $2.99 vs. $3.99 and Singles vs. Trades has come up again.

$2.99 vs. $3.99 - In my personal experience I will continue to buy the books I really want to read at $3.99. If the Fantastic Four book went to $3.99 I would continue to by it and the FF numbers would probably not drop to much. That being said, the indy book or the other Marvel/DC book I wanted to give a read is now not going to be bought.

I also agree with the point that Dark Reign FF is a great series. It is the only Dark Reign mini-series I have bought or will buy. It shocked me that it was the worse selling compared to the others. Maybe because it was an issue #3 or issue #4 vs. Young Avengers being a #1?

Singles vs. Trades - I countinue, almost monthly, to have this battle within myself. I believe that if you are a wait for the trade kind of person or wait to get stuff at cons thats all you. I understand that not anyone has an unlimited comic budget and its really not mine or your job to pay more money for something just to keep the comic companies in business. That is NOT my responsibility. I understand that if you dont buy the singles as they come out, the trade and/or the rest of the series may not be released. I just personally dont feel any responsibility to purchase the single issues based on that fact.

Irredeemable Vol. 1 TPB - Collects issues 1-4. Retail price $9.99
Irredeemable Single Issues. Retail price $3.99 each - Total = $15.96

Why would I buy the single issues? Now I bought issues no. 1 & 2 and then stopped (due to budget cuts ironically enough). So I spent $7.98 retail for 2 issues when had I know that the trade would be $2.01 more I would have just waited for the trade and got 2 more issues. If I bought all for issues at full retail and then saw that I could have gotten the same four issues for $5.97 LESS, I would be upset (to put it nicely) with Boom.

I understand that the first trade will be at a special price and the rest of the trades in the series will probably not equal out this way but if Boom has a history in doing this I am NOT going to buy the singles issues from this company and will just wait for the trade. If it never gets to trade then oh well, I will probably think about it for about 20 seconds and then pick up the next comic. If it does make it to trade and is standard price then I am not really going to lose any money anyways.

On the Shrapnel note, I really enjoyed the first issue of the series. Budget cuts stopped me from continuing but I will try and go back pick up the issues later or hope they put out a trade but with those numbers I dont know.

Just my thoughts.

Now go buy Dark Reign FF or wait for the trade to be solicited the same month as the final issue in the mini-series.

[Wood]

Always love these episodes, thanks for taking the time to do this each and every month.

A few points from the conversation:

1) Jon Hickman is writing Dark Reign: FF, not Rick Remender. But your point still stands Bob, Hickman is a rising star at Marvel and certainly brought with him an embedded fan base which should be helping sales

2) John, YOY numbers matter b/c that's how companies manage their businesses. Marvel has to explain to shareholders YOY trends, and provides financial guidance on YOY growth expectations. That's why many people, myself included, are more interested in the YOY tally than sequential tallies. Both are important though, particularly in terms of trend analysis. We agree.

[jlshank007]

I am really looking forward to Hickman working on the regular FF book coming up. I think its a good transition from the last team and we should get some really good FF stories.

[JohnMayo]

2) John, YOY numbers matter b/c that's how companies manage their businesses. Marvel has to explain to shareholders YOY trends, and provides financial guidance on YOY growth expectations. That's why many people, myself included, are more interested in the YOY tally than sequential tallies. Both are important though, particularly in terms of trend analysis. We agree.

I see your point on the YOY numbers. I just think that those are heavily influences by what is available and while they are reflective the health of the publishing companies, they aren't reflective of the health of the title.

Personally, I think that publishers would be better off growing profits but having titles that at least have steady sales or, better yet, have growing sales rather than simply pumping out more titles.

I'm debating seeing if I can put together a way to chart the unit or percentage gain/losses for a title with a way to exclude the bumps caused by multiple covers, new creative teams and other sales gimmicks like those. The point being, if you ignored those, how would even the strong selling titles look over time. In other words,are those really the only thing propping up the sales of long running titles?

[Wood]

2) John, YOY numbers matter b/c that's how companies manage their businesses. Marvel has to explain to shareholders YOY trends, and provides financial guidance on YOY growth expectations. That's why many people, myself included, are more interested in the YOY tally than sequential tallies. Both are important though, particularly in terms of trend analysis. We agree.

I see your point on the YOY numbers. I just think that those are heavily influences by what is available and while they are reflective the health of the publishing companies, they aren't reflective of the health of the title.

Personally, I think that publishers would be better off growing profits but having titles that at least have steady sales or, better yet, have growing sales rather than simply pumping out more titles.

I'm debating seeing if I can put together a way to chart the unit or percentage gain/losses for a title with a way to exclude the bumps caused by multiple covers, new creative teams and other sales gimmicks like those. The point being, if you ignored those, how would even the strong selling titles look over time. In other words,are those really the only thing propping up the sales of long running titles?

I totally see where you're coming from.

Another thing that stunned me in your report was that almost 2/3rds of titles are issue #12 or less, did I hear that right? That's ASTOUNDING to me, good lordy begordy.

If you're looking for the importance of YOY comparisons, just take a look at what Marvel did this week. They shipped 39 BOOKS this week. Why? Because it's the last week of the June quarter.

[spid]

Personally, I think that publishers would be better off growing profits but having titles that at least have steady sales or, better yet, have growing sales rather than simply pumping out more titles.

What do you think of Marvel's Iniative/Dark Reign and DC's One Year later promotions? They are/were not really events, but general labels for the overall new status of the universe. Or are you talking about something like promoting Wonder Woman's Rise of the Olympian's arc or the Rise and Fall of the Sh'iar over in Uncanny?

[BobBretall]

1) Jon Hickman is writing Dark Reign: FF, not Rick Remender. But your point still stands Bob, Hickman is a rising star at Marvel and certainly brought with him an embedded fan base which should be helping sales

D'OH!!!!!

Those damned "Image Defectors".....can't keep them straight in my head!

[JohnMayo]

Another thing that stunned me in your report was that almost 2/3rds of titles are issue #12 or less, did I hear that right? That's ASTOUNDING to me, good lordy begordy.

If you're looking for the importance of YOY comparisons, just take a look at what Marvel did this week. They shipped 39 BOOKS this week. Why? Because it's the last week of the June quarter.

182 of the items on the top 300 comics had an issue number between #0 and #12 (inclusive). Another 15 had no issue number. That should serve to highlight the amount of turn over in the list from year to year.

The lare number of titles the last week of the month could also be to prevent those items from being returnable if they would otherwise be late. I'd have to look over the list to know if that is really the case this time around or not.

[JohnMayo]

Personally, I think that publishers would be better off growing profits but having titles that at least have steady sales or, better yet, have growing sales rather than simply pumping out more titles.

What do you think of Marvel's Iniative/Dark Reign and DC's One Year later promotions? They are/were not really events, but general labels for the overall new status of the universe. Or are you talking about something like promoting Wonder Woman's Rise of the Olympian's arc or the Rise and Fall of the Sh'iar over in Uncanny?

One Year Later was a huge success in terms of getting people to sample the DC line up of titles. Unfortunately, the content of the titles wasn't sufficiently good to keep readers around. In fairness, it would probably be unreasonable to expect everyone to stick with the titles even if they were completely brilliant and exactly what every reader wanted them to be. Budget limitations would be a factor if nothing else.

Initiative and Dark Reign are a bit too dilutated as concepts to really serve as any sort of pull for new readers. It seems more likely that the banners would scare off more people than they brought in. And I say that strickly in terms of the marketing power of the banners, not in terms of the strength of the stories or the other marketing behind those umbrellas.

I think named and numbered story arcs are bad things in general. They point out that most parts of the story aren't the first part and therefore probably not an ideal place to jump onto the title. And, with the end of each story arc, there is the implicit (and sometimes explicit) jumping off point.

The publishers would be much better served by making each titles as strong and consistent creatively as possible in the (perhaps vain) hopes that the market will reward quality with sales.

We all know that quality currently doesn't bred sales success but it would be nice if the publishers at least gave it a try anyway.

Variant covers, "news worthy" stories and massive crossover events only create short term bumps and even those are starting to diminish because of over use. Battle for the Cowl has multiple covers, was a major change in the Batman status quo and still failed to crack 90,000 units in the direct market.

If each title was worth reading in and of itself, these gimmicks wouldn't be needed. If people cared what happened to Batman or Superman or Captain America, they wouldn't need to kill off and resurrect these characters time and time again.

[adampasz]

Great episode as usual.

My philosophy regarding $3.99 books is that I will only buy something that stands a good chance of being a five star book. And yes, this is even counting the DCBS discount. I'm a huge JMS fan, but Thor has been a casualty of the $3.99 price for me. The story has seemed quite aimless of late, and I felt the Exile of Thor from Asgard was highly contrived. Are the gods really so dumb that they're going to trust Loki over Thor??? I guess I just didn't buy the plot device. At $2.99 I would have stuck with this book without hesitation, but at $3.99 it feels like a rip off.

Not sure if Captain America is getting a price increase, but if it does, it could quickly end up on the chopping block. So I guess the only $3.99 Marvel I'm sticking with is War of Kings.

On the DC side, I've steered clear of most of their $3.99 books, even though they are extra-sized. Booster Gold lost some of the magic after Johns left, and I'm not interested in Jaime Beetle, so that's been dropped. I haven't read it yet, but Rucka's Detective has been getting good buzz, so maybe I'll stick with that.

On the indie side, I'm willing to be more forgiving, though right now I don't think I'm picking up any $3.99 books. Most are $2.99 or $3.50 (a much more sensible price point).

[spid]

If each title was worth reading in and of itself, these gimmicks wouldn't be needed. If people cared what happened to Batman or Superman or Captain America, they wouldn't need to kill off and resurrect these characters time and time again.

Outside of Walking Dead or Invincible are there any other examples of the strategy your suggesting working? It might be a good to showcase in either the Mayo report or the podcast examples of titles that are being promoted in a positive long term fashion.

[HassanT]

John,

I agree with you there is a problem that most books decline in sales over time. However, I don't think that is an issue with just comics but entertainment in general. People's interest declines overtime on a particular show, book, artist, or movie. That is why you tend to see ratings or sales decline over time. Comics is the only medium that I know where it is expected that the same comic book that has been publish over the the past few decades to continue to do well.

As for sales analysis that you and Bob did, I like the fact that you guys touch upon the "quality of the books" i.e. do people really want to be reading a bunch of Dark Reign titles. I think that is a good point that most people don't focus on when they discuss comic book sales. It is like when box office dollars decline YOY, some "analysts" say people don't want to go to movies anymore, but it is also related to the fact that there were movies that came out that no one really wanted to see. I think that is currently happening in comics over the past few months which compounded the issue of declining sales. Obviously, it is a very subjective statement, but the buzz on the majority of the DCU line was be very negative over the past few months from both readers and shop owners. That have to have an impact on sales. It would interesting to see the graph you did on sales to be split between Marvel and DC to see how well they are doing independent of each other as opposed to relative to each other.

Another possible impact to the decline in comic books sales, is the idea that LCS are reducing their inventory on their racks due to the economy. The big LCS near my house used to have plenty of copies of every comic on the racks, but lately they "sell out" of comics more and more. It appears that they rather sell out of a comic instead of keeping extra comics on the rack or back issues and not generating revenue. If a comic would to sell out on the rack, they would reorder more copies if copies are available. This is just one LCS (that has two locations) but I can imagine that other LCS are doing this.

BTW, I think the reaction to the decline in sales over the past few months, have led to Marvel to do the "Dark Reign: The List" event, which I think it is a brilliant idea.