Image to Retailers up or your orders....Or Else...Kinda...Sorta

spid

I thought this was a interesting bit of news. Image will no long be reprinting issues of their popular titles who are chronically under-ordered.

I have some bad news: SAGA #7 is sold out. Sounds like good news, right? Well, it’s not. First, it means that retailers under-ordered it. And second: We will not be reprinting it. Should we have overprinted? We did. Should we have told you specifically “Order a lot of this one”? Well, did we really need to?

This is SAGA we’re talking about. Issue #7 was its return after a brief hiatus that had fans of the epic by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples as restless as cats in heat and following on the heels of the release of a trade paperback that is moving like wildfire (it’s is still on the New York Times Bestseller list). And its FOC came just two weeks after I quite single-mindedly harangued you about order numbers decreasing with each issue of even our most popular titles, using math. (Math, people!)

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/12/11/as-issue-seven-sells-out-image-decides-to-stop-reprinting-comics-like-saga/

Update. Saga 7 and 8 are going back to print.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/12/13/image-comics-responds-to-retailers-and-announces-a-second-print-of-saga-7-and-maybe-8/

Trev

I wonder how many retailers purposely under order on titles like this to encourage the speculator market, knowing a second will come on its heels.

Chuck_Melville

I think the main reason for underordering is simply to maintain some control over stock. You only have so much space for storage, and if the books don't sell fast enough, they eat up that space.

Torchsong

1) Retailers only have so much space and dough to throw around.

2) I imagine more than one retailer is just tired of playing the game of overordering, etc.

3) Heaven forbid a comic actually be rare and valuable anymore.

4) If the trade paperback is moving like wildfire, does it matter? (I'm genuinely asking here - not being snarky (for a change! :) ))

Chuck_Melville

My impression has been that the trades don't move any faster, and that they take up even more shelf space, but I don't know how factual that is beyond my impressions.

SolitaireRose

Dear Image,

Hi. This is 2012. We've got digital comics, so if a store sells out, the reader can go on-line and buy it in less than 5 seconds.

Also, you seem to forget that the stuff a comic shop buys in non-returnable. So, if they order too many, they have to eat them. You should know that when you go to conventions and see boxes and boxes and boxes of the crap you put out from 1992 - 1996. They also have you putting out a LOT of stuff that is simply unknown to them because your marketing is all left up to the creators involved who quite simply are not people who work in PR. They are writers and artists who came to you to handle a lot of the business stuff they either don't know or don't have time to deal with.

Yes, Saga sells very well, but when creators "take a break" and then come back, the books don't sell well at all. Ask John Byrne how well Next Men did last year. Or the creators of G0dland. Or any of a bajillion other books you published that couldn't make deadlines, or ended before their stories got a conclusion.

Plus, check your stats. The majority of indy sales are in very specific parts of the country, and clustered in a very few shops that work very hard to bring in readers that will buy them. The vast majority of shops are happy to sell Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men and the majority of their clientele wouldn't know a Saga from a Tales of the Beanworld. They don't care. Oh, and they should just "know" that a book will be hot, because they have over 500 pages in the damn catalog to go through every month.

Also, when Brian K Vaughn has a big on-line following, Runaways was below the cancellation line at Marvel and they kept it going because they liked it and hoped trade sales would make it viable. Y The Last Man didn't sell well as a monthly. Should I go on?

Keep humping that "collector mentality" in the modern market. I DARE you. I DOUBLE DARE YOU.

I understand you don't want to be sitting on a lot of inventory. It represents wasted money, inventory to be storied (which costs money) and taxed (which costs money). Neither does a comic shop. And, guess what, they can't bill the creator for their mistakes like you can.

If you have a lot of orders for a book and you won't do a second printing to meet that demand, who is the foolish businessperson here?

As a former retailer, I understand why shops get very upset with publishers who treat them like children, when most publishers don't know jack or shite about running a retail establishment in a down market.

spid

And the retailers have answered back with varying responses.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/12/12/retailers-respond-to-images-decision-to-drop-second-prints/

nweathington

As someone who's worked on both sides of the fence, I can definitely appreciate de Guzman’s frustration, but her tone and approach are both terrible, and could do much more harm than good for Image’s sales.

Saying things like this (from lower down the story) is great:

CHANGE #2 — Orders presently are 38% lower than orders for the debut issue. If you haven’t read CHANGE #1 yet, please give it a look. Its writer Ales Kot had a breakout hit with WILD CHILDREN this year, and CHANGE taps into the same sensibility.

THE LEGEND OF LUTHER STRODE #2 — Orders are 21% less than orders for #1, which has sold out. This is a known seller by creators whose traction in the industry is growing — Justin Jordan, who also writes Shadowman for Valiant and Tradd Moore, who has drawn a variant Deadpool cover for Marvel and a story in the digital Legends of the Dark Knight for DC.

Saying something like this (also from lower down the story), is borderline, but would have been fine if she had stuck to the facts and left out the “seems a mite steep” phrasing:

NON-HUMANS #2 — I know. It’s late, and lateness is a death knell for sales numbers. But! This is the return to Image by Whilce Portacio, and a 33% drop in orders seems a mite steep, considering that NON-HUMANS #1 sold out.

@SolitaireRose, I agree with your points if not your tone. But I think publishers (in general) know more about running a retail shop, no matter the market status, than you seem to think. And if they don't, they usually have someone on their staff who does. And, frankly, there are a lot of comic book retailers out there who don't know as much about how to run a shop as they should. That being said, it doesn’t make de Guzman’s letter any less insulting.

spid

I updated the original post, but Saga 7 and 8 are going back to the printers.

SolitaireRose

spid said:

I updated the original post, but Saga 7 and 8 are going back to the printers.

Looks like the publisher had to step in because the retailers were crapping all over this decision and the tone.