Comic book sales: the chicken and egg situation

[JohnMayo]

Since this did not and will not see print at the place that I submitted it to, I figured I'd post it here:

-----------------

When it comes to comic book sales, there is a bit of a chicken and the egg situation going on with the retailer and the reader. The question isn't so much of "which came first?" but more a question of which is the driving force behind comic book sales.

While the end consumer of comic books is clearly the reader, the end customer for the publishers in the non-returnable direct market is the retailer. And, as I discussed last time, the sales information we have is what was sold to retailers. So, in that sense, the retailers are driving the reported sales figures.

But retailers don't exist in a vacuum. They order based on what they think they can sell to their customers. In that sense, readers are driving the reported sales but only indirectly. Retailers usually need to adjust what they order each month based on the changing buying patterns of their customers.

What is comes down to is readers can't buy what their retailer doesn't have and retailers aren't likely to order items they don't think they can sell. This is why it is usually a good idea to let your retailer know what you want in time for the retailer to order it for you. This is also why for the past two years I've been hosting a teleconference on Skype discussing the items in Previews each month and release a monthly Previews Spotlight podcast episode spotlighting items from the current Previews. The biggest barrier to sales seems to be matching up the right comic with the right readers for it.

The question remains of if the sales trends at the retailer level match those at the reader level.

I have often been told that it is the sales to readers that should be reported on, not the sales to retailers. After all, that is how BookScan reports book sales. In principle I agree with that and would be more than happy to report on comic book sales to readers. However, to do so, I would need the data on comic book sales to readers which isn't currently be collected anywhere.

There are two key differences between book sales and comic book sales that need to be understood to appreciate the challenges involved in collecting and reporting on comic book sales to readers.

The first is that books are sold to bookstores on a returnable basis. Until a book sells to a reader there is the chance it will be returned. That is why a book can't be considered sold in the book market when it is sent to a bookstore. In the nonreturnable comic book direct market, if the store can't sell an item, it is stuck with it. This is one of the reasons why some retailers get some items on a returnable basis from other distributors as it mitigates the risk on those items. But usually the items that comic book retailers obtained on a returnable basis from other distributors are graphic novels and collected editions, not periodical comic books.

The other key difference between the comic book direct market and the bookstore mass market is that most bookstores have a Point-of-Sales system in place while many comic book stores don't. In fairness, some comic book stores have had a Point-of-Sales system in place for nearly a decade. While this is starting to change, a lot of retailers are still operating using basic cash registers. BookScan is able to report on book sales to readers because of these Point-of-Sales systems. The sales data is collected automatically and from there it is a simple matter for it to be collated and reported on.

To track comic book sales to readers, comic book retailers need to have Point-of-Sales systems and there needs to be an entity that collected the data from those various types of Point-of-Sales systems. I've offered my services as a business analyst, programmer and database administrator to ComicsPRO (or any other such organization) to help build a reader sales tracking system. Some people seem content to complain that reader data is what should be reported on instead of sales to retailers but I'd rather work on making it possible for the reader sales trends to be analyzed and reported on.

Building a reader sales tracking system wouldn't be trivial but if the data collected goes down to the individual reader and purchase level it could reveal some very useful information about reader comic book sales trends. We could learn a lot from this kind of detailed data such as how many regular readers there actually are, how many comics they typically buy and how often they get their comics. All of this can (and should) be done without ever needing to identify who the reader is. An arbitrary number uniquely identifying the reader would be sufficient. In an ideal world that reader would have the same identifier across all stores allowing all of the purchases by that reader to be grouped together.

The real challenge in tracking reader sales isn't technical. It is convincing retailers to submit information about how their business is doing to a third party to report on. While the data from Diamond is far from perfect, it does cover all of the sales for the top 300 comics and top 100 trades through Diamond each month. That makes it a much more inclusive data set than any collection of sales data from retailers is ever likely to be. Because for a reader sales tracking system to have statistically meaningful data a cross-section of retailers that was representative of the overall reader sales trends would need to submit their data to that central data collection and reporting entity.

[BobBretall]

Also, I'm still looking forward to John's article on how variant covers affect sales. let's give him encouragement to write one!

[JohnMayo]

The exact reason given for why my piece didn't see print was:

"Due to the quarterly nature of the magazine (and our propensity for being late) we just figured it wasn't in our best interest to run a column that was so easily outdated."

[comicm]

I don't think it is time sensitive at all. I can guess which quarterly magazine that may be. Unless they can predict the future in a few months and know that every comic shop will have a Point of Sale system implemented then I can not see it being time sensitive.

[TravAzz]

John made a good point on the POS sales system in comic stores. All of my local shops still have cash registers. A couple of them separate their sales by Marvel, DC, Image, Indy, and Back Issue. I think a scan system would work wonders for the books.

Something that might happen to heighten the numbers is what the book is actually counted under. Years ago ToyBiz did the WCW action figure line. When any figure was scanned out in Walmart, Toys R Us, Kmart, etc sometimes they scanned out under the wrong wrestlers name. Wrestler Chris Jericho went to 3 different stores and bought his own action figure, in all 3 locations they rang out under Hulk Hogan. This became a problem, because he did not get a correct payout from ToyBiz because they said his figure wasn't selling. Yet Hulk Hogan was getting huge royalty checks because they couldn't keep his figure on the shelf.

So let's say there's an X-Men one shot coming out. Depending on how the Marvel wants their sales to look, they could put those sales under X-Men or Uncanny X-Men, thus giving a small increase to a book that didn't do that well.

I'm not saying this would happen, but it is a possibility.

[Skyhawke]

Outdated? Hardly, until the status quo changes on how comic books are ordered and sold this article will stand the test of time. Well written John.

[Lord Shaper]

Ok well I think that column isn't and can not become outdated with one exception... if there is a POS system that will track retailer sales and all retailers are using it before the article was to have been published, which to be honest I think will become highly unlikely in todays climate with stores wanting to keep overheads down so they can stay in business.

[Lobo]

This will be timely until retailers can return all of their Diamond orders, and every comic shop has a POS system reporting to one data collecting agency (like Bookscan).

Anyone who suggests otherwise either knows nothing about the comic industry, or is a liar.

[JohnMayo]

This will be timely until retailers can return all of their Diamond orders, and every comic shop has a POS system reporting to one data collecting agency (like Bookscan).

The industry is a long was off from every store having a POS system, much less one that reports to a central data collecting agency. Which is unfortunate because I think that would be very valuable information for the industry to have.

Anyone who suggests otherwise either knows nothing about the comic industry, or is a liar.

The two are not mutually exclusive...

[JohnMayo]

The shame of it is that the magazine could have been a lot more successful if they hadn't just assumed it would magically fly off the shelves. They really dropped the ball on promoting it.

... which is astoundingly ironic, given the number of times the same accusation is leveled at independent comics on various podcasts and forums.

I have to agree with you on that. We are long past the "Field of Dreams" days where just publishing a comic book or magazine about comic book was enough.

Part of why Bob and I do the Previews Spotlight and Previews Spotlight Interviews episodes is to help the smaller publishers promote the comics they are doing. Most smaller publishers simply don't have the marketing budget or manpower for promotion.

These days it doesn't cost much to set up a website to promote something. The key is to update the website once in a while. You know, maybe even mention when new issues get published. Things like that. Having a website that hasn't been updated in months just makes it look like the project has been abandoned.

But to just assume that people will buy something just because it is supposedly brilliant is foolish. Even if it is brilliant, people still aren't going to know about it. I would think that anybody that has paid any attention to the sales estimates would know that quality is no guarantee of success.

[HassanT]

I been off the grid for the past few days so pardon me for joining in the discussion late.

I agree that the article that John wrote is timeless and could be published yesterday, today, or tomorrow, as long as the Direct Market exists as it does today. In fact, I think the article is an awesome topic and well written that it deserves to be seen by others. How about publishing it on CBR as a special article?

[jon carroll]

With james sime's comments recently about how having a point of sale has changed his ordering habits for trades, this aritcle does have some prescience. A POS system would also give us quicker numbers and sell through ability to track. Think about how you could break down the sell through with alternate covers alone, it would make Bob's point about the FC covers. The down side is that alternate covers price for artists like Ross and JRJR would possibly jump.

Think back to the 90s, Billboard put out soundscan that tracked sell through in stores. Suddenly, rap and country exploded. Why? They were selling through in stores and not sitting at distributors or at stores on the shelf which is how the old numbers were calculated similar to what we have now.

If you put in a POS system that also had an option for reordering when titles dropped below a certain point, would indies go up? If you put in a cross link like amazon does with people who buy x, also like y both on a national and store level, or if you buy Fables, don't forget about Jack of Fables or the Oz manga. Because as John mentions you can keep track of what they buy, you can know that they tend to buy or have already bought. If the data base sees they started buying Spiderman when JRJR is on the title, maybe they would like the Masterworks.

A POS system would help sells. There are various concerns about anonymity and security, but those are easily rectified. More stores should do them and this should be pushed by creators as well.