Comic Pants’ Randy Lander chats with Thom Zahler about his comic, Love and Capes. Zahler talks about, among other things, how Free Comic Book Day affected sales:
3. Along the same lines, you released Love and Capes #4 as a Free Comic Book Day selection. How did that go for you? Did it get a good response? Did you pick up a noticeable bump in new readers? And would you do it again?
Image for Question #3ZAHLER: The Free Comic Book Day issue did really well. I sold roughly three times the number of books of a regular issue, and it got great exposure. I was written up on Salon.com and Entertainment Weekly Online. I did notice a bump in readers from issue 3 to 4. I was really impressed at how well the retail version of #4 sold. It sold better than issue #3, and had been available for free two months before.
The traditional arithmetic on books is that #1 will sell X, #2 will sell half that, and #3 will sell half again. With Love and Capes, there was a dip between #1 and #2, and since then we’ve been gaining readers every issue.
I have tentative plans to do issue #7 as another Free Comic Book Day issue, so yes, I’d do it again.
