A random thought about the creative changes happening at DC concerning the New 52 books, both real and rumored: How much of this is brought on by the immediate feedback on the launches to date, and how much to information that we’re nowhere near privy to?
Obviously, sales probably contribute something, but with every book released so far selling out, it’s not as if any of them are clearly underperforming just yet. So, even if we put down creative changes to either personal reasons – That’s what John Rozum’s leaving Static Shock seemed to amount to, and JT Krul’s leaving Green Arrow may be down to his mysterious new project – what are we to make of rumors of books already being marked for cancellation at #6? Is this the result of a greedy mindset of “(Book X) isn’t performing as well as Justice League, even though it’s selling above our initial estimates, maybe we can come up with something that will sell better?” or are order numbers on the second and third issues significantly beneath the first?
September 19th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
At this point, I would guess that it’s entirely speculation.
That said, I do wonder what the sales cut off will be for DC going forward. It seems to me that with all the moves Warner Brothers has made over the last few years, DC is probably expected to be profitable now, as opposed to breaking even and keeping IPs alive.
It would not surprise me to learn that Warners has made the cut off a number that generally only DC’s top tier books were meeting.
September 20th, 2011 at 4:30 am
i think warner bro’s myself is more intersted in the digital part and makeing the character’s more marketble to other media’s.then print sale’s so i think there not involved with print cut off’s.
September 20th, 2011 at 8:31 am
This “every book released so far selling out” stuff drives me crazy. It’s not accurate to how the market works. These are ‘sell through’ numbers DC is reporting, these are ‘sell to’ numbers that DC is reporting.
Just because a book is sold out at a distributor level, does not me it is sold out at a publisher level. Since the comic market (and the distributor / bookstore market) work as far as nine months ahead, I think it is easy to see how the initial numbers projects out in a pre-sales, sales, and post-sales season. If those numbers are coming in low, that’s a VERY big problem.
Graeme, I love your writing — but this short-sighted way of looking at market performance (and all of its influencing factors) is part of the issue.
It’s like a doctor examining your fingers when you’ve clearly broken your leg. You are looking at one small piece of a much, much larger issue.