I'm actually quite surprised that no one else has picked up on this little nugget of news that Nick Spencer shared via Twitter, first on March 9th and then more recently on March 14th. The writer of Morning Glories (among others) said that the first print of the initial trade paperback already sold out of it's 10,000-units run. That's quite remarkable in of itself, considering the book was released on February 16th, but there was something else that caught my eye. More after the jump.
It's quite common knowledge that in the direct market, most of a book's units are sold on its first month, when retailers order it through the Previews catalog. After than, standard attrition settles in, and books don't move as many units in the following months. When checking the February sales via ICv2, one can see that they have the Morning Glories Vol. 1 trade listed as selling a still-respectable 5063 units. However, that's a big difference in reported numbers vs. units sold according to the author. Spencer even commented on this disparity, saying that the numbers were "way under". It should be noted that the ICv2 numbers only report direct market stores, and it is possible that the rest of the copies were sold on bookstores and online retailers like Amazon.
Still, this raises a lot of question on these numbers, which we normally use to analyze the state of the comic industry. The numbers remain good for analyzing trends and comparisons, but the exact numbers of units sold cannot be taken as irrefutable.
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9 comments:
The creators always say that the numbers are too low, and then the number-counters always respond with "well then give us the real numbers." Of course, one imagines the writers are generally unable or unallowed to do so, in which case I do feel sympathetic to their frustration regarding these matters.
Happy to say I was one of those 10,000. Great comic really looking forward to Vol 2. Does give me hope that the industry isn't in as bad shape as those sales figures make it out to be!
On a side note I'd also like to thank this site for putting me onto it in the first place. Generally I'm pretty much a Marvel Zombie but after reading reviews & articles on here I've tried out titles such as Scalped, Morning Glories, American Vampire, Daytripper, Skullkickers etc
Morning Glories started out incredibly well, then issues #6 & 7 made me back away from it.
I picked up #8 today, if it doesn't get back to just telling the story without almost forced LOST-style switches it's going to lose me(Spencer seems to have been told MG is the comic version of LOST and he's taking that literally).
Funny. The first two things I did when I got home tonight were opening my copy of Morning Glories volume 1 which arrived from Amazon today and checking this site to see this quote.
I preordered it from Amazon and when it arrived it was a book called Forgetless. A little disappointing. I read this happened to several people on Amazon. I just have to wait on my replacement copy.
ICv2 is North America, direct market only. When you factor in bookstores, amazon, other countries I can easily see the number being 1/3 to 1/2 under reported. Especially for a $10 trade. Also the trade has any sort of returnable option on it then ICv2 will downgrade to compensate. In short, it's not surprising Nick has a higher number.
@John: Yeah, I went to order it from Amazon last night and they had pulled it because so many people had reported problems with it. I hope they're able to get it sorted out quickly; I've been wanting to pick this up.
@John/Klep: Interesting, I hadn't heard about this issue with Amazon. Have they said what caused the problem?
@Matt: Not to my knowledge. I just know I couldn't order it directly from them when I was placing an order last night and there was an alert on the page saying that was why. It's still available from independent sellers on the marketplace, but I'd just as soon wait.
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