Marvel 2017 Monthly Comic Sales

[Tofali]

If overshipping is bad then why should Marvel reinstate digital copies? Isn't the objective for overshipping and digital copies the same? Lure more subscribers for MU and increase readership. How does either benefit Marvel's bottom line if the return isn't materializing?

[rui no onna]

It would be interesting to see how many variant covers Marvel put out compared to DC. A poster mentioned a variant cover can boost sales up to 5K an issue.

Just saw this on another forum so you can see a relatively extreme example right out the gate.

For the low, low price of $2,999.99, you can get:

X-MEN BLUE AND GOLD ULTIMATE BUNDLE

This set includes these 1 of each of these Variants

X-Men Blue #1
Regular
1:1000
Classic Kirby (1:10)
Skottie Young
Hip Hop
Kirk Corner (1:10)
Martin Variant (1:50)
Lopez Variant (1:25)

Unknown Comics Exclusive Connecting Covers for Blue #1 and Gold #1

X-Men Gold #1
Regular
1:1000
Lim Party Variant
Skottie Young
Martin Variant (1:50)
Kirk Corner (1:10)
Classic (1:25)
Hip Hop

I wonder if anyone's insane enough (or just rolling around in dough) to bite.

Incidentally, that $3,000 is just about breaking even on the cost to acquire 1000 copies of X-Men Gold #1 and 1000 copies of X-Men Blue #1. I expect they plan on making profit on the remaining 19 x2 1:50, 39 x2 1:25 and 99 x3 1:10 variants.

[rui no onna]

If overshipping is bad then why should Marvel reinstate digital copies? Isn't the objective for overshipping and digital copies the same? Lure more subscribers for MU and increase readership. How does either benefit Marvel's bottom line if the return isn't materializing?

How about keeping some of the customers they already do have?

I used to buy $80-100 worth retail of Marvel floppies every month. When they announced the change, I cancelled a number of titles (including Unstoppable Wasp, Silk, Jessica Jones, ASM:RYV, Thanos, Old Man Logan, Captain America: Steve Rogers, etc) and only kept the ones in my signature. My purchases went down from $80-100/mo retail to just $20/mo retail.

Looking at May releases, some of the titles I'm following are finished so my Marvel preorders are down to just $8:

• Elektra #3 - $4
• Hawkeye #5 - $4
• *Gamora #5 (solicited in FEB17 Previews and already preordered)

If these get cancelled, I'm done buying Marvel single issues unless they release a new Black Widow series.

[Raye]

Okay can everyone stop pretending digital sale mean a thing at this point? They are bar none the easiest numbers to publish and track but not a single publisher will post their numbers beyond that their growth was notably less than paperback sales. In short their so embarrassingly bad industry-wide they are beneath consideration.

They have no reason to post digital numbers. Diamond (it is not Marvel or DC that publishes the estimates) doesn't post sales estimates in order to brag, they are a sales tool put out by Diamond so shopkeepers have a barometer of what's selling and what isn't to help them make more informed ordering decisions. That is a complete non-issue with digital. There is no need to try and guess how many issues will sell beforehand like they do with print because there is an infinite number of copies available, and no risk of ending up with unsold stock.

[JKtheMac]

If overshipping is bad then why should Marvel reinstate digital copies? Isn't the objective for overshipping and digital copies the same? Lure more subscribers for MU and increase readership. How does either benefit Marvel's bottom line if the return isn't materializing?

Anyone that thinks overshipping is bad has no idea why it is being done. Clearly the only reason to overship is to encourage the stores to sell or promote books that Marvel think will be better received than the order levels would suggest. It is purely a marketing tactic and it is functionally similar to discounting which encourages shops to order stock they may not have ordered, or variant cover incentives, which encourage stores to push their order slightly higher.

It can only be a good thing for the retailer because the value of the stock is higher than the shipping cost and they can always just give them away to valued customers if they can't sell them, or bundle / heavily discount them in promoting their other stock.

[JKtheMac]

They have no reason to post digital numbers. Diamond (it is not Marvel or DC that publishes the estimates) doesn't post sales estimates in order to brag, they are a sales tool put out by Diamond so shopkeepers have a barometer of what's selling and what isn't to help them make more informed ordering decisions. That is a complete non-issue with digital. There is no need to try and guess how many issues will sell beforehand like they do with print because there is an infinite number of copies available, and no risk of ending up with unsold stock.

Precisely. I would prefer the anti digital brigade to just acknowledge digital is part of the landscape and get over it. We have no idea if sales map across from retail to digital because both of the methods of gauging this are seriously flawed. The digital market is a long tail market. The big hyped books of the week are always going to appear as the big selling books, but there may be perennial sellers that sell much higher numbers which don't map to Wednesday Warrior tastes because they are being purchased sporadically but consistently. This is why many of us suspect some apparent low sellers are actually selling better in digital.

For all we know, (and I would be willing to bet) Ms. Marvel #1 might still have healthy sales and encourage knock on purchases.

[rui no onna]

Anyone that thinks overshipping is bad has no idea why it is being done. Clearly the only reason to overship is to encourage the stores to sell or promote books that Marvel think will be better received than the order levels would suggest. It is purely a marketing tactic and it is functionally similar to discounting which encourages shops to order stock they may not have ordered, or variant cover incentives, which encourage stores to push their order slightly higher.

It can only be a good thing for the retailer because the value of the stock is higher than the shipping cost and they can always just give them away to valued customers if they can't sell them, or bundle / heavily discount them in promoting their other stock.

The thing is retailers still carry the risk for the initial orders if they don't sell, nevermind the overship. Some variant cover incentives don't just try to push orders slightly higher, they try to push orders a lot higher. Which is fine for ratio variants if the store has customers willing to pay premium $$$ for them.

The incentivized themed variants? Those are open to order and Midtown typically carries them for 15% off so it's gonna be difficult for local comic shops to sell them at a premium in order to pay for the extra regular cover copies they have to buy in order to qualify.

A variant sale is still a sale. Those are potentially eyeballs that could be reading new titles. Sure, some might just bag and board without reading but there are bound to be a few that read them. Maybe they'll even buy the next issue or put the title in their sub. If John Tyler Christopher Action Figure, Skottie Young and Hip Hop variants have a built-in audience for say 20 copies but Marvel requires retailers to buy 30 copies of the regular cover when they can only reasonably expect to sell 10, the retailer might just skip the variants altogether so that's 20 less people that the first issue could've reached.

Also, given Marvel is already heavily discounting and giving free overships on #1s, why not just do low introductory pricing of $3 instead of $5 price tags on #1s for better sell through? I've started buying a lot of Image TPBs thanks to inexpensive sampling via Image Firsts. Same with Black Eyed Kids #1 for $1.99, and Red Sonja #0 and Vampirella #0 for $0.25. Even DC Rebirth, I started sampling because of the Black Friday 50% off comiXology sale on Rebirth one-shots and #1s (so $1.50 instead of $3). Ended up buying 25 DC single issues at regular cover price that day on top of all the collections.

[JKtheMac]

@Rui No Onna, I agree with everything you say apart from your wondering about pricing. Pricing isn't a dark art. The basic rule is you price high enough to make a profit and as high as you can without lessening that profit. Reducing the odd book here or there would have a damaging effect on the price of every book. It is up to the retailer how they choose to discount the books if at all. If you look closely at the sales charts dozens of books have discounts to the retailer, many key DC books do, and for the first time in ages I have disagreed with a comichron anayais where he suggests you can tell which books overship when some of those guesses could be discounts.

If you order 100 Black Widow and get 120 you could sell them all at cover, discount everything by 20% or even discount down to your standard discount less 20%. You could sell the normal let's say 95 books at the usual price and then stuff the back issue boxes, you could give 20 comics to customers that buy Hawkeye or The Pinisher to tempt them into buying another book, you could just hand them out to anyone curious about the title as a free book. I don't see a downside. It is just a form of discount with the net result that more books could potentially get read.

[Anduinel]

Right.

Taking the digital market into account doesn't excuse books that aren't selling well in print, but in some cases books sell enough digitally to warrant continuing. At some point, I think it was said that Ms. Marvel has managed to keep going because of how it sells digitally. If it were just down to print sales, it would have been cancelled.

The rumor was that Ms. Marvel was a happy anomaly because it was selling 100% of its print sales in digital. Even if that isn't true, though, I don't think Ms Marvel's print numbers put it in any danger. The print sales weren't terrible - in fact, for a brand new character, they were very good. I think it stabilized at around 30K for the first volume, then attrition kicked in after the relaunch. And the first trade has sold an estimated 45K+ copies through the DM alone.

[JKtheMac]

The rumor was that Ms. Marvel was a happy anomaly because it was selling 100% of its print sales in digital. Even if that isn't true, though, I don't think Ms Marvel's print numbers put it in any danger. The print sales weren't terrible - in fact, for a brand new character, they were very good. I think it stabilized at around 30K for the first volume, then attrition kicked in after the relaunch. And the first trade has sold an estimated 45K+ copies through the DM alone.

I have listened to interviews with creators where it was suggested some select titles had reached 50/50 print to digital, so that does ring true. And again the continued availability of these books on digital to a curious readership may make the first few issues only grow in sales in the long tail. Marvel have very clearly been seeking to repeat the appeal of Ms. Marvel without directly copying it. Only they know exactly which books have been able to walk in its shadow.

Another interesting thing would be to know how the people who purchased Ms Marvel digitally as a first or early digital purchase continued into a wider catalogue. Marvel would have access to this data and also could theoretically look at MU subscibers that read Ms Marvel within their first few comics (ie to whom the choice to subscribe was influenced by that book) and which other books they then chose to read.

The choice of what to publish since, or what to keep going despite low sales, will have been influenced by these kinds of figures.

I suspect Mighty Thor may also be one of these high percentage digital books. The art and colouring choices do seem to be digitally influenced.

[Raye]

Precisely. I would prefer the anti digital brigade to just acknowledge digital is part of the landscape and get over it. We have no idea if sales map across from retail to digital because both of the methods of gauging this are seriously flawed. The digital market is a long tail market. The big hyped books of the week are always going to appear as the big selling books, but there may be perennial sellers that sell much higher numbers which don't map to Wednesday Warrior tastes because they are being purchased sporadically but consistently. This is why many of us suspect some apparent low sellers are actually selling better in digital.

For all we know, (and I would be willing to bet) Ms. Marvel #1 might still have healthy sales and encourage knock on purchases.

Also, even if a book doesn't sell massively (relative to other books) in digital, the profit margin per copy sold is FAR higher for the publishers, even with discounted prices and no ads in the books. With print, the publisher has to pay for the costs of producing the book, (paying staff, creative etc.) printing, eat the cost of any over-print, (which, in Marvel's case, they may as well send to shops rather than let it sit in a warehouse or destroy it) shipping to Diamond, and finally Diamond's cut of the profits for acting as distributor. With digital, they only have to pay for the cost of producing the book, and Amazon's cut. Even if Amazon takes way more than Diamond does per issue, (which is not the case, from what I've heard) I am sure the publishers get more money per issue sold digitally. Especially for those books purchased full price (I personally subscribe to a few books on Comixology that i get at full price, because i really like them and want to signal my support for them, but wait for a price discount on most others. this is no longer really an issue with DC, but... still) On the other hand, they can't get one time boosts with digital like they can get with their variant covers in print. There are pros and cons to each. But this increased profit per issue probably adds up significantly over time, so a lower selling book that does even just a little better than average digitally relative to it's print sales can justify it's continued existence. It's more about the money a book can pull in rather than the number of eyeballs it gets reading it.

And then there's the sales. Because of the increased profit margin with digital, they can go crazy with sales, which will lead to more of the long tail buying you mention. There are frequently sales on Comixology and Amazon (technically same thing, but they handle their sales separately) that will lead to odd spikes in their back catalog, which, yes, are selling at a reduced price, but it's still money in their pocket. I mean, I am in Canada, and while I know from talking with American friends that this isn't consistent across all of Amazon, (but they may do it with the American and UK etc. sites, just at different times) I sometimes buy digital trades for like TWO DOLLARS because Marvel sometimes goes nuts and marks all their Kindle books that are over a certain age off by like 90% for a couple days in an unadvertised sale. Just keep a trade on your wish list and sooner or later you'll see it get a 90% discount, along with every other book Marvel has on there. They did it just this past week, in fact. I got all of Nextwave for a grand total of $4.66. They (and other publishers) also tend to keep their digital trades, especially the first ones in a series, marked significantly lower than the print versions all the time. Having a look right now, Superior Spider-Man vol.1 is marked down by 81%, coming in at $3.81, and that is it's regular all the time price. As mentioned before, there is no stock for Marvel to get rid of or anything in this case, this is just them trying to get a few sales on books that people may not normally get at the regular price point. But Marvel can still turn a bit of a profit even when selling a trade for 2 dollars with digital, and that's not possible in print. On the other hand, with print sales, Marvel will not have to take a hit per copy sold when a book is marked down in price, since the sale is on the shop's end, it's the retailer that takes the monetary hit. But there are a finite number of copies available, and the discount typically can't be as steep. But either way, the digital sales will make books more profitable over time for the publishers. The people who REALLY LOVE a book will get it full price, and then publishers can get a bit from the people who are curious about it but not enough to pay full price later, and it's really hard for anyone but the publishers to say how much of an impact that has. But if a book is continuing to be published despite low Diamond sales, I mean, we have to assume it's making money *somewhere* since it's not like the publishers can operate at a loss for very long.

[rui no onna]

I have listened to interviews with creators where it was suggested some select titles had reached 50/50 print to digital, so that does ring true. And again the continued availability of these books on digital to a curious readership may make the first few issues only grow in sales in the long tail. Marvel have very clearly been seeking to repeat the appeal of Ms. Marvel without directly copying it. Only they know exactly which books have been able to walk in its shadow.

Another interesting thing would be to know how the people who purchased Ms Marvel digitally as a first or early digital purchase continued into a wider catalogue. Marvel would have access to this data and also could theoretically look at MU subscibers that read Ms Marvel within their first few comics (ie to whom the choice to subscribe was influenced by that book) and which other books they then chose to read.

The choice of what to publish since, or what to keep going despite low sales, will have been influenced by these kinds of figures.

That's one sad thing about Marvel Unlimited being 6 months delayed. Sometimes titles get cancelled before they even make the trade or reach Marvel Unlimited.

Honestly, I think some of their "experimental" titles, they could've done digital first via Marvel Unlimited or regular catalog (although given no split to Apple/Google and Amazon/comiXology, MU is probably the better bet) and depending on popularity, later release print versions either as single issues ala-Injustice or DC Comics Bombshells or go directly to trade.

But yes, you're right on most retailers not taking advantage of their ability to discount pricing. comiXology's hands are tied. They can only sell at prices DC and Marvel set. DCBS gets it. First issues and beginning of story arcs often get bigger discounts and they pass it along to their customers. Almost all regular cover first issues on DCBS are at 50% discount which encourages more sampling.

[JKtheMac]

That's one sad thing about Marvel Unlimited being 6 months delayed. Sometimes titles get cancelled before they even make the trade or reach Marvel Unlimited.

Honestly, I think some of their "experimental" titles, they could've done digital first via Marvel Unlimited or regular catalog (although given no split to Apple/Google and Amazon/comiXology, MU is probably the better bet) and depending on popularity, later release print versions either as single issues ala-Injustice or DC Comics Bombshells or go directly to trade.

But yes, you're right on most retailers not taking advantage of their ability to discount pricing. comiXology's hands are tied. They can only sell at prices DC and Marvel set. DCBS gets it. First issues and beginning of story arcs often get bigger discounts and they pass it along to their customers. Almost all regular cover first issues on DCBS are at 50% discount which encourages more sampling.

Not sure Comixology have their hands tied. That wouldn't be the usual relationship with retailers. In a supermarket if a product is discounted the producer takes the hit not the shop. I suspect that sales are driven by Comixology choices and probably in conjunction with but not totally driven by the publishers. But for new books I think the main players have an agreement to not undermine the price of books.

@Raye: The recieved wisdom is that the cost of maintaining a digital platform and a big back catalogue offsets the benefits of not needing to print books. Plus the majority of the cost of a new book is in the writing, art and preproduction costs.

[rui no onna]

Also, even if a book doesn't sell massively (relative to other books) in digital, the profit margin per copy sold is FAR higher for the publishers, even with discounted prices and no ads in the books. With print, the publisher has to pay for the costs of producing the book, (paying staff, creative etc.) printing, eat the cost of any over-print, (which, in Marvel's case, they may as well send to shops rather than let it sit in a warehouse or destroy it) shipping to Diamond, and finally Diamond's cut of the profits for acting as distributor. With digital, they only have to pay for the cost of producing the book, and Amazon's cut. Even if Amazon takes way more than Diamond does per issue, (which is not the case, from what I've heard) I am sure the publishers get more money per issue sold digitally. Especially for those books purchased full price (I personally subscribe to a few books on Comixology that i get at full price, because i really like them and want to signal my support for them, but wait for a price discount on most others. this is no longer really an issue with DC, but... still) On the other hand, they can't get one time boosts with digital like they can get with their variant covers in print. There are pros and cons to each. But this increased profit per issue probably adds up significantly over time, so a lower selling book that does even just a little better than average digitally relative to it's print sales can justify it's continued existence. It's more about the money a book can pull in rather than the number of eyeballs it gets reading it.

As far as digital revenues, that kinda depends but you're right about digital likely providing a bigger share to publishers.

Rough Estimates:

$2.99

• $2.99 digital, comiXology website - $1.50-1.95 (50/50 to 65/35 split between publisher and Amazon-comiXology)
• $2.99 digital, in-app purchase - $1.05 (35/35/30 split between publisher, Amazon-comiXology and Apple/Google)
• $2.99 print - $1.20 (40/10/50 split between publisher, Diamond and retailer)

$3.99

• $3.99 digital, comiXology website - $2.00-2.60 (50/50 to 65/35 split between publisher and Amazon-comiXology)
• $3.99 digital, in-app purchase - $1.40 (35/35/30 split between publisher, Amazon-comiXology and Apple/Google)
• $3.99 print - $1.60 (40/10/50 split between publisher, Diamond and retailer)

[rui no onna]

Not sure Comixology have their hands tied. That wouldn't be the usual relationship with retailers. In a supermarket if a product is discounted the producer takes the hit not the shop. I suspect that sales are driven by Comixology choices and probably in conjunction with but not totally driven by the publishers. But for new books I think the main players have an agreement to not undermine the price of books.

Agency pricing. Amazon doesn't have it for TPBs (notice DC Rebirth TPBs for $9.99 on Amazon but $12.99 on comiXology) but they have to abide by it for single issues likely to protect brick and mortar comic shops.

comiXology sales aren't decided by comiXology. It's set by the publishers.

Notice the Price set by seller under the price.