Tilting at Windmills v2 #3
by Brian Hibbs

[#120 – March 2004 – “Wading for the Trade”]

Let’s stay on the topic of the book format comic, though I promise not to bury you in numbers like last time (I swear that the lack of response to that one made me picture the whole audience as Teen Talk Barbie saying “Math is hard!”)

We’ll stick to simpler concepts this time such as when and how and why to do books, and what “waiting for the trade” really means to the industry.

A little background first: I loves me the Trade Paperback (“TP”) – a collection of previously published single periodical comics – I certainly think of my store more as a book store than a magazine shop, well over half of our sales are in TP-format comics, with a high percentage of those sales coming from “civilians”, and I’m long on the record in thinking the industry should move more strongly towards the TP. I believe I am even on the record as saying publishers shouldn’t even bothering releasing periodical comics that they don’t someday intend to collect into TP form.

Which, I suppose, is a perfect example of “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it”.

At the time, my reasoning was that there was very little sense in pouring all of our efforts into creating 22-page stories that became, if not effectively then relatively, unsalable after the first weekend they were on-sale. The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of all periodical comics sell in the first 96 hours.

Just so everyone is clear on how things work: not all 22-page “floppies” are “periodicals” in sales patterns – there are dozens of comics from a decade or more past that still sell well, week-in and week-out, even when there is also a TP available (One prime example is Johnny the Homicidal Maniac #1 – over 100,000 copies sold through seventeen printings) – but these are the exception, rather than the rule.

When we talk about “periodical sales patterns” what we mean is things like this week’s issue of Superman, where half or more of the copies that sell do so by the end of the weekend. On many “mid-list” or lower books this could be 75% or better. There are certainly a handful of titles that every comics retailer carries where if you don’t move your rack copies by the end of business, Wednesday, you’re extremely unlikely to ever sell one.

The original model of the DM was largely about maximizing the periodical sale. There were far fewer titles, and cover prices were so low that keeping and storing a wide variety of back issues was both prudent and profitable. It used to be that customers could come in with $5, buy that week’s titles that they collected, and have change left over for a back issue.

Today, of course, people bring $20 and they still often don’t have enough to purchase everything they might want that is new.

During the 80s I worked for a chain that had the order for the store, then an extra order for the warehouse – it was common practice then for us to order case-lots of X-Men to stash for later sales.

Now, there are a few comic shops that still follow a back-issue-centric model today, and do so quite profitably, but for the vast majority of stores, the back issue market dried up in the 90s.

Why? Massive title proliferation is one culprit. Back then, any given month might have just Batman and Detective shipping – you could go two weeks without seeing a Batman-starring title. Today, it’s a light week if you’re not getting three Bat-books. And, of course, rapidly-rising cover prices curtailed a lot of otherwise discretionary spending on back issues.

But this created a situation where a lot of creators were pouring their heart and soul into creating work that effectively disappeared into the ether after a weekend on-sale. This is why I love, say, Cerebus – because of Dave Sim’s understanding that the body of work was the important thing, there hasn’t been a single month gone by since I opened Comix Experience that I haven’t made a dollar off of Cerebus #1, via the “phone book” TPs.

The TP changes a lot of the equations, as it provides a steady, if individually unspectacular, income. Suddenly, we’re able to be in the “back issue” business again, only this time, the retailers don’t have to hold the stock, they can instead order it as they need it. If I’m going to sell 30 copies of Watchmen this year, I don’t have to order 30 up front – I can keep three on my shelf, reordering every time my stock drops to two, ensuring maximum rack time for minimal financial exposure. This is also known as “Just in Time” inventory.

In a perfect world, everything that is created could be perpetually available – the back end becoming a great deal more important than the front end in the long haul. I’d venture a guess that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have now made more money from Watchmen than they did from the original serialization. How wonderful would it be if the same were true for all creators’ entire body of work?

The problems with that dream, however, are significant: there is simply not an ever-expanding amount of rack space available (One reason I believe the bookstore incursion is going to trail off a lot more rapidly than a lot of other people seem to think – they have even less space than the DM) to house those bodies, and, perhaps more importantly, not all work is created equal. When DC, for instance, publishes 60-70 distinct series a month, it’s not really much of a stretch to recognize that maybe only 6-7 of them will be truly worthy of long-term reprinting.

That’s part of the secret to the TP: it’s a long-term commitment. What the market wants and needs are not more books that sell like periodicals – we already have plenty of those, thanks! – what we need are more books that are month-in, month-out sellers.

There are a couple of cardinal rules that need to be observed. The chief among these is that numbered series need to be perpetually stocked. When volumes 4 and 5 of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men are out of print (as they currently are), sales velocity plummets on 1-3 and 6. There also needs to be a consistency and a plan when it comes to numbering. Placing a “volume 1” on the cover or the spine is only a good plan when there is going to be a volume 2 and beyond. Readers are attracted to numbered TP series because they believe, if they like it, there will be more for them to read – but this means that like must be placed with like. Organizational plans like Marvel’s “Legends” collections almost certainly become failures because there isn’t a consistent “through-line” of quality and style. Wolverine: Meltdown is so far in content and tone from Wolverine: X-Isle that calling them “Wolverine Legends” volumes 2 and 4, respectively, is counter-productive.

One thing that many publishers seem to forget or overlook is that, for the vast majority of its sales life, all that the average consumer is going to be able to see is the TPs spine. Virtually no store has the display space available to give front-cover facing displays of TPs, so the spine is the single most important sales tool you have.

Good spine design is first and foremost legible – a clear, readable font should be chosen, with colors that stand out well from one another. It stuns me sometimes how many TP spines there are on display at Comix Experience where you simply can’t read it from three feet away. Sometimes it’s because the publisher chose a fancy type treatment, sometimes it’s because the lettering is too small, or colored something silly like pale red on black.

Further, good spine design is consistent. Nothing looks dopier on the shelves that a TP series where the Art Director has redesigned the spine every volume. Such consistency, however, shouldn’t generally be company-wide, or be anchored around the publisher’s name. The company logos of both Marvel and Image are far-too-large on their spines. These books look garish when racked together, and I strongly believe it detracts from sales.

Think of it this way: the general consumer for TPs is not the same one as the “floppies” – TP consumers tend to be more weighted to “civilians” -- they’re no more interested in who the publisher is than you think “Today, I want to watch a movie released by Universal!” No, you want to watch a good movie, with actors you like, or perhaps a writer or director you enjoy – which studio released it is almost certainly the furthest thing in your mind.

There are three pieces of information that really need to be on the spine. Title is the obvious one, and it needs to be the title of the work, not the marketing plan. I hate to keep sticking it to the “Legends” line, but when “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” was replaced by “Daredevil Legends” on the spine our sales velocity plummeted. How much? Well, I used to sell about 10 copies a year of that book, but since they created the new trade dress I do not believe I’ve sold a single copy.

The second piece of data that needs to be on the spine is the creators. Personally, my experience is that this is even more important than the title of the work, and if this were a fascist regime with myself as the head I might insist it gets listed first. The TP buyer most often shops by creator, and it’s a mistake to not make them the key data presented.

Finally, there’s a number, if it is part of a series. The number should be simple and easy-to-read (no need to box it out like the Image spines), but once you’re on the second volume of a series, it is a key piece of data to have there. It tells people clearly what order they can read a series in, and, perhaps more importantly it makes retailer’s jobs easier in shelving the material. Plenty of customers are... sloppy when it comes to reshelving books they look at, and straightening the racks is much less of a chore when spines are numbered effectively.

Another tricky question is when do you do the trade? It is hard because when there’s high demand for a work, the collection simply can not come fast enough – for example, DC really should have had all of Transmetropolitan TPed within six months of the series ending, and it cost us all a lot of money that they didn’t. The thing is however, it is really a rare situation that there’s that much instant demand.

In most cases, demand is actually being minimized by not waiting some period of time between serialization and collection. It is usually good to let a market build up demand because wanting is very often better than having.

A growing number of people are regularly “waiting for the trade”, but what I’m seeing is a growing trend of people still “waiting” even once the trade is released. If the TP is there, and is assumed to be perpetually in stock, it’s easy to postpone the purchase. Far easier than it is to postpone buying a periodical you want.

Ultimately, I think the growing trend in comics publishing to have the TP out before a whole quarter after the end of a storyline passes will prove to be self-defeating. I strongly think that no less than 6 months should pass, and, more usually a full year is more appropriate. One strong exception to this might be if the collection is an upscale format like a hardcover – then you’re talking about clearly different demographics.

We’re right on the lip of a spiral where mid-list periodical titles may no longer generate enough sales to sustain themselves because customers are “waiting for the trade”, yet where initial orders on those trades may then not be enough to cover enough of the creative and manufacturing costs to be profitable. And that will make it much harder for smaller books to succeed.

I totally sympathize with the “waiting” crowd, but I can see clearly how it’s hurting a lot of titles. It’s also a message distorting the market a lot right now.

More and more I’m seeing small publishers trying to go “straight to the trade”, whether it be wrapping up their mini-series before completion of serialization or trying for an OGN (“Original Graphic Novel”), and I think that’s a real mistake.  The best way to get a fan base in comics is to earn it one reader at a time. But like I keep trying to impress upon everyone, the retailer is your gateway to those readers in the DM because we buy non-returnable.

So when I see a publisher and creators I’ve never heard of before offering me a $12 OGN at 40% off, it’s really hard for me to justify throwing down $7.20 on the chance that they’re any good and salable.

And I’m an “Indy-friendly” store, man!

I’m down for the $1.60 gamble for the serialization of that $2.95 comic however. Creators really need the serialization – it keeps you in front of the audience, it gives them a chance to bond with you, to want to follow your work.

Exceptional work will always find its audience, but format can and does work against it. Particularly as more publishers move to TPs and the market over-expands. As always, be careful out there, folks.

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Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience in San Francisco since 1989. Feel free to e-mail him with any comments. You can also purchase a collection of the first one hundred Tilting at Windmills (originally serialized in Comics Retailer magazine) from IDW Publishing.

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