Jeff Truppe of Gnu Books in Oshawa, Canada read the Q3 comic sales article (see "It'€s Official: Q3 Comic Sales Sucked") and believes that too many re-launches, miniseries and one-shots are big factors in the downward sales trend.Raise your hand if you're sick of re-launches, new miniseries and one-shots. I'm not sure if I can count that high. In this industry the marketing of the big companies is getting out of hand. How many of you retailers out there can honestly say they know how many of these new titles they should order on a monthly basis? It's hard enough with the main titles let alone 20-40 new titles in a month. I, as a retailer, have probably wasted more money on ordering these new titles and ordering more copies to get that one extra alternate cover than any other adventure we've come upon.
I'm tired of it and my customers are tired of it. Instead of a new jumping on point some of my customers have taken the re-launches as a jumping off point. Most of the miniseries and one shot have such lackluster talent on them that people don't even bother to take a second look at them. Is this the way the main companies wish to make their money? Get the retailers to order these title with hopes that their customers will purchase it. Sure there has always been that aspect of the business but we only had a handful of titles to deal with not the hundreds and thousands of titles that are out there now.
If we had the capability to return product, there might be more incentive to order these titles but they offer "deep discounts" instead where you have to order more anyways to get that deal and then you still have a pile of product that nobody wants. If they could cut down the new titles, stick with the main core titles and put the talented people that our customers want to follow on a consistent basis on these main core titles we may have something to build on.
Am I wrong???
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
