DC is about to announce that it will offer the new printing of Batman Archives #1, normally a $49.95 book, at a $19.95 retail price on initial orders from retailers.  The book will be marked at that price in the UPC box on the back and the price blurbed on the cover.  The rest of the printing will be marked at and sold based on the normal cover price of $49.95.  The title has been out of print for several months; the new printing will ship in August. 

 

DC priced the end of its first printing of Batman Archives #1 to retailers based on the $19.95 price, but that price promotion did not carry through to the consumer level; this promotion is set up to carry the price all the way through to the consumer level, encouraging maximum preorders at all levels. 

 

We asked DC VP-Direct Sales Bob Wayne whether the promotion would be extended to other titles in the Archives program; he told us that the current plan is to continue to test the promotional pricing with the next couple of Archives #1s that go back to press. 

 

We also asked why, if the books can be sold profitably at that price, they're not priced at $19.95 all the time.  Wayne responded, 'Because I don't think we can maintain the velocity on them to maintain them at that price.'

 

Archives are offered to the book trade through DC sister company Little, Brown & Co., although, according to Wayne, there's very little interest in bookstores due to the price point.  The price promotion will also be made available to retailers serviced through Little, Brown.   

 

Given Marvel's recent announcement that Barnes and Noble would be publishing trade paperback editions of its Masterworks editions and selling them exclusively through its own stores (see 'Barnes and Noble to Publish Masterworks Trade Paperbacks' for our report, and 'Marvel on Barnes and Noble Masterworks Editions' for Marvel's statement on the matter), we asked Wayne whether DC was considering publishing trade paperback versions of its Archives books.  'We have decided to date from the feedback we've gotten from retailers and from consumers and the surveys we do with our retailer focus group that we don't pick up enough additional sales on going to softcover to justify the erosion we would have from people who would wait and buy the softcover vs. the hardcover,' he said.  'The healthiest way for us to keep this line going and to keep as many books and add as many new titles as we do is to keep it as a hardcover imprint, so that's what we're doing.' 

 

We asked about other channels, given that the feedback Wayne was describing was all from the comic store channel.  'If a person has enough interest in comics that they're curious about reading the All Star Comics Archives Volume 7 or Volume 8, there's no reason for them not to migrate into the direct market system where there's a higher level of knowledge about the comics,' he said.  'It doesn't seem to have the appeal to be a mass market consumer item even if it was priced at a softcover price.'

 

Asked about the exclusivity given to Barnes and Noble, Wayne said that while he'd never say never, that DC had no plans to create any products (other than the occasional custom comic produced for promotional purposes) that wouldn't be sold through comic stores.  We asked why.  'It's just a different perspective that we have on how to do this,' he said. 'We think that the comic shop market and the other pop culture stores that are serviced through Diamond are the core business for this type of material and we want to do everything that we can to keep them healthy, not divert those customers away from one channel to another.  It doesn't really prove anything when you divert customers from one channel to another other than that they have mobility.'