Image Director of Retail Sales Corey Murphy explained the trade-offs for the company. "We don’t want to spend our creators’ money carelessly, but that being said, we understand how essential it is to the health and well-being of our retail partners, the creators we work with, and Image itself, that we make the necessary investments in our series," he said of the decision.
Image sell-outs have been common in the last couple of years, as a surge in interest in the company’s titles, especially early issues, has outstripped supply. The reference by Murphy to spending "our creators’ money carelessly" refers to the fact that Image has a different business model than most publishers, in that it publishes and distributes its titles for a fee paid by the creators, who also pay the printing costs. The money to the creator becomes what’s left over after the Image publishing fee and printing costs. So if printing costs go up, and the books don’t sell through, it reduces the money that the creators of the comics Image publishes receive after costs. If the print run increases do sell through, the creator ends up with more money than he/she would have otherwise received.
The announcement that print runs would be going up came in conjunction with the news that five recent issues are going back to press: Bitch Planet #2 and #3, Descender #1, The Empty #1, and Rumble #3.
Image Publisher Eric Stephenson noted that while sell-outs can be positive news, having enough books available is preferable. "This is an issue we’ve wrestled with for some time now, but in all honesty, we’d love it if this announcement was the last press release we ever had to send out about sell-outs or second printings," he said. "It’s more important to us that these comics are in stores when readers come looking for them."