Learning from its experience with past comic-based movie releases such as Hellboy (see 'Dark Horse Struggles to Fill Hellboy Demand'), Dark Horse has shortened its supply chain and planned multiple reprintings of its red-hot Frank Miller's Sin City trade paperbacks (see 'Sin City Trades Take Off') to keep pipelines full.  A North American printer is handling the multiple printings of the books and shipping them to customers.  For example, one shipment is currently en route from the printer to Diamond, and another printing is going to press next week. 

 

The steady flow and relatively short supply chain is keeping accounts satisfied, for now.  Dark Horse is 'keeping books available to the direct market,' according to Dark Horse VP Business Development Michael Martens, while filling the rapidly growing orders from bookstore and other channels where the books are also selling very well. 

 

Diamond Book Distributors' Kuo-Yu Liang sees some factors in the marketplace that are stimulating sales.  'The velocity of sales are picking up daily and selling in every single channel,' Liang said.  'The sales pattern also tells us we're seeing two type of consumers -#1 who is only buying Hard Goodbye, #2 is buying every book he/she can find.  The publicity for the movie is unbelievable and the range it is appearing in (from Esquire to Wired to Playboy to Maxim to Premiere to Entertainment and every Website you can imagine) - best news is every single media coverage talks about the books, mentions Frank Miller and how the film is shot virtually panel by panel from the comic books.'
 
That kind of publicity means that no matter whether the movie does well or not (and all indications are that it will do well), the graphic novels will get lots of attention and sales.