Avie Rants about the Industry part 3: Publishers Article by aviewaskewed, 11:29 PM 31st Jan Disclaimer: The following column is entirely the opinions of the author (even at that we aren‘t sure), any similarity to the opinions of any other staff or affiliate of theendlesscrew.com is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all creator comments have been gleaned from other sources and no creators have actually endorsed any aspect of this column. So in retaliation this column is going to endorse no creators, we will however be ahead of the trend, and worship the characters. So here we are, talking about publishers. I don’t mind telling you this is a subject I find very daunting, it’s hard to wade through the hype and the misdirection, to really see what is…well, hype and misdirection. If there’s one thing this industry knows, it’s spin, especially at the big two. I know we’ve talked about creator spin in the past, so I figure we’ll start off this examination of publishers by talking about their spin. The big scams I see publishers running now, is exclusive contracts, and “selling out” of certain books. Selling out doesn’t sound like a con job on the surface, because hey, you sell out of a book, you have no more to give out, that has to be good for business right? They can’t mislead us about that can they? Actually, yes, they can, and they are. See, as Joe Casey and Matt Fraction pointed out in their Basement Tapes column a couple weeks back, we don’t know the print run of a book that sells out. Sell out doesn’t necessarily mean that a book is hot, or that it made it’s publisher more money then whatever else they put on the rack that month, or even the week of it’s release. All we know is that the publisher did not have the print run supply, to meet the consumer demand. Let me make it simple for you, let’s say that DC sets the print run of…oh, let’s just say the next issue of Batman at 20,000 copies. The print run is set, retailers order, and DC sends out maybe 10,000 (print run is always set higher then what retailers order, because there’s a chance of at least some of the books coming in damaged, or possibly being lost in shipping, so you need to have stock on hand to replace these at the very least), now, let’s say that 10,000 sells, but retailers order out the other 10,000. DC has just sold out of this issue of Batman at the publisher level. Now, let’s say DC gets orders still coming in, and they total up to another 5,000 copies, now DC has sold out, and still have demand to be met. Put in those terms, a sell out is not impressive, it’s just a business situation, but the big two have been turning it into an event when it happens on their big buzz books. I have to applaud them though on the restraint they’re showing, they’re only making press releases, and putting the hype out there on the big books. But to me? It’s still a waste, the fact is, everybody expected things like Identity Crisis, or New Avengers, or Teen Titans, to do really huge numbers. All the press releases do is confirm the obvious, the books did well, and they sold well. But we don’t know how well because we aren’t handed any numbers, my 20,000 copy example, actually would show rather anemic sales, as 20,000 copies at the big publishers is the cutoff level on almost all books where to go below that is to get cancelled. We don’t get hard numbers until later on, and usually? They aren’t hugely featured on news sites, so what the publisher effectively does, is to make it seem like the book is doing horribly well, without giving any data to support it, and the news sites don’t really demand it either. So how fucking long is it going to be before publishers decide to apply this theory to lesser books? Before they use this as a trick to push crappy books out the door and make more money off of them figuring that the speculators, if no one else, are going to buy the book because they heard it “sold out” and the publisher gets to make more money off the next print run, or with any leftovers from the initial run (since it seems to me a faint possibility that some retailer somewhere could have unsold copies of the initial print run for some reason). It hasn’t happened yet, but if history has taught us anything, it’s taught us that money beats brains every time in this industry. The exclusive deal is another one that I’ve quickly gotten tired of. In the beginning it was big news since Marvel and DC were snapping up hot writers and artists to deals. Now? Now it’s mostly people who, while maybe good technically and all, have only been working on mid-level selling books, and thus, I don’t think most people know who the hell they are, and so we’re just seeing a lot of useless press releases going out that we, the news sites, are posting up so as to make sure we come off as having our fingers on the pulse of the industry. Anybody who reads our site for the news, you know how personally sick of it all I am, I’ve said that a couple times now. It’s great for the creators, since they’re guaranteed work now, but in all honesty, I can’t get excited about projects coming from people I’ve never heard of. That defeats the whole purpose of exclusives right there, because the only thing having someone work for you exclusively benefits you, I feel, is that the guy has a name, and it helps sell books. Although maybe Marvel is being smarter then me, and they’re thinking long term, they’re building up quite an artistic pool, and in the short term, they can say “hey! Look at how many guys would rather work for us then DC!” (since most of the guys signed worked for DC). But what Marvel really needs, as I said last week, is they need to get more writers. Brian Bendis, Mark Millar, and Stracyznski are all fine, fine, writers, but it’s ridiculous to me that they are handling all the top books for the company at the moment. I say the same for DC. I realize there’s always a situation where some guys are going to be much more beloved then others, but there’s also merit in cutting a popular writer’s workload down a bit so that people get a chance to “miss” their work. But in general, Marvel just has more of a shortage I feel then DC does, DC spreads they’re people out more, and I think that’s because they made an effort to hire more of them. Marvel is by no means poor, and the Bendis overload can only end up hurting them, especially if there comes a point where Bendis begins to lose his touch, and fans respond (not saying it’ll happen, just throwing out a what if), Marvel will be left in a pretty big pit. Another thing to look at, which actually makes me glad I’m doing this column for this week, and not last, is company direction. I was just reading through an interview Dan Didio did today talking about the upcoming Countdown project, and the direction of DC in general. In it, Didio is talking about how Countdown is going to lead to a couple mini series this year, and then change the direction and tone of the DCU in general (a process started by Identity Crisis, and something Didio has been talking about for some time now). I’ve said many times before I think it’s good, and smart that DC knows where they won’t to go, that they have a policy that says “everything we do right now matters, because we have a larger picture” so I, as a fan, as a consumer, can consider that if I’m buying something from DC for the most part, but certainly if I buy one of these mini series, or a book tying into it, I am buying something of consequence. Or at least…that’s what DC WANTS me to believe. I’m not questioning Didio’s honesty, but I question his logic. I think DC is trying to throw out too many mini’s at once. I mean, think about a mini in general, these are usually loss leaders, especially now with the prevalence of the trade market since an announcement of “this is going to change everything” guarantees that people CAN afford to wait for the trade since it’s going to have to be collected because of it’s significance, it’s entirely affordable for someone to just wait for the collection so they can read it all in one sitting if they want. Let’s also not forget that people only have so much money, and most of us who are serious fans (myself included) we have the things we read, we have that pull list (the books that you ask your local retailer to put aside each month, or just the personal shopping list you have that you buy), so to ask people to pick up an extra two books a month can be a hardship. Not to mention DC also has the MASSIVE Seven Soldiers project happening which exists apart from Countdown and it’s minis, and is looking to put out 32 issues this year. 32 issues this year! That’s the kind of output that most series average after 3 years of continuous publication. In short, I applaud DC for having real vision, and a real plan, but I think they are moving way to quickly, to steal a line from pro wrestling writing vernacular, they are “hot shotting” this plan. Didio said it’s a two year plan, said that with ID Crisis, so I imagine by next year we’ll see a retooled DCU. My personal opinion though is that they need to take more time, they should save some of these “events” for later on, because to put so much out so quickly? They’re actually competing with themselves, and guaranteeing that they can’t make all the money they would have made if they had just run one mini series at a time, or one after the other, rather then three at once. On the flipside, Marvel’s policy just seems to be “shock and awe/slash and burn”. I have not heard anything out of Marvel as to long term direction, all I see them doing is tearing things apart (like the Avengers) and then rebuilding it “newer, better, more star power!” and crossing that over into the books of everyone involved (like…uh…The Avengers!). Or they just dig up the past, destroy it, then try to rationalize it by saying “well, nobody really remembers these characters enough to really worry about what we could be messing up here” yeah…that’s a really good argument there. I mean, we’ve proven how little these characters matter because you’re still writing about them! Does Marvel really think we’re that stupid? Anybody who doesn’t see a storyline like Gwen Stacy shags Norman Osborne and has his super Goblin babies as cheap shock and poor revision of history to generate controversy is quite frankly, stupid, and probably a tool, and that seems to be exactly what Marvel wants in it’s fan base. I know Marvel will be able to stand up and say that they are doing great numbers for the Spider-Man story I mentioned, for Avengers Disassembled, and New Avengers, and that’s fine, they probably are. But my point here is, is that REALLY going to be indicative of new readers you’ve brought in? Or is it the people who stopped to read this stuff because they heard the bile, they heard the faint praise, and because of the controversy, needed to read those books because they wanted to form they’re own opinion (we’ve all done that)? I honestly wonder how long any of these changes will last, how long any of the sales increase they’ve gotten is going to continue. But if it’s done anything positive, it’s making Marvel go back to press on some of these issues, and is eroding their “no-overprint” policy. So to wrap things up, where are we as an industry? Well, to be honest, I think it’s the same place we always are at. Every time a publisher is moving forward, and does something good, they take about two steps back, and screw things up. Mostly I think because there’s just no patience in the industry, or at least at the top of it, and when they lock onto something that makes money, they poison it. They poison it with overexposure, they poison it by pricing it to high, or something else. It’s a pretty good time though I think to be a fan, quality is still pretty good in general, even though we still have other issues to sort out. Next Week: The Shared Universe, do we still need it? Maybe the debut of a new feature too. Back to Rants