We finally have answers to the Spider-Man subscriptions question. On August 12, 2008, in a CBR interview Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort said “Everyone is saying the book will be cancelled any day now. I could float the book on my subscribers alone at this point.”
The question of whether [...]

[Read more →]

Looking at comments online, there seem to be two distinct camps for Captain America #600’s Monday release: places where practically no one batted an eyelash on Monday and places where it was a hot ticket.  This isn’t too surprising since while there was some publicity, it was spotty and much [...]

[Read more →]

Is Gareb Shamus stealing a page from Danny Ocean?
The Beat noted an interesting quote about a survey being conducted at The Big Apple Con: “If Big Apple Con added a casino, would you stay and gamble?”
Want to know the secret behind that question?  Open source intelligence reveals all.
You may recall [...]

[Read more →]

As you may or may not know, Marvel Comics told retailers that the 600th issue of Captain America would be available for sale today, a Monday (Wednesday being the day new comics normally go on sale), because there was going to be a biiiiiiig announcement.  They thought there was going to be similar coverage to [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve made some comments over the last month or two about feeling sorry for anyone planning to read Secret Invasion in trade paperback (tpb) format.  The actual mini-series was released as a solo tpb and when released on a weekly basis, the tie-ins (especially the Avengers titles) would unfold as flashbacks, [...]

[Read more →]

As you may know, The New York Times has started a best seller list for “Graphic Books,” which you and I would probably call either graphic novels or comics.  A lot of people have been trying to figure out what this list really is and whether it’s valid.  The exact [...]

[Read more →]

This is the final installment of a look at the world of print comics in a world where the direct market implodes.  Previous installments were the actual “Doomsday Scenario” and a look at formats that print comics might adopt online.  This installment will look at graphic novels as more of an independent product than just [...]

[Read more →]

Last week, we looked at a possible doomsday scenario with a perfect storm of a recession, price hikes, consumer antipathy towards the Big 2, and digital distribution cause a drastic shrinkage in the direct market and the number of books distributed as printed monthly magazines (*cough* Seattle Post-Intelligencer *cough*).
The first thing we [...]

[Read more →]

I want to emphasize, this is not written for the express purpose of fear mongering.  This is a look at what might happen if a few current industry trends are taken to their logical conclusion.  I’ve discussed these scenarios with a few publishing professionals (both comics and “traditional” book publishing) and the consensus is this [...]

[Read more →]

Over at Comic Book Resources,
Brian Hibbs has done his annual analysis on BookScan’s sales figures for graphic novels.
First thing you have to say about BookScan is the standard disclaimer that we don’t really know what percentage of retail sales it represents. Barnes & Nobel, Borders and Amazon: Yes. Wal-Mart, book clubs, many independent bookstores and [...]

[Read more →]