I'm all for the increasing prevalence of trade paperbacks, but I wonder if the sales of the monthly issues will be high enough to get to the trades. Y - The Last Man is selling well enough, but there are plenty of others that aren't.
Maybe Bil will re-explain the economics for me, but I seem to remember that it's the trade paperback's sales that actually subsidize the individual issues. Because the TPBs sell far more, but you'll have trouble distributing your TPB if you don't have monthly issues to back them up or some weird thing. As if the three month's lag time in the industry didn't make comic book production risky enough...
What I was trying to mean is that the appearance of TPBs is not entirely dependant on how well issues are selling. They can be used to shore up a not-so-great-seller, in fact.
So you'll probably get your next TPB of Y.
Has anybody heard whether or not Fantagraphics has dealt with their money problems? I'm kinda curious as to whether I should go max out my credit cards picking up the rest of the Love & Rockets & the Woodring collections.
Has anybody heard whether or not Fantagraphics has dealt with their money problems?
Don't know. However...
I'm kinda curious as to whether I should go max out my credit cards picking up the rest of the Love & Rockets & the Woodring collections.
I wouldn't worry about this
too
much. Especially with L&R, because (a) they kept all the issues in print (b) scads of TPBs (c) Beto and Jaime own their own work including the original art (as you'd expect after the Comics Journal spent decades excorciating Marvel for dicking over Jack Kirby). Consequently some other publisher could put them back into print.
Woodring you might want to nab a few right now.
mearaing
As of yesterday, Fantagraphics is solvent. They sold enough to make their bills.
That being said, they did mention in the press release that if you want to continue to purchase items, please do, if for no other reason it will allow them to retire their debt faster, such as all the back royalties they owe their creators.
Holli, what is your comic shop then? The one out on Rockville Pike that is hidden away on the second story of a strip mall?
There is a balance point where the serial pays for the TPBs, and the TPBs are where the real money is. The thing is the serial has to surive a year or so to get a couple TPBs out to see if it is worth it. I suspect that Y is making enough money in TPBs that the serial would have to be selling very little for it not to be worth floating the serial looking ahead to the TPB payday.
Yes, Y is actually considered a hit for the Vertigo imprint. The last direct market sales figures (for April sales) pegged them at around 25,000 copies. 15,000 seems to be the danger level where DC starts to seriously consider cancellation, at least for newer series. Lucifer, for instance, sold just under 14,000 copies to the direct market in April, but its trade paperback sales have been established enough that DC can carry the monthly at that level. I also think that Mike Carrey has a definitive end for the series, so the company will want to keep the issues going to fill out the trade collection.
Bil, I don't really have a comic shop-- the Bethesda one is the one I go to most often, but that's still not very often.
And I didn't know about the one in Rockville. Have to remember to look for that one.
I saw the book Chosen at the bookstore today on my lunch hour. It appears to be a summary of the entire 7th season.
I just read some of the reviews, and I don't know if I could stand all the typos and such!
