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The Walking Dead #163 the highest ordered comic in nearly 2 decades

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I ordered a ton and plan to give the bulk away at fcbd (cheaper to me than most fcbd books)

 

I only had a handful buy the 500 book deal to get the variants

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I ordered a ton and plan to give the bulk away at fcbd (cheaper to me than most fcbd books)

 

I only had a handful buy the 500 book deal to get the variants

 

:o Couple guys bought 500 copies (pretty much 2 long boxes) from 1 dealer and there is a lot of dealers/shops thru out the country. This may work out the way Image imagined since I can only guess there will be a ton of copies being given away and should go into some new reader's hands.

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All this sounds like the early 1990s all over again :eyeroll:

 

Yes, it does. (thumbs u The artwork was better then though.

 

I see this being more similar to the sport's card market in the early/mid 1990s. Regular cards were junk and were instantly discarded for the rare chase cards. At least comics had fancy covers and twice a month publications to entice people to buy and read the books.

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are they trying to sell these other than in comic shops? if not, i don't see how they're going to expland readerhsip. of course, by today's comics standards it is selling fine normally. still worth it to do the book at 60K copies, right? has kirkman reduced his role on the book now that he is a celebrity?

At 60K per month, and with Image's fixed fees covered by the first 5-10K in sales, assuming LCS gets 60% cut, Diamond 15% and printing costs $0.25 per copy, that's roughly $25K/mo or $300K annual (minus taxes) going to the creators' pockets.

 

That's not including sales from collected volumes and digital. Granted, probably dwarfed by revenue from HBO. I reckon as long as the HBO TV series continues, so will the comic. :D

 

I think Image might get more like $50-$70K an issue out of it. Obviously Image has its own administrative overhead an what not, so how much Kirman makes I have no idea.

 

Here jim zub (skullkickers) breaks down the economics on a 5K a month title creator owned ... WD is going to have much lower printing costs I presume because it is B&W (mostly) and the print-run is 10-15X higher:

 

http://www.jimzub.com/the-reality-of-mainstream-creator-owned-comics/

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This is a no brainer. Even if a dealer has 2 long boxes left over, they will eventually sell. True, not much money for the floor space, but whatever.

 

Remember how it looked like dealers would be stuck with an endless supply of WD 100 with its 3 million covers?

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This is a no brainer. Even if a dealer has 2 long boxes left over, they will eventually sell. True, not much money for the floor space, but whatever.

 

Remember how it looked like dealers would be stuck with an endless supply of WD 100 with its 3 million covers?

 

There's a reason inside the cover you don't find those often in $1 bins. This one, maybe, maybe not.

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I think Image might get more like $50-$70K an issue out of it. Obviously Image has its own administrative overhead an what not, so how much Kirman makes I have no idea.

 

Here jim zub (skullkickers) breaks down the economics on a 5K a month title creator owned ... WD is going to have much lower printing costs I presume because it is B&W (mostly) and the print-run is 10-15X higher:

 

http://www.jimzub.com/the-reality-of-mainstream-creator-owned-comics/

And here's Jim Zub's update on the economics for a comic that sells at 2.5x.

http://www.jimzub.com/creator-owned-economics-the-changing-market/

 

Mind, Robert Kirkman is also COO for Image Comics, Inc. :)

 

I know you’re looking at that bar chart and can’t fathom how 2.5 times the sales magically turns into 7.5 times the profit. Trust me, I’ll explain.

 

Here’s the real beauty of the Image model when it’s running at full steam and, as far as I know, it’s something no other creator-owned publisher can match: Image has a flat administrative fee for soliciting and releasing each issue of a series. That amount does not change no matter how much the issue sells. On a relatively low selling comic (like back in 2010 with Skullkickers #1) that base fee can eat up most of what’s left over after the printer, distributor, and retailer take their cut but, on a strong selling comic that amount stays the same and the issue becomes a lot more profitable. A lot.

 

This is why that pie chart from my original retail post doesn’t scale well to different print runs and doesn’t perfectly sync up with the Image model. A 5000 copy comic has a very, very different money breakdown than one that sells 10k or more. Printing large quantities of something vastly decreases the cost per copy. The “price per unit” drops and the profitability per copy increases, but Image’s base fee doesn’t change.

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This is a no brainer. Even if a dealer has 2 long boxes left over, they will eventually sell. True, not much money for the floor space, but whatever.

 

Remember how it looked like dealers would be stuck with an endless supply of WD 100 with its 3 million covers?

 

There's a reason inside the cover you don't find those often in $1 bins. This one, maybe, maybe not.

 

True, but I don't see any WD in $1 bins, including the lootcrate issue that had a billion copy print run

 

With that said, if these wind up selling out of $1 bins in 3 months the stores will be thrilled!

 

And heck, even if they're giving them away to customers later, these cost as much as a bag and board, and the variants are going to have some market.

 

 

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Right, it's good for shops. I don't need more books that might sell for $1 one day, I'm well stocked in that area. For regular joes, unless they're getting the variants, I don't see the upside of ordering 500 copies unless they want to give them away at halloween and if it's gorey I'd be very careful about that.

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Here is another way to look at this: this comic is practically being given away and the highest sale it can garner is just under 800,000 copies. What are we celebrating exactly? Arguably one of the comic worlds most well known titles (the television series is viewed by 12x as many people or more on average) and it can only move 800,000 copies when it is priced at $0.25?!?

 

I've said most people wouldn't be interested in a comic if you gave it to them for free. This dubious honor that Walking Dead #163 will hold pretty much proves it. In a country of over 300 million people, a $0.25 copy of a well known comic should be able to sell better than this IMHO.

 

If Image was really interested in bringing in new readers, they would put an ad on television during the airing of the show and advertise this $0.25 issue. Reaching out to only comic readers is not going to cut it IMHO. Unless the end goal was just to shift copies to comic readers and collectors, most of which won't even get read.

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Here is another way to look at this: this comic is practically being given away and the highest sale it can garner is just under 800,000 copies. What are we celebrating exactly? Arguably one of the comic worlds most well known titles (the television series is viewed by 12x as many people or more on average) and it can only move 800,000 copies when it is priced at $0.25?!?

 

I've said most people wouldn't be interested in a comic if you gave it to them for free. This dubious honor that Walking Dead #163 will hold pretty much proves it. In a country of over 300 million people, a $0.25 copy of a well known comic should be able to sell better than this IMHO.

 

If Image was really interested in bringing in new readers, they would put an ad on television during the airing of the show and advertise this $0.25 issue. Reaching out to only comic readers is not going to cut it IMHO. Unless the end goal was just to shift copies to comic readers and collectors, most of which won't even get read.

 

That's a really interesting perspective that really captures the problems facing comic publishing. And if there wasn't a 1:500 variant as incentive to push these numbers what would the total be?

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