An Inhospitable Retail Environment

glamourpuss #2 (July 2008)

Art by Dave Sim

JEFF SEILER: 

Sequentially reprinting Dave Sim's letters and faxed correspondence to me, with occasional annotation from me.

Today’s entry continues the discussion about the early sales numbers on glamourpuss, a discussion that included Craig Johnson and Lenny, and (peripherally) me.

16 July, 2008

Jeff and Lenny:

My best guess is that once you drop below an overall “one copy per store” ratio (estimates vary between 2,000 and 3,000) then that’s the edge of the psychological radar screen where your work ceases to exist in the mass comicbook mind.

The severe cutting is a result of Marvel and DC glutting the market. Whatever you sell between Wednesday and end of the first weekend, that’s all you’re going to sell. So, if the store orders eight copies and has five left over on Monday, they’ll cut their orders to three on the next issue. Of course, that doesn’t really work with indy comics since indy customers are not usually “every week” people -- and they expect to be able to walk in and buy the first three issues of glamourpuss if they only go in once every six months, which isn’t going to happen in 99.9% of stores. Paradise -- whose employees and owner are the only ones to sign the petition and therefore the only North American store I’ll go into -- had issues 2 and 3 of Terry Moore’s ECHO but no #1’s. And ECHO is monthly, so you’re talking about a less-than-three-month supply of back issues.

It’s really a matter of Marvel and DC creating an environment which is inhospitable to anyone except Marvel and DC: an ongoing, massive glut of Colgate versus Crest flavours to occupy all the rack space and no market (or cash) for back issues.

I’ll be speaking to Sandeep today or tomorrow and I’ll get him to do a package of #3 artwork. We can certainly work the solicitation period, but I suspect all that’s going to do is give the stores an “out” during the week of release (“Why did you release the artwork two months ago? Now everyone’s forgotten the book and I’m stuck with all these copies!”). Oh well, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Dave