"I, too, think this has the potential to be one of the biggest stories of the year -- though I admit to being super-double biased, of course.
"I quite hope that if this proves as successful as I think it can that other publishers will begin to adopt this thinking, and maybe we can transform the way comics are ordered and displayed in the Direct Market.
"I think DC's current version is a good first step towards what I envision, and I think it is only natural that retailers will have some quibbles or commentary about the specific participation levels they've set at launch. Ranking quantity by discount level is a good first stab at the complexity of the problem, but clearly, with the vast range of dollar amounts and types of stores in any given range, this may not be a 'one size fits all' solution.
"The difference in between DC's, say, 55% bracket of $3400 (at the low end) and $16,999 (at the high end) is pretty enormous, and in that spread you're going to have some stores which will have a difficult time meeting some of those plateaus on some of those books (which book and which plateau will almost certainly vary from store to store)
"(However, THANK GOD they're trying this AT ALL -- commenting on where an individual store might fall isn't 'moaning', I don't think, but an honest hope from most stores that they'll be able to maximize thier individual results)
"As for the conservatism of the market, let me observe that the 'best selling' title does something just north of 100,000 copies -- Diamond reports '3500' stores. Which means the 'average' (yah, ha-ha) orders 29 copies of the BEST SELLING title...
"Half to three-quarters of the battle in the Direct Market is getting ANY copies of a title on the shelf AT ALL. I don't even think this is a 'mainstream' versus 'alternative' split, really -- you have to look hard to find stores that always have a full spread of EVERY DC and Marvel title on the racks all of the time.
"We're still waiting for DC to publish the results of the intial Saturation Test (as they promised they'd do), but my (perhaps faulty) memory of the results as read at the RPP was that marginal 'mainstream' material (like, say, a 'SECRET FILES' of GREEN LANTERN, or something), had just as much of an initial weak position from the participating retailers as did a Vertigo or Cartoon Network title -- actually HAVING COPIES ON THE SHELF (as opposed to 'Sell out and reorder') has a very strong positive impact on sales of material... regardless of it being spandex-oriented or not.
"The battle for rack space in Direct Market stores is very much a battle against financial conservatism and the inherent it-can-put-you-out-of-business-if-you're-not-careful nature of selling a non-returnable product.
"Whether you're talking about YOUNG JUSTICE or ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY, getting that FIRST 'rack copy' in a store is the most important step. Then you start working on getting the SECOND copy, and the third and so on.
"Let me give you an example: right now, this second, at Comix Experience (We're VERY solidly a "55" account -- making us, by all accounts, a 'Top 10%' DM store) our rack sales of SUPERMAN have dropped into the single digits. That means every time I place a double-digit order (10 or 11), I'm taking a large risk that my ENTIRE order of SUPERMAN will become break-even at best.
"If I'm working on a 10% pre-tax profit margin (which is pretty high for retail) than 8 copies sold of the $2.25 SUPERMAN yields $1.80 profit. Each copy of SUPERMAN that I buy at 55% off costs me $1.01. Thus, if I order 10, and only sell 8, I'm actually DOWN by 22 cents for that book for that month.
"(That's an EXTREMELY shallow and fast analysis of how the DM works, of course -- the math isn't quite as linear as that -- and without SOME rack copies you CAN'T grow your business. Besides, most comics don't exist in a vacuum)
"Insitinctively, most retailers err towards 'having too little' on their shelves, because while you can marginalize yourself to the point where you're not making much money at all, it's hard to go OUT OF BUSINESS by selling-through at 100%.
"That is to say, no one went out of business by not racking ACME, but, rather, by having that case of TUROK #1 sitting in the backroom, soaking up their profits.
"And that, basically, is the behaviour I was thinking of when I first suggested this idea a decade ago. Reorder availability only goes so far in matching demand -- most reorders take at least a week, if not 2, to arrive -- so the question becomes 'how do you get material on the racks in the FIRST PLACE?' I think some form of returnability is the only real way that makes any sense -- I wouldn't EVER want to get back to the newstand-style 'full returns, all of the time!' model... it is wasteful (print 5 to sell 1) and rife for corruption and abuse, but partial returns are sensible and help all levels of the business out."
As always, it's nice to see someone back up an argument with figures and examples. Like the sidebar says, send email to weblog@tcj.com -- all email is considered anonymous unless you volunteer otherwise, and assumed printable unless you say otherwise.
Speaking of the sidebar: we've made a small addition to the bottom of the links, as your surly neighborhood ¡Journalista! has signed up as a member of the BlogCritics collective, which allows me to crosspost the occasional essay to two blogs at once. Whether this is a bigger boost to this website's traffic and brand-recognition, or merely to my ego, remains to be seen, of course...
