as a former comic shop financial supporter (i hesitate to call the way i was bleeding out "investment") i know this guy means well but i kind of want to smack him; "first issues sell more" is for all practical purposes industry myth that encourages horrorshttps://twitter.com/AshcanPress/status/987053893757612034 …
retailers are mostly true believers at some level, which means they don't even work out the economics of their situation, and even if they did what choice do they have but to try as hard as they can to get people to jump on first issues?
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it's not like you can get somebody to start reading a title at #16 since at this point that numbering is a signal that it's already four issues overdue for a relaunch
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You can. But a lot of people look for 1's. At least that's what every publisher and retailer has told me. Your data seems to be different.
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oh, no, they do, they've been trained to, and as a result there are more #1's than anybody knows what to do with and the situation has imploded
End of conversation
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So they hemorrhage money every year but don't anyway? Weird. The shop I worked in, 7th biggest in North America, sold on average upwards of 200% more copies of issue ones of rebooted series. But we may have been an outlier.
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things are probably a little different at big stores; this was a real mom & pop i was dealing with. what year this was is pretty important, too. #1 sales bumps were a lot more significant before they started being leaned on like a drunk leans on a lamppost.
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Mine was 4 years ago I guess? That's when I left to work in publishing? 5? And yes, each store is definitely different.
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okay. i got out last August. the "get them #1 sales!" button got pushed A LOT of times in the intervening years
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have some more anecdata over here too:https://twitter.com/danlistensto/status/987066273736642560 …
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this isn't to say that a #1 that's legitimately of a new series isn't cause for celebration no matter how many of those there are. it's the relaunches that make my blood boil
End of conversation
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