Why Varient Covers are NOT a good idea...
So today at work I was brouseing a few comic forums and came across a thread on Marvel's plan to do a Varient cover for I think 'Ultimates #2' the original plan was to put out a 50/50 split of the books, one half would be the normal book, the other half would be the same book, but in plain pencils both cover and interiors, that means no inks or colors. Cool idea but retailers screamed no way! They didnt want to have to order double the number of book in order to satisify demand for the normal book, so Marvel changed it to a 1 in 10 copies would be the alternate...the new plan was grudging accepted by retailers. That got me thinking just how bad ARE varients?
*puts on accounting cap*
God help me I was bored at work today.
Okay say a Store Owner orders 40 copies of a comic title per month, he has 30 people on subscription that will buy a copy, that leaves 10 copies for the shelf. Of those 10 copies he usually sells 80-90% of those. All is well. Till word comes down that next month the publisher will be giving 1 out of every 10 issues a varient cover. That means with his normal 40 comic order 36 wll be standard covers 4 varients. Sounds okay.
But what if he has more that 4 people that want the varient cover?
That means that he will have to order 10 more comics JUST to get one more varient. Remember he sells on average 8-9 books over his subscription orders those extra books just won't sell, eventualy those books will wind up in the discount bin to be sold, and the Owner will take a 1.00-2.00 loss PER BOOK.
Now take into effect that most comic shops are small operations, and unlike book publishers you cant return unsold comics to the publisher and the books are paid in full when they are delivered to the shops. There is only so long a comic shop can take hits like that before they have to close shop.
One solution is to not order extra books to get extra varients, however for every shop that does that, there are 2 others that WILL do it therefore Shop A will loose customers to Shop B and 'A' will go out of business sooner than Shop B. But Shop B will take a loss on unsold books and might have to tighen the belts later on.
So the word is...Varient covers are bad business all around, they might be good in the short term for the publisher, but horrible in the long term for the shops.
So why do companies still Publish them? Because they DO sell.
Why do they sell? Because fans want to support the publisher, or have a complete collection or run of a title.
It's a nasty cycle too say the least.
How do we STOP this? Buy not buying the damn varients! Yet...they always do. ~_~
*sighs*
And I wanna WORK for this industry? Oy...
SW
*puts on accounting cap*
God help me I was bored at work today.
Okay say a Store Owner orders 40 copies of a comic title per month, he has 30 people on subscription that will buy a copy, that leaves 10 copies for the shelf. Of those 10 copies he usually sells 80-90% of those. All is well. Till word comes down that next month the publisher will be giving 1 out of every 10 issues a varient cover. That means with his normal 40 comic order 36 wll be standard covers 4 varients. Sounds okay.
But what if he has more that 4 people that want the varient cover?
That means that he will have to order 10 more comics JUST to get one more varient. Remember he sells on average 8-9 books over his subscription orders those extra books just won't sell, eventualy those books will wind up in the discount bin to be sold, and the Owner will take a 1.00-2.00 loss PER BOOK.
Now take into effect that most comic shops are small operations, and unlike book publishers you cant return unsold comics to the publisher and the books are paid in full when they are delivered to the shops. There is only so long a comic shop can take hits like that before they have to close shop.
One solution is to not order extra books to get extra varients, however for every shop that does that, there are 2 others that WILL do it therefore Shop A will loose customers to Shop B and 'A' will go out of business sooner than Shop B. But Shop B will take a loss on unsold books and might have to tighen the belts later on.
So the word is...Varient covers are bad business all around, they might be good in the short term for the publisher, but horrible in the long term for the shops.
So why do companies still Publish them? Because they DO sell.
Why do they sell? Because fans want to support the publisher, or have a complete collection or run of a title.
It's a nasty cycle too say the least.
How do we STOP this? Buy not buying the damn varients! Yet...they always do. ~_~
*sighs*
And I wanna WORK for this industry? Oy...
SW