(Comics Retailing) ICv2 has posted its estimates for Direct Market sales in October. As predicted last Wednesday, there are no real surprises here; with Jim Lee no longer drawing Batman, sales on some fan-favorite titles have drifted upward by a few thousand here and there, anecdotal evidence for the theory that those big Batman sales were drawing dollars away from other comics rather than bringing in new readers. Beyond that, we've got five gimmick issues sitting in the top slots, and the usual suspects sitting below them.
Against this backdrop, retailers are continuing to write in supporting their beloved comics pamphlets in the face of doomsaying by retailer Steve Bennett last Thursday. Both John Robinson and Gail Burt agree that it's content, not format, which spurs sales growth -- tell it to the Manga Stack of Intimidation, kids. The modern-day comic book, charging prices comparable to those of newsstand magazines for under a third the page-count, just don't look like a bargain to anyone but the committed fans. Format, it would seem, is working to dissuade people from checking out the content after all. If it were otherwise, why isn't the Western "mainstream" comic book racking up the kind of sales being earned by Shonen Jump?
The only answer being offered at the moment comes courtesy of California retailer Sara Gray:
"I do believe that the book Shonen Jump is printed in huge quantities -- but most of those books are not sold to comic store chains. I see the book on magazine shelves in bookstores, supermarkets and other such non-industry locations. Meaning? I would guess that many of those Shonen Jumps are not "selling" at those locations -- they are being returned along with the rest of the traditional American magazines that don't sell.
"I can't sell Shonen Jump at my store to save my life. We get all of one or two copies an issue, and even those often wind up languishing on the shelves. My store is a *very* manga-oriented store, always has been. So one would assume that either the content or the 'Japanese format' would suck in readers by the score.
"However...
"It is a format that the general American comic buyer is *not* ready to accept (I was going to say 'jump into' but that would be silly), for the reasons that have already been commented on by a prior Talk Back participant. But aside from that, while it does have what appears to be a reasonable price for a large anthology magazine, its content is not as desirable to mainstream American buyers, not even kids, and not even the large number of Anime lovers we have going for us."
Got all that? Viz Comics is just spending rediculous amounts of money printing those massive phonebook-like magazines month after month and pretending that they sell well. Well that explains everything, doesn't it? Further down, Gray assumes that this is all for the benefit of booksellers who see the words "Anime" and "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and assume that they sell well, in spite of what she assures us is nine issues' worth of evidence to the contrary. To do this, of course, one must guess that Ms. Gray is also assuming that bookstore owners track their sales about as well as the average comics-shop owner. And her evidence? Well, these annoying Shonen Jump things don't sell well in her store, of course! It's all so clear.
What I've been hearing suggests otherwise. My local grocery stores sell out of Shonen Jump very quickly, and the occasional email I receive from bookstore clerks and grocery employees would seem to indicate that, if anything, the sell-through on Jump is noticably higher than that of other magazines. Going by anecdotal evidence, I get the feeling that the biggest obstacle to even more rapid increases in circulation for the magazine would be its massive bulk -- although I've also heard of stores that keep extra copies in the back, in order to replace the two copies that will fit on the racks as fast as possible when they sell. Hell, the last time I actually saw a real live child under fourteen in a comic-book store, he was being led to the front counter by his father to ask the clerk for a copy of, yes, Shonen Jump. Even excluding such hearsay as evidence, however, logic dictates that Viz wouldn't waste so much money in bulking up its magazine and printing more copies if it was doing as poorly as Ms. Gray would like to think, nor would retailers order so many copies of so large a publication month after month if all they were going to do was throw most of them away; shelf-space is just as valuable to them as it is to Direct Market retailers.
Further, Ms. Gray notes that she runs "a *very* manga-oriented store," but one must ask: compared to what? Other comics shops? The manga racks at Barnes & Noble? A good comparison might be with Phoenix, Arizona's upstart manga/anime store Samurai Comics, which devotes more of its floorspace to manga than to Western comics, incorporates anime and videogames for maximum synergy and according to my sources does an astonishingly good job of bringing in children who would otherwise never knowingly set foot in a comics shop. Ms. Gray's own commentary would seem to void such a comparison; by her own account, comics pamphlets make up the vast majority of her sales, and very few manga titles are even published in that format these days. "Compared to other comics shops," therefore, would seem to be our answer -- which, given that manga makes up under 10% of Direct Market sales, isn't really saying all that much.
I've mentioned why I don't think non-superhero comics will ever sell under the current Direct Market philosophy on numerous occasions, so I won't waste time doing so again; nor will I offer some lengthy defense of why I think Shonen Jump sells as well as it does (besides, John Jakala just beat me to the punch). I must say, however: if the reaction on ICv2 is in any way indicative of general comics-shopowner sentiment, there's a considerable amount of denial going around these days. I don't think the comics pamphlet is going to vanish in the next six months, but neither do I think such steadfast devotion to superhero funnybooks at the willful exclusion of all else is going to do the Direct Market any good in the long run, either. As Andi Watson notes in The Pulse over the cancellation of Namor -- itself a book meant to appeal to a wider audience than that found in comic-book stores:
"What does interest me is are the Big Two going to try different ways to reach readers outside the direct market? It's no secret that the DM is shrinking and has been for years, there will come a time (and soon) when it's no longer possible to make money outside of the characters that were created in the last millennium (arguably that's already happened). Are the big guys happy to see that happen (and rake in the licensing deals) or are they interested in making comics?
"With Blankets doing well in bookstores, TOKYOPOP reaching 60% female readers, the Shonen Jump anthology shaming the DM sales, trades in general making inroads in bookstores and getting wider media interest [...] If western comics as a medium hasn't already reached a point of no return, then it's on the cusp of big changes."
That major comics publishers don't seem to give a good goddamn about such questions is worrying; that many comics retailers don't seem to give a good goddamn about such questions is genuinely scary.
