This week is a perfect example of why I, as the guy who has to order these books, dislikes double shipping.
All New X-Men #1 arrives this Wednesday. I had to make a total guess on how to order it. I doubled what my best X-title was selling. So far I have had 3 (yes, THREE!) people add it to their pull lists. Will it sell more than that? Yes, I fully expect it to. But the number I ordered is a complete guess, hoping for the best.
Because the title ships every 2 weeks, I have already had to put my non-adjustable order in for #2.Now there is a natural tendency to reduce the number from what I ordered of #1. There will be some people who only want to buy it because it is a #1. There will be some who buy it and don’t care for it and won’t get #2. So I have to guess. Normally I will have about a weeks worth of sales data on #1 to base my order of #2 on. If I ordered 50 and sold 40 in that first week, I’m in pretty good shape. If I only sold 10, I can cut my numbers.
But Marvel adds another wrinkle to all of this. By doing a very small overprint, if I cut the order by too much, I won’t be able to get more. So they encourage us to order more than we think we’ll need in order to have them on the shelf. But too many copies of a $4 book can get very expensive quickly. In contrast, when DC did their relaunch I was able to return any overages through the first 4 or 5 issues. There was a 20 cent per copy fee for each returned book, but that only means that the cost to me of 20 extra DC issues was the same as 2 extra Marvel books. That’s a big difference as far as a margin of error.
So, I’ve already had to guess on the #2s. Today I have to put in my final non-cancellable orders for #3, 2 days before #1 comes out. I want to think its going to be a huge success. But I also have to plan for it to tank. So I will be lowering my numbers from #2 because I don’t want to get stuck with too many. Again, only 3 people have asked for this book, so no matter how much faith I have in it, I’m not being given the chance to see how sales are to base my orders. I have to assume that, after an initial bump for a new #1, it will be down to its level, somewhere around where Avengers (Bendis) and Uncanny X-Men are currently selling. So that’s where my order will be.
A owner of a chain of stores has been posting his internal memos on my retailer site. It has been very helpful just seeing what someone else is thinking. Here is his comment on this:
“All New X-Men: #1 still hasn’t hit the stands and we’re ordering #3. Putting in a small order and will revisit it. Not playing Marvel’s ‘screw-the-retailers’ game.” Now this might explain the lack of extras. He is putting in a small order and will increase it after he sees how 1 does. But Marvel sets its print run today. So enough big stores doing this will eat up any extras.
That’s the reason I’m not a big fan of the double shipping, especially with the #1s. Give me a chance to see how its going to sell before I have to commit my numbers. As it is, Marvel now has our committed orders for the first three issues of a book before a single copy has been sold. That’s asking the retailers to carry all of the burden for this book. Plus the sales chart numbers for the first 3 issues of this book are already set and have no correlation to demand. So actual sales figures won’t be accurate until #4 at best. I think that this is going to give Marvel an artificial boost for the next 6 months. So in that respect, it will be good for them.
The other thing that concerns me is that we are going to have 3 issues of All New X-Men in 4 weeks. That creates it own set of problems. Not everyone hits the store every week. When you’ve only read number #1 and the next time you’re in its at #4, you may be inclined to pass rather than spend $12 to get caught up.
I will let you know how my guesses went.
