When it comes to comic sales what is the lowest number required to pass to avoid titles from cancellation?
it depends on so so so many factors.
cost to make the book, ancillary sales (trade, foreign, digital, bookstore) all of which is COMPLETELY ignored by most of the know it all analysts (because they have ZERO access to that info because its literally no ones business but the publishers), if the creators or publisher think a book on the bubble and on the cusp of finding an audience, if the book might sell to hollywood…
creator owned books are a COMPLETELY different mode than work for hire. many creator owned books have the creators working at no page rate bringing the cost of production way down and the profit margin WAY up. its an investment but it can really pay off. or not. but at least you have a book.
or a book can get cancelled because it isn’t working creatively. or it has run its story course. that has happened. it happens all the time.
and i’ll yell from the rooftops till i am blue in the face but every chart, every column, every report about comic sales is bogglingly incomplete. most info, including EVERYTHING i mentioned above is never included. it is info that can add up to a HUGE percentage of a books profitability. that is probably what is confusing you.
you’re reading half reports. its like reading political poll numbers or domestic box office analysis :)
just enjoy your comics. comics are and should be fun for you.
Short version: Yup. Right on the money
Long version: I know it can be entertaining to check sales charts and analysis, but it’s an incomplete and inaccurate picture that leads to confusion. I’ve checked out some of my books on those charts and seen numbers almost 20% lower than actual sales. That’s a huge margin of error and that doesn’t even include digital, trades, foreign licensing, convention sales, or how all those compare to actual creative costs.
Internet chatter can affect sales (positively or negatively) but there’s also a large portion of the market buying outside of our bubble. Something like the Disney Kingdoms: Figment series won’t burn up the sales charts in single issues (though it did well for its niche), but now, in collection as a hardback, it sells well in the book market, to libraries, and through the Disney park gift shops.
Fans armchair quarterbacking through flawed sales charts without understanding those complexities can be frustrating. So many assumptions. In the past I’ve taken a small writing pay cut on a work-for-hire project to keep it rolling with a different artist as a way to tweak the creative cost equation.
It might be nice to have a simple clear _number_ to indicate success/profitability or failure/cancellation, but that’s not going to happen.
Printing, shipping, marketing, editorial, and creative costs fluctuate. Sales, profit, optics, and politics all factor into which comics stay afloat and which are cancelled.
