Botched up launch of recent IDW D&D comic series.

[ggroy]

Some blog posts about how the recent IDW D&D comic book series has been completely botched up from the start.


The Sad Tale of a Comic Book Publisher's Failed Product Launch | The Official Mat Nastos Website

How to keep IDW Publishing from losing their shirt on the Forgotten Realms, Part 1: Building a Foundation for a Successful Comic Book Product Launch | The Official Mat Nastos Website

How to keep IDW from losing their shirt on the Forgotten Realms, Part 2: Connecting with your audience | The Official Mat Nastos Website

The Failure of Licensed Comic Publishers | The Official Mat Nastos Website

 

[Klaus]

How are the sales numbers going? 'Cause the series is pretty awesome.

 

[ggroy]

According to Diamond's publicly released figures:

- Issue #0 of the D&D comic by IDW, was the 86th best selling comic title during August 2010.

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. - Top 100 Comics: August 2010

- Issues #1 and #2 of the D&D comic by IDW, do not show up at all in the top 100 best selling comic titles during November and December 2010.

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. - Top 100 Comics: November 2010
Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. - Top 100 Comics: December 2010

- For the entire 2010, the IDW D&D comic does not show up at all in the top 500 best selling comic titles over the year 2010.

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. - Top 500 Comics: 2010

- Issue #3 of D&D and issue #1 of Dark Sun by IDW, do not show up at all in the top 100 best selling comic titles during January 2011.

Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. - Top 100 Comics: January 2011


By these measures, the D&D and Dark Sun titles by IDW both appear to be completely "small fish".

 

[ggroy]

Then again, any new title in the comic book business will be competing against the Marvel and DC heavyweight monthly titles like (various): X-Men, Batman, Thor, Spider-Man, Justice League, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Superman, etc ...

A tough act to follow indeed.

 

[ggroy]

Some estimates of sales numbers. (Estimated number of copies sold deduced from Diamond's statistics).


D&D issue #0 - 23,657 (86th best selling in August 2010)

Comic Book Sales Figures for August 2010

D&D issue #1 - 15,462 (118th best selling in November 2010)

Comic Book Sales Figures for November 2010

D&D issue #2 - 11,623 (159th best selling in December 2010)

Comic Book Sales Figures for December 2010


In contrast, the top selling titles each month are estimated to be selling around 90,000 copies or higher every month.

 

[ggroy]

If these estimates of copies sold are reliable, these figures look quite drastic.

The number of copies sold of D&D issue #0, is cut in half by the time D&D issue #2 is released.

 

[ggroy]

Another estimate for the number of copies of D&D issue #0 sold: 24,792.

In a top 1000 list of comics sold in 2010, D&D issue #0 was the 962th place.

It just barely squeaked onto the top 1000 list.

2010 Year End Sales Analysis - Comic Book Resources

 

[Klaus]

Well, very few comics actually *gain* readers. I can think of American Vampire and The Walking Dead.

Fantasy comics also have a hard time with sales in the US. And in this day and age, to breach the Top 100 without being a DC/Marvel comic is quite a feat.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I read through those articles, and they were an interesting look at small publishers. However, they all seemed to ignore several larger pieces of the puzzle. For example, that comics by and large are a dying medium, that indie/small-publisher hits are not as common as it might seem, that fantasy comic and D&D in particular are not popular comics fare in the US, and that sometimes a good thing just doesn't work.

Take the first article posted. The argument is basically, "They did everything right, it didn't work, blame IDW." Well, if they did everything right out of the gate and showed a 50% drop over three issues, no amount of advertising is going to help. Heck, I'd argue it would be financially irresponsible to continue throwing money at it.

Similar issues, IMO, occur with each of those posts.

 

[ggroy]

Well, if they did everything right out of the gate and showed a 50% drop over three issues, no amount of advertising is going to help. Heck, I'd argue it would be financially irresponsible to continue throwing money at it.

As an analogy, I examined the sales figures of the DC Comics "World of Warcraft" series over its entire run of 25 issues (over 2007->2009).

The data is from:

Monthly Rankings for Comic Book Sales

Format of data will be: issue# - number of copies sold (position in top 300 list of number of copies sold during month sold)

1 - 44,492 (48 in November 2007)
2 - 32,720 (73 in December 2007)
3 - 31,158 (69 in January 2007)
4 - 28,963 (66 in February 2008)
5 - 27,151 (72 in March 2008)
6 - 26,266 (85 in April 2008)
7 - 24,582 (95 in May 2008)
8 - 23,302 (94 in June 2008)
9 - 22,198 (105 in July 2008)
10 - 20,872 (111 in August 2008)
11 - 19,325 (120 in September 2008)
12 - 18,198 (140 in October 2008)
13 - 17,013 (117 in November 2008)
14 - 16,056 (161 in December 2008)
15 - 14,991 (116 in January 2009)
16 - 14,175 (124 in February 2009)
17 - 13,612 (121 in March 2009)
18 - 13,109 (158 in April 2009)
19 - 12,536 (140 in May 2009)
20 - 12,269 (160 in June 2009)
21 - 12,648 (158 in July 2009)
22 - 12,118 (159 in August 2009)
23 - 11,949 (176 in September 2009)
24 - 10,436 (173 in October 2009)
25 - 10,062 (173 in November 2009)
special 1 - 10,323 (180 in December 2009)

(There were second printings of issues #1 and #2, which would increase each respective figure by around another 4000 copies).


The 50% drop point in the number of copies sold per issue, happened around issue #9. (If one includes the second printing numbers to issue #1, the 50% drop point happened around issue #7).