Comments on: Killing a Good Thing

By: Manny Trembley

Manny Trembley — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 01:39:36 +0000

To address the “People do this for money” answer.
Which is a valid response. I’d be liar if I didn’t say I hope to make decent/good money off comics.

The fact is that I don’t make much at all off comics. My experience, as small as it is, is that you have to reach a certain point (number of copies sold) before you can start making GOOD money off comics. I don’t yet know what that magic number is. :) I work a day job and draw comics as a hobby. A hobby that could pay out, but a hobby nonetheless. So along with Sam Noir and pandaxpress! (our online webcomic), I do these things because I really enjoy sequential storytelling.

The thing I appreciate about Shadowline and one of the things that seems to be in slight contention here is that they are trying to help me make “some” money for my efforts. And I assure you, even our “sold out” book doesn’t reap a whirlwind of financial gain. Especially when I factor in the hours dedicated to make these books.

Now see me in 10 years if I ever sell 100k copies of each book and I roll up in diamond encrusted hummer because of the phat l00tz I am pocketing and maybe I’ll be singing a different tune. ( I kid.)

Who knows.

-Manny

By: Manny Trembley

Manny Trembley — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 01:05:10 +0000

Selling out is something that is both good and bad. In our case it meant that retailers didn’t anticipate people wanting our book, so, pre-orders were ordered within a safe number. Then pre-orders came in and ate up all the reserve copies at Diamond.
I am not allowed to give out actual numbers printed and sold. That is an Image stipulation. The numbers for issue 1 according to ICV2.com were 4300 (If I remember correctly). I can tell you that the numbers released through sites like ICV2 and CBGxtra are not accurate. The best gauge for us was that stores demanded re-orders and emptied the copies left at Diamond within 10 days of each issue hitting shelves.
Using B/W as a medium was an artistic choice. Sam Noir is a detective story mixed with old style samurai narrative. Both genres are epitomized by their gritty noirish style. Thus grey scale seemed right. We knew full well that B/W comics don’t tend to sell as well (except Walking Dead, which sells better than almost any non-Marvel/DC book), but we stuck to this as our palette. It is a bonus for us that B/W books are cheaper to print. I won’t deny that benefit. :)

Hope that helps.

-Manny

By: Johanna

Johanna — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:42:52 +0000

Thanks for coming by — I appreciate hearing your perspective.

I’m glad your book sold out, but that doesn’t mean anything unless you’re willing to tell us how many were printed. Are we talking 2000? 5000? 10,000? more?

If the choice to go B&W had nothing to do with sales, then why did you choose that? Artistic reasons? Cost? Something else?

No apologies necessary to participate. You certainly know more about these specifics than I do. All I do is comment from a jaded outsider’s perspective, using the principle, “the most likely answer to the question ‘why did they?’ is ‘money’.”

By: Manny Trembley

Manny Trembley — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:07:35 +0000

Hey all, I just wanted to comment on a bit of mis-information.

“It also looks like they’re trying to camouflage bad news, that they’re having to cut page counts and remove color on their books because *they don’t sell*. ”

Our book, Sam Noir sold out (from Diamond) within a week of being put on shelves. All 3 issues. The choice to go B/W was our choice, Eric and I, and had nothing to do with hiding poor sales. (Just to be clear, we did not expect to sell out!)
I also think the $2.99 price did help the sales. On top of that we had fewer ads. I don’t in any way believe Sam will ever compete with Fell. We are definetly no Warren Ellis/Ben Templesmith. I’m a big fan of Ellis’ work. We had a much better reception to our little book than we ever imagined and we look forward to seeing where Sam Noir goes. Ultimately, I’d appreciate it if people wouldn’t make blanket statements about an entire line of books. Shadowline books are not “all” failing. Every publisher has books that come and go. One’s that recieve excellent reviews (Emissary was well recieved and had good pre-orders), and others that are increasing pre-order numbers with each issue (Bomb Queen).
Shadowline only publishes 5 books at any given time, so it’s easier to watch a smaller array of books demonstrate what happens throughout the entire comic industry. Not every book can be wildly successful. It’s just not possible
The debate as to what is a “slimline” book? Well.
Fell and Casanova are 16 pages of story/art and 24 total pages. Full color. Sam Noir/After the Cape are B/W (by design) 22 pages of story/art and a total of 24 pages. So, you get 6 more pages for a buck. Fell gives you 8 pages per dollar and Sam Noir gives 7.33 pages per dollar. :)
I’m just being stupid now. Sorry. The main reason I came thorugh and commented was to make sure people didn’t just make blanket statements about books based on a comment via a forum.

My apologies for taking up space on your site.

-Manny

By: Alan Coil

Alan Coil — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:22:17 +0000

It’s dumb enough to shoot yourself in the foot, but doubly so when you take aim first.

By: Nat Gertler

Nat Gertler — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 17:01:09 +0000

Well, I’m not going to agree with you on the use of the term “format” to include pricing… but if these books are in black-and-white, then they aren’t in the same format as Fell.

However, I can’t blame them for not wanting to go the discount coer price route. Attempts to compete on the comics market by running at lower-than-typical cover prices have a very bad history. This is true going back at least as far as the short-lived Golden Age book Nickel Comics. The Eclipse bi-weeklies, the self-covered Disneys, the Beckett books, the 99 cent Marvels, and more all either died or gave up their discount status rather than being successful. I’ve talked to the head of one comics line where they tried a “discount” month, dropping the price of their comics to get people to sample them… and found that their unit orders went down for the month.
(This is not to be confused with giving people value; there are definitely successes with giving people many more pages for a slightly higher price.)

By: Greg McElhatton

Greg McElhatton — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:39:59 +0000

Absolutely agreed–if it’s not the $1.99/24 page format, it’s not the Slimline format. It’s just less pages, that’s all.

But then again, Shadowline as an imprint is littered with disasterously bad comics and ideas.

By: david brothers

david brothers — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:58:02 +0000

For what it’s worth, Sam Noir is good enough that I don’t mind paying the three bucks for it. It’s the right mix of pastiche and genre-bending for me. It isn’t as good as Street Angel or Scurvy Dogs, but it is in the same realm.

It is true that that reasoning is kinda dumb, though.

By: Loren

Loren — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:37:36 +0000

Yeah, what dopey logic! The problem with the pricing on comics not in the big two is that they’re so damn expensive that you have to really know if you want to read it (big buzz and such). I allow a certain amount of my comic budget to check out new projects (for example, I was sucked in by Emissary which is cool), but I’d bet that I’m not the norm. I think people would more easily try something if they were lower priced.