Weird Fact of the Day
- Posted by Johanna on November 5, 2007 at 11:08 pm
- Category: Meta
The latest Comics Journal, #286 (cover date November 2007), features their official Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation. It states that last month’s issue had a print run of 3,444 copies and over the last 12 months, they printed an average 3,555 copies.
Why do I care? Because that means that every day, I get more visitors than read the Journal per issue. Which freaks me out. They’re an institution. I’m just shooting my mouth off. Sheesh, now I need to be responsible.
(And please, no cracks about the Journal being past their prime. They’re still a great magazine with interesting things to say about the medium.)
Caveats: yes, this ignores if a copy of the magazine is read by more than one person, and it doesn’t take into account the number of online TCJ readers, and it’s a lot easier to sell “free” than $12 US an issue. That’s the logical side coming to the rescue of the emotional.
November 5, 2007 at 11:29 PM
LOL congrats I guess on the traffic? Though how many are just looking for porn and mistyped?:)
I miss TCJ being in book chain stores. I don’t find myself interested in enough of their interview subjects to subscribe(Nor have the money currently anyway). So getting to pick up the issues at the local BAM was cool. Especially since I’ve yet to see a shop within a 100 miles that orders it.
November 6, 2007 at 12:08 AM
I’m not surprised. I love TCJ- I have all but 5 of the issues- but with its limited distribution and high price ($9.95), it’s not an impulse purchase anymore. It’s hard to find unless you go to one of those 50 or so Direct Market stores that carry more than special order copies.
I still love the magazine. I just finished the Darwyn Cooke/Ernie Colon/Keith Knight issue, and it’s a doozy. While we don’t get hard-hitting journalism anymore from the Journal, it still acts as the best oral history of comics that we have, and there’s a lot of value in that. I hope TCJ is around for a long time.
November 6, 2007 at 1:42 AM
Distribution had been hovering around 4500 copies or so since the beginning of the decade. It dropped due to our ending newsstand circulation some months back in the course of plotting out a new strategy for such things — I believe an announcement on this subject should come sometime soon.
November 6, 2007 at 6:51 AM
Oooh, new plans! That’s great to see, keeping up with changing times.
(Ray, it’s $11.95, not $9.95 any more.)
November 6, 2007 at 7:36 AM
Huh! So it is. (I get mine through MailOrderComics, so I rarely see the price.)
November 6, 2007 at 9:21 AM
Wait till more people read you than read the X-Men. That’s when it gets stupid.
November 6, 2007 at 9:46 AM
That doesn’t say much for the Journal’s so-called cred, I have to say. It makes it seem like much more of a vanity publication than I ever imagined it was . . . the real cash cows are obviously the books and comics, but in all my years, I’ve never encountered an inanimate object with as big a head as the TCJ . . . big hat, no cattle, as they say.
November 6, 2007 at 10:22 AM
Was “no cracks” confusing to you?
November 6, 2007 at 10:30 AM
I never said anything about them being past their prime! Nor about not being a great magazine! I followed the rules . . .
November 6, 2007 at 12:29 PM
No, you just said they had a swelled head and were unimportant. Are you perchance a lawyer? :)
November 6, 2007 at 12:46 PM
I never used the word unimportant – I did call it a vanity publication. Which it is and always has been. Lots of vanity publications are worthwhile . . .
I wish I was a lawyer . . . they have nicer clothes and expense accounts than I do.
November 6, 2007 at 4:46 PM
Congrats, Johanna. Personally, with so many comics news Web sites out there, I get my fill pretty quickly and don’t feel the craving to thumb through TCJ. It does offer more indepth stories, which I think are lacking on the Internet. But it’s kinda like trying to hold out for pumpkin pie next week when there’s a bag of M&Ms in front of you!
November 6, 2007 at 5:13 PM
What a great simile!
I sometimes wonder if the internet has ruined me, because I find in-depth lengthy pieces harder to force myself through.
November 6, 2007 at 5:39 PM
This is why I don’t hate my two-hour commute on the train- plenty of time to read comics! (In the last two months, I finished Lone Wolf and Cub and GTO. The whole runs.)
November 6, 2007 at 8:18 PM
How about cracks about Rich Johnston? Can we? Please?
As I am on a limited budget these days, I never read TCJ. My LCS only gets 1 copy for a subscription customer.