Comments on: Wonder Woman Collection Published Simultaneously

By: Johanna

Johanna — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:43:58 +0000

There’s a market for almost anything, but you have to find it. Try ebay to start.

By: timghetta

timghetta — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:02:32 +0000

i have a friend who has rare wonder woman print(in frame) oversized print…

he wants to know if there is a market for it to be sold?

tim

By: Johanna

Johanna — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:19:32 +0000

That’s not the only time Diamond’s done that. The Baby-Sitters Club graphic novels were released in both hardcover and softcover, but they were solicited a month apart. I don’t know if Diamond recommended that approach to the publisher or what.

By: Reeve

Reeve — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:15:43 +0000

I guess Diamond staggered them out then, as my local comic store would get them in hardcover-first. Kind of odd if they were on a different schedule than Scholastic’s other distribution channels, but I guess that’s because they saw it as a different market.

By: BobH

BobH — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:32:41 +0000

No, I double checked with Bone and the colour editions came out the same time. The logic of that, I think, is that they really appeal to different markets. Libraries need the hardcovers for high turnover books, and will happily pay extra, but the publisher also sells a lot of them at book fairs and the like, where you want to be able to sell them to a kid with a $10 bill. I was more curious than the subject really warrants so I looked at some more of the data for DC, and find that they average about 400 days from hardcover to softcover. That does seem excessive, but cutting it down to 0 seems even odder. In fact, I just checked and the softcover collecting the issues before the Rise of the Olympian story hasn't been solicited yet, and Amazon currently has it coming out next March, the normal 1-year gap from the hardcover.

By: Reeve

Reeve — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:52:12 +0000

BobH: IIRC, the color volumes of Bone came out hardcover first, then softcover some weeks later. The original Cartoon Books editions might have come out in both formats simultaneously; don’t quite remember if they did.

By: Alan Coil

Alan Coil — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:12:56 +0000

After reading the comment from BobH, it occurred to me that it might just be more time efficient to publish them both at the same time. The master copy has already been proofed, and the file is ready, so why not just publish both at the same time, saving the labor it would take to re-do the whole process again months later. And once the books are printed it would cost too much to store them for a year, so sell both relatively at the same time.

By: BobH

BobH — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:52:26 +0000

I think one or two of the Will Eisner books that DC published came out in both formats at the same time. I don’t know if they were simultaneous, but a few other books have had two editions published very close, within weeks.

Wait, I can check a few of them…

According to information from here, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS softcover came out two weeks after the hardcover, and SANDMAN: SEASON OF MISTS (the first volume to have a hardcover) also had a two week gap between the two editions. And MINOR MIRACLES was the Eisner book I was thinking of. The next original Eisner book they did, NAME OF THE GAME, had a more-typical-for-DC full year between editions.

Trying to figure out the reasoning for why a comic book company does things is akin to the old sport of Kremlinology, of course, but this does seem like a weird move from DC. It’s not that atypical for book publishing in general. I recently looked at the solicitations for the next few months and noticed a number of books coming out in both hardcover and soft among stuff I was interested in, like Al Williamson’s FLASH GORDON book, Eddie Campbell’s ALEC omnibus, Tim Hamilton’s adaptation of FAHRENHEIT 451, the new edition of Charles Vess and Jeff Smith’s ROSE (and I think the colour editions of BONE all came out with both editions at once).

By: Eric Rupe

Eric Rupe — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:40:11 +0000

At Robot 6, Tom Bondurant came up with the idea that DC is seeing if the hardcovers are even worth putting out anymore. DC’s lower selling titles don’t tend to get hardcovers so I guess they might think Wonder Woman doesn’t sell enough to warrant them.

If that’s the case, the fact that the latest Green Lantern Corps collection is a hardcover, not a trade like usual, kind of backs this up since GLC has been increasing its over the past year or so.

By: Jon Jordan

Jon Jordan — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:11:07 +0000

Not sure why they are doing it, but I like it. The brits do that with a lot of novels and it works well, and I think fans who buy them will appreciate the choice.