Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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drew
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Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

Post by drew »

yep, I agree, walking dead got me back in the LCS:

As the fall television season kicks into high gear, TV shows based on comic books are becoming more and more common. But do they have any effect on the sales of comic books in stores?

"Yes, of course!" said Bret Park, owner of Salesfish Comics in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, echoing the answers we heard from comic book retailers across the country.

In fact, retailers said the TV shows seem to bring in more sustained customers than comic book movies of the last few years. And not surprisingly, retailers said the biggest boost in sales has been the result of The Walking Dead TV show — a sales trend so prevalent in comic book stores that the title is consistently a top-seller on national lists.

"Whenever The Walking Dead returns to air — even five years in — sales take a spike," said Mike Wellman, owner of The Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach and Culver City, California.

"Every time a new season [of The Walking Dead] starts, I tend to pick up a few new followers of the comics and novels," said Charlie Harris of Charlie's Comic Books in Tucson, Arizona. "[It] shows the most growth as a TV tie-in, keeping the title in the top five selling titles."

The biggest challenge in keeping those customers around? Educating them about the serial nature of comic books — and some aren't too happy that there's a whole month to wait between issues.

"Often times people who enjoy the superhero shows will come and buy an issue and are somewhat befuddled that there are more issues to buy later," said Adam Casey, manager at Ssalesfish.

"Sometimes it takes some work to get [new customers from the TV shows] to stay customers, but I welcome the challenge," Park added.

Besides The Walking Dead, retailers said there are several other TV shows that bring new customers into stores — from The Flash to Gotham to Daredevil to the iZombie series.

"Arrow and Flash have brought in new customers (or lapsed readers in some cases) and DC was kind enough to have books for us to sell to them such as Flash Season Zero and Arrow Season 2.5," Park said. "I have had some luck 'converting' buyers of the digital-first titles to Green Arrow and Flash 'New 52' trade paperback buyers. When that happens, I feel successful. When someone says the comics are better than the shows, I feel validated."

For fans of Gotham, retailers pointed customers to Gotham Central. When asked about the Daredevil show, retailers sold everything from classic era Frank Miller trades to the modern comic book series. "Thankfully after the Netflix show, Daredevil kind of sold himself," Park said.

Sales of iZombie trades have also been going up substantially, retailers said.

"Sometimes it takes a different medium to make a comic book concept connect with readers," Park said. "It just didn't sell that well pre-show."

Another side effect of the TV shows is building excitement among existing comic book fans.

"The CW stuff really resonates with our customers and is a weekly topic of conversation," Wellman said. "The shows keep the energy going throughout the week for comics."

Other retailers agreed that the CW shows have been particularly successful in piquing the interest of new and existing customers, but several store owners were befuddled that there wasn't the same attraction with Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"We've had less response to S.H.I.E.L.D., although the comic book series is more closely related to the program than to comic book continuity," Harris said. "And maybe that's the problem."

"As big as the Marvel movies are, I can't think of anyone who has come in asking about Agents of SHIELD comic book," said Casey.

Back issue bin prices have also gone up for the original printings of comics that preceded the TV shows. Not only are early issues of The Walking Dead worth big money, but the original iZombie issues are pretty much sold out.

"There is a strong trend of back issue customers buying back issues with characters that are announced as TV show properties," Park said. "This type of collecting has always baffled me, but I run the type of store that has or finds whatever folks are looking for so there is no judgment on my part."

Several retailers also emphasized the success of comic books that continue the stories from TV shows that have ended, or fill in stories between seasons. And when customers come into the store for those TV-based comics, retailers can often lead them to learn there are other comic books that inspired TV shows.

"It's often the non-comic readers who come to the shop with friends and suddenly realize that many of their favorite programs have deeper stories in the comics, or canceled series that continue in comics such as Smallville, Jericho, Buffy, X-Files, etcetera," Harris said. "But many of these leave with the first Walking Dead omnibus and then become regular customers."

Despite the success, all the retailers had wish lists for what could be done by Marvel, DC and other publishers to help sell more comics to TV and film fans — from advertising during shows to just a better dissemination of information about the source material, such as the frequent references to The Walking Dead comic book during The Talking Dead after-show.

"I think that the general public who sees comics as mostly people in tights punching one another will come to see the diversity of the medium," Harris said, "especially if the film industry informs their audiences that non-superhero titles like From Hell and the Road to Perdition are derived from their comic book origins."

"I would like to see commercials for the comic book at the midway break of the show," Park said. "So if anyone reading this can make that happen — do it I don't mean an ad for digital comics either; I mean an ad for real comic books sold at real comic book stores for people watching these shows on real TVs."

Retailers are particularly excited about the growing number of TV shows based on comic books, and they hope to see even more.

"As a literacy advocate I would like to see comics and books thrive on their own strengths," Harris said, "but if America's fascination with film is the primary entry level for new readers, then it's all good."

"Rising tides lift all ships as my friend Richard Starkings likes to say," Wellman said. "And it's true. These TV shows are multi-million dollar ads for the product we sell, as far as I'm concerned. Keep 'em coming!"


http://www.newsarama.com/26070-do-comic ... gh-in.html
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drew
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

Post by drew »

Although I agree with the latest comic tv shows will not have a significant impact on a retailer preorders - I look forward to the next bookscan numbers to see if reader interest is increasing - having seen arrow and flash trade end cap displays at Barnes and noble recently - perhaps it is
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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We've had successful comic book based television shows for years. Smallville lasted for a decade. Arrow is on year four, Agents of SHIELD on year three, Gotham, Flash and iZombie are all on Year two.

If television shows increased sales then why aren't we seeing an increase in sales, or even a stabilization in sales, in the comic book shops?

I completely agree that they shows are great promotions for comic books. They just don't seem to be effective ways to promote comic books in terms of increasing sales from what I'm seeing from the Diamond data.

As for BookScan shedding some light on this, I don't see how it could. The article quoted people from four comic book shops. Presumably all of them order from Diamond since that is the only source to get new comic books from these days.

The publicly released BookScan data won't tell us anything useful beyond the top ten ranked items. Specifically, that data can't be used to do any sort of month to month comparison since it is a ranked list, not an indexed list. The items on the list could increase or decease in sales by orders of magnitude and it would be invisible based on the publicly released data.

Television shows increasing monthly comic book sales is something which seems like it should be true but there doesn't seem to be any actual data to support it beyond anecdotal stories like this from individual retailers. I'd love to analyze the sales data from these stores to see if their sales actually went up overall or if the new customers from the shows was just replacing other customers that left during that time. Hopefully it is a substantial increase in business for these stores.

Is it possible the television shows are increasing sales at comic book shops but those same shops aren't increasing orders? That would explain articles like that and the lack of any corresponding increase in the sales data released by Diamond.

If the article is correct that the television shows increase sales in comic book stores then we should see an increase in sales at least on the related titles which can be traced back to the television shows. Such a correlation isn't as clear cut as the article implies it should be.
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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JohnMayo wrote:We've had successful comic book based television shows for years. Smallville lasted for a decade.
didnt realize there was a smallville comic, was it digital first?
If television shows increased sales then why aren't we seeing an increase in sales, or even a stabilization in sales, in the comic book shops?
yeah i agreed with your Mayo Report discussion on comics shops influence sales-wise, doubt any significant numbers of TV show watchers will try to find a comic shop and if so said comics will be on shelf, and if not will pre-order said comic and return in 3 months for book, not gonna happen much
The publicly released BookScan data won't tell us anything useful beyond the top ten ranked items.
I was referring to the full chart which has some interesting data with numbers from bookstores that dwarf anything sold to comic shops and therefore we might see some bump from the television show audience http://www.comicsbeat.com/women-and-chi ... vel-sales/
If the article is correct that the television shows increase sales in comic book stores then we should see an increase in sales at least on the related titles which can be traced back to the television shows. Such a correlation isn't as clear cut as the article implies it should be.
agreed and i am not interested in comic shops (just didnt want to clog your Mayo thread) but more interested in other sales channels and formats...someday i hope to get a neilson subscription and start diving in to those numbers...
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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Smallville was digital first. There was the Season 11 series and a bunch of miniseries after it.

Note the lack of Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Flash and S.H.I.E.L.D. on that BookScan list. Certainly the television shows have an impact of some sort on comic book sales. The question is if it is a large enough impact which can be clearly attributed to the shows.

The article from The Beat deals with the mass market. The first article you references was clearly talking only about the direct market.

As for getting the Neilson data, I'd love to get it and have looked into getting it. Alas, it is way out of my price range.
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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Yet another indication comic book related shows aren't helping the trades top the BookScan list:

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/3 ... hic-novels

Batman has been in the top 20 for BookScan for years before Gotham started. The Walking Dead trades were also in the top 20 long before the television show started.

Green Arrow, Flash, iZombie, Constantine/Hellblazer, Powers, Daredevil and SHIELD haven't been in the BookScan top 20 at all this year.

While the mass market is larger than the direct market and is where the impact of television shows on the sales of trades is more likely to be seen, we aren't seeing it at the top of the BookScan charts.
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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JohnMayo wrote:Yet another indication comic book related shows aren't helping the trades top the BookScan list:

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/3 ... hic-novels
While the mass market is larger than the direct market and is where the impact of television shows on the sales of trades is more likely to be seen, we aren't seeing it at the top of the BookScan charts.
at initial glance, the masses love Manga and female protagonist books much more than the direct market...which kinda makes sense given the majority of comic shop owners are older white guys

we need a kickstarter for a nielson subscription, would love to see those top 750 trends over time
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Re: Comic Book TV Shows Influence on Comic Sales

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drew102e wrote:we need a kickstarter for a nielson subscription, would love to see those top 750 trends over time
I looked into getting the BookScan data from Nielson a while back. It was both way too expensive. This is data they are selling to huge corporate conglomerates. A crowdfunding campaign is insanely unlikely to raise the money needed to get access to the data.

While you get the rights to use and analyze the data, you can't share the granular data. That is what they are selling after all. So, were I to somehow get the BookScan data, I'd be able to draw conclusions from it but not provide the details to back up those conclusions. Not exactly a winning scenario.

Again, I looked into this a few years ago including talking with someone at BookScan. Unless the entire corporate business model for Nielson radically changes, getting the BookScan data simply isn't going to happen.
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