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Andy Mokler
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Posted: 29 September 2017 at 7:25am | IP Logged | 1 post reply
The numbers are further skewed by the fact that shops have to order a certain amount of product to get the coveted variant covers, so indeed many of these issues go straight to dollar bins, just because the shop wanted to get the 25:1, 100:1 variant covers.

Forgot about that.  Seems safe to say that sales numbers are skewed.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 29 September 2017 at 10:11am | IP Logged | 2 post reply
Remember, too, that (unless things have changed while I wasn't looking) the companies count the orders from the shops as sales. That skews the calculations, since there are no returns, and books gathering dust in longboxes are considered sold by the bean counters.
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Andy Mokler
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Posted: 29 September 2017 at 10:54am | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Remember, too, that (unless things have changed while I wasn't looking) the companies count the orders from the shops as sales. That skews the calculations, since there are no returns, and books gathering dust in longboxes are considered sold by the bean counters.

There seems to be an attitude of the sales numbers from the past being misrepresented while today's numbers are "true".
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 29 September 2017 at 11:04am | IP Logged | 4 post reply
Yeah.  And some of those extras go in the back issue box at higher prices and others end up in the discount boxes.  Sales probably even out (for the comic shop guy who knows what he's doing).

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I find it more and more the case that stores are risk-averse and only cater to their pull customers. There may be a handful of extras for walk-in customers, but otherwise you need to be aware of a book three months before it comes out so you can preorder it or miss out on getting it if you aren't there on Wednesday. It's a ridiculous model. 

The good stores are the ones that actually have extras of a given title, allowing for the opportunity of new readers.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 29 September 2017 at 11:35am | IP Logged | 5 post reply
Check the Statement of Ownership in books from the Sixties and Seventies. There are occasional errors in math, but the numbers are mostly correct. So when it says a book has sold 400,000 that means sell-thru, and to pretty close to 400,000 READERS.

Remeber those 1,000,000+ sales during the Speculator Boom represented only a fraction that many customers, many of whom were NOT readers. (Frank Miller used to tell a horror story about doing a signing at a shop whose owner insisted comics were not supposed to be read and never had been! They were just oversized trading cards.)

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