The small comics publisher Top Shelf faced a curious situation this fall. Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel From Hell, a steady backlist seller with a $35 price tag, was released as a major movie.
Overprinting could have been financially dangerous, underprinting could have been foolish, and a window of a few weeks made all the difference. In retrospect, publisher Chris Staros thinks it probably worked out for the best that none of the major book chains did big co-op programs; instead, they ordered conservatively, and he sent the book back to print every time his inventory dipped below 10,000 copies.
To date, he's sold 110,000 copies of From Hell worldwide, with minimal returns. Earlier this year, Fantagraphics, whose graphic novels are distributed to the trade by W.W. Norton, had a similar conundrum with Daniel Clowes's backlist title Ghost World, also made into a new movie. "We erred on the side of caution, for sure," reported Fantagraphics' publicity director Eric Reynolds, "and probably even lost some sales as a result. Norton placed way more copies of Ghost World in the big chains than any other book we've ever had." In the end, the book sold at least 50,000 copies over the summer.
It's very easy for comics publishers to determine the initial demand for a book, since a fairly stable percentage of each publisher's initial sales are nonreturnable preorders from comics specialty stores, placed through the direct-sales distributor Diamond. This makes it much easier to arrange terms with printers, even for large press runs. Jeff Mason, publisher of Alternative Comics, noted that for his upcoming anthology 9-11 Emergency Relief, he's simply arranged for Diamond to pay his printer directly. It's not as easy to plan for backlist inventory, though, especially for color comics, whose incremental costs are high.
Most comics publishers plan to keep their backlist in print for a good long time, since it supports itself: Alternative Comics' Mason, for instance, routinely prints five times his initial direct-sales orders. New books in a graphic novel series build enthusiasm for earlier volumes, and popular writers and artists can develop their fan base with a few new titles every year. Shawna Ervin-Gore of Dark Horse, noted that translated Japanese manga titles do especially well in the long term--1996's Ghost in the Shell, for instance, still sells around 400 copies a month.
The king of the graphic-novel backlist is DC Comics, which currently has around 500 titles in print. "For a small publisher, if you look at us that way, that's a pretty nice-sized line," said publisher Paul Levitz. About 15 years ago, after decades of specializing in traditional, ephemeral, pamphlet-style periodical comics, DC started to concentrate on keeping its collections in print, basing its strategy on ideas from not just the book business, but from the music and video industries as well. The publisher has been rewarded with longstanding hits, including Frank Miller's Dark Knight (see sidebar), Alan Moore's Watchmen, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. DC's latest marketing trick is adapted from the video world: the first volume of The Sandman now comes with a CD-ROM that includes previews of 100 books on DC's backlist. "What we're seeing is that this format brings a purchaser back six to 10 times a year to buy one or two books," Levitz said. "That's a very exciting new group for us."
Marvel Comics is more or less following DC's lead. Since the arrival of publisher Bill Jemas a couple of years ago, Marvel has been building up its backlist inventory from "remnants of this book and that book," as v-p of retail sales Matt Ragone put it, to around 100 titles, with more added every month. For particularly important titles, like the new Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men , Marvel is printing as much as 200% above initial orders. "It's a fundamental strategic change," Ragone said.
There's one other major difference between the backlist philosophies of traditional book publishers and graphic novel publishers: the latter rarely remainder their older titles, because they often keep trickling out forever. Dark Horse clears overstock through occasional warehouse sales. DC has enough storage (through its distributor and corporate parent, AOL Time Warner) that it's not much of an issue; Marvel warehouses its backlist through Diamond, which is now also handling its returnable distribution to the book trade. And Fantagraphics' Reynolds added that the house holds on to new titles for at least two or three years, and that "if it's a cartoonist we're still actively publishing new work by, we'll almost never remainder anything."
