Over at The Engine, there’s an interesting discussion about Vertigo’s success in the monthly market. Or the lack thereof – as the original article points out, most Vertigo books sell pretty crap on a monthly basis.
It would be easy to consider the books commercial failures, but, as the conventional wisdom goes, the monthly is only part of Vertigo’s financial crutch: It’s sales of the collected editions that will make or break a series. So how important is the monthly product?
Fairly important, though obviously not crucially so. Brian Wood points out the benefits of having your product and your name out in the market every month. There’s also the steady, regular income, even if it’s not a lot.
I wonder if there aren’t multiple categories, though. For a book like DMZ, whose creators aren’t brand names in the market, the monthly is probably more important. Few people will spend $10-15 for a tpb of a new series by creators they may not be familiar with. The monthly allows the creative team to establish themselves and gradually build an audience.
On the other hand, one wonders if there aren’t different standards for longer-running books with more established creative teams. DMZ is outselling 100 Bullets in the monthly format, but the latter is an established hit in TPB format. Is it a given that readers of a Vertigo monthly will eventually migrate to TPBs? That’s been my own experience: I started reading both Lucifer and Y – The Last Man monthly, but eventually switched over to the collected editions. I’ve only ever read Losers and 100 Bullets in TPB format, the latter only after the series had already been around for a couple years. This is one of the benefits of a strong TPB format: On some books, at least, Vertigo can take a long-term view.
It’s somewhat puzzling that Crossing Midnight, the new series by Lucifer creator Mike Carey, debut quite low: The first issue sold only (approximately) 12,756 copies, less than the 14th issue of DMZ. Lucifer never sold gangbusters on a monthly rate, but one suspects the series must have sold well in trade format to allow it to reach its 75-issue conclusion. Is Crossing Midnight just not a good seller, or is it a given that Carey has a following who will buy the collected edition?
None of the Vertigo books sell terribly well in the direct market — a “hit” like Y clocks in at #87 with just over 25,000 copies sold — but is there a threshold for monthly sales? Testament has slipped under 9,000 copies per issue, but doesn’t appear to be slowing: With well-known author Douglas Rushkoff and a fair bit of mainstream acclaim, the book must be doing good business in TPB format. It even seems to be a hit, though the monthly numbers certainly don’t support that.
So I wonder what the formula is: Is there a floor for the monthly issues at all? Or is the continuation of a book 90% dependent on healthy trade sales? And if the latter is true, do certain books even need a monthly product?