Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: Comics, dc, marvel

Monday Trending Topics: The Mechanics Of The Comic Book Pre-Order

Published Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:42:10 -0500

Last updated Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:43:49 -0500

Amidst all of this year's debate about day and date digital, there seems to be another interesting comic-cultural shift gaining ground: attention paid to the details of pre-release info — even just the simple blurb, creator info, cover graphic, (and importantly) the release date — is way, way up even among casual readers. The DC Relaunch is one obvious reason, but are casual readers more aware of release cycle mechanics due to the info being pushed at them for digital releases? Will this be the side effect benefit of digital for paper releases that pubs are looking for?

Along with that, we're see major Kickstarter successes like Womanthology. Creators and publishers have tried to crack the preorder marketing nut for years, and mostly failed to move the needle outside of normal ordering patterns too much. But suddenly here's Kickstarter, coming at it from a different angle, and sometimes working very well indeed even for comics coming from major publishers. A preorder by another name, but a preorder nonetheless.

And added to that, we're hearing a lot about retailers having big success with marketing DC September preorders at the local level, and even grass-roots efforts by retailers to expand this trend beyond DC to indy publishers. And my analytics are telling me that this new magic is finally starting to spread to Marvel as well.

Some very interesting things happening under the hood in comics this year indeed.

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