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Image Comics Responds To Retailers… And Announces A Second Print Of Saga #7. And Maybe #8

Image Comics Responds To Retailers… And Announces A Second Print Of Saga #7. And Maybe #8Two days ago, Image's PR & Marketing Director Jennifer De Guzman emailed a number of retailers a letter announcing that Image was to cease second prints on more popular titles to encourage retailers to order more copies of the initial print.

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool ran a number of retailer responses. They wern't entirely on board. There have been a number of other responses by retailers since.

Today, Eric Stephenson, President of Image Comics issued this open letter in response, and performed a bit of a policy flip-flop. He writes;

Believe it or not, we listen to you.

Just as you use the information provided to you by your customers to place orders for our comics, we use the information we get from you to set our print runs. Like you, we modify the numbers a little bit. We always assume there will be reorders and we make sure to overprint. Most of the time, our final number provides us with just enough inventory to satisfy demand, but more and more frequently, we've been selling out.

When we sell out – and more importantly, when you sell out – we know we're all losing both time and money. It typically takes three weeks to a month to get a second printing to market, and that's three weeks to a month we all could have been selling more books. That's frustrating.

It's doubly frustrating when a book like Saga, a bonafide hit by the creator of Y: The Last Man, Runaways and Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughan, and his insanely talented collaborator Fiona Staples, continues to sell out even as it gets deeper into its run. We did five printings of issue one, three printings of issue two, and there were second printings of issues three to six. We are, as I type this, preparing to go back to press on the first trade paperback collection.

And like the previous six issues, Saga #7 sold out, and given that orders hadn't skyrocketed upwards from issue six at FOC, we decided that it was probably time to bring the second printings to a halt. Using the information we had at our disposal – your orders – we figured the generous overprint we did for this issue would satisfy demand.

By "we," incidentally, I mean "me."

It was a rash decision made somewhat in haste and a little bit out of frustration, and I think it was that sense of frustration that bled into the retail newsletter our PR & Marketing Director Jennifer de Guzman sent out earlier this week. For those of you who found the tone of that newsletter condescending or abrasive –  you have my apologies. In communicating my frustrations to Jen, that inadvertently got passed down to you, and that shouldn't have been the case. We also should have given you more of a heads up on how we were handling this, so that you weren't completely blindsided by a sudden change in policy and again, that's on me.

We can't go back in time and fix the past, though, so instead, we're going to move forward.

Like I said up top: We listen to you.

So we're going to reprint Saga #7, and we're going to offer that reprint to you at a massive discount.

[There are then details of the incentive on Saga #7 second print, which although an open letter, may be commercially sensitive.]

The order code for the second printing of Saga #7 is NOV128073. FOC will be 12/24, and the in-store date will be 1/16.

We did a pretty hefty overprint on Saga #8, too, but looking at current reorder activity, I'm guessing we won't hold onto that stock very long. More news on that as it develops, but if we have to reprint that issue, too, we will.

In the mean time, though, we simply cannot reprint every single issue of this series on an indefinite basis, so with the FOC for Saga #9 in the not-too-distant future, I'm going to ask you to help us out and make sure to double-check your orders on that issue when the time comes. I have an advantage here in that I get to see this stuff before you, but I promise you –  this series is only going to get better from here. Brian and Fiona have some amazing things planned, and you are not going to be disappointed if you continue to support this series.

Thanks, and again – my apologies for the way my frustration on this issue was communicated. We won't leave you out of the loop on decisions like this in the future, and in fact – make sure to check out our next weekly newsletter for full details on our reprint policy going forward.

-e.s.

Eric Stephenson
Publisher, Image Comics, Inc.

SAGA 7 Second Printing
Diamond Code: NOV128073
Final Order Cut-off: December 24, 2012
In stores: January 16, 2013

SAGA 8
Diamond Code: OCT120541
In stores: December 10, 2012

SAGA 9
Diamond Code: NOV120578
Final Order Cut-Off: December 24, 2012
In stores: January 16, 2013

SAGA 1 – Image Firsts Edition
Diamond Code: OCT128195

SAGA, VOL. 1 TP
(Collects #1 – 6)
Diamond Code: AUG120491
ISBN: 978-1-60706-601-9


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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