Warren Ellis on economics of comics
Very interesting Warren Ellis column in this month's Wired:
"I just pulled up North America’s estimated comics-sales figures for May, and the top comic sold 163,000 issues that month. That’s a regular US-style comic single, costing $4 that goes directly to specialist comic-book shops. The top ten comics for that month sold a combined number in excess of a million units. The top 20? Somewhere over 1.6 million. And these estimates are usually lower than the real sales figures. Plus, of course, all these single issues will eventually be reprinted as trade-paperback collections. Tell a book publisher those numbers and see what colour they turn . . ." "But here’s the thing that interests me: what happens when a big, cult audience gets entrained to buy bits rather than atoms? We’ve seen that before, but not necessarily with the people Hollywood relies on to open a film or buy a DVD."
