My problem is with boardies trying to act as if they know what publishers NEED and immediately equating it with FOC. As we have seen FOC really only represents some of the pie (I myself like how re-orders are ignored, but that is a small nit to pick). As a fan/spec n00b I wonder how digital tech has changed the game from the days when changing the plates influenced things, but I digress.
What publishers need and how that need is ultimately represented by a "true" print run (and chasing that elusive number makes you more hapless than Ahab) is a shifting formula that changes for every issue of every title. We know so little and have no idea what we do not know.
Arguing about the degree of unknown or how some element effects the print run helps little as well. (Or, in the immortal words of Bill Parcells "in some contingency event, all of which are hypothetical".)
All very good points.
However knowledgeable boardies have come on (on multiple occasions) and confirmed that the FOC numbers (as reported by Comichron) are not wildly different than what is ultimately printed. The FOC is there for a reason- and that reason (obviously) is to give publishers a very good idea of how many copies they need to order up from the printers.
This really is just common sense, and I don't believe anyone has given a very good reason why using Comichron numbers as a baseline estimate is not, at the very least , a valid starting point.
And then if anyone has any additional information to share about a particular book that might be helpful in modifying the equation, all the better.
-J.
Really? We must not be reading the same last ten or twenty pages because it seems like there's been a lot of additional information.