Charlton Print Run vs Sales Numbers 3 3

[Get Marwood & I]

Hello 

Charlton were in the habit of occasionally posting 'Statements of Ownership, Management and Circulation' figures in their titles.

Here is an example from Billy The Kid #112 cover dated April 1975:

If we zoom in...

...we can see under the column titled "Actual number of copies..." a figure of 221,800 for a single issue.

If I'm reading this right:

• 221,800 copies were printed
• 2,000 were spoiled leaving 219,800 
• Of that 219,800, 118,577 were sold leaving 101,223
• A further 200 were given away leaving 101,023
• That 101,023 is shown as being "Copies distributed to newsagents but not sold"

The pattern above is repeated on various examples that I have gathered in Charltons ranging from 1964 up to 1975 - all show about half the printed copies as being sold.

So the obvious questions are:

• Why did Charlton routinely print double the amount of copies that their historic sales figures indicated would sell?
• What happened to the unsold copies?

Anyone?

[lizards2]

Perhaps their quality control department was also in charge of marketing?  

I do wonder how these figures compare to other publishers. I'm thinking you have to distribute a lot of product to generate even 50% in sales??

[MatterEaterLad]

If it's like the book publishing world, all those extra copies get remaindered, or sent to a secondary market at a steep discount. 

It was common for a publisher like Random House to print 100,000 copies of a novel, hoping to sell that many, but they'd end up only selling 45,000 and remainder the rest, or offer them to discount bookstores and low-market retailers. 

 

[shadroch]

Marvel and DC  had similar dale thru rates. It's the way the magazine and comic industry worked  before the direct market.  Vendors were offered items that were returnable in return for a small discount.  A news stand book that sells for a dollar costs the vendor zero, and if he sells it he makes twenty five cents. If not he returns it. A direct copy that sells for a dollar costs the vendor fifty cents up front and if he sells it, he makes fifty cents. If it doesn't sell, he is stuck with it.

Once a company paid for the printing plates and they were set up and the run started, the cost  to run off an extra 100,000 copies was a fraction of the cost of the first 100,000 copies so why not?

[the blob]

I don't think the charltons got pulped. I see plenty of the same issue, maybe with a paint or ink splash on the top. I guess they got sold to someone. Some of the war titles in the 70s and 80s were so generic and cruddy I can't imagine who bought them. The monster stuff was ok. It is a shame they were so lame. Even good books like e-man and doomssday+1 failed.

[shadroch]

One the comics were printed, they were shipped to distributors and the distributors did all the work and book keeping. No books were actually returned to Charlton or any company. 

In some cases, a distributor would want  only the top half of the cover, returned, and sometimes they would want the whole book back. Obviously the half cover was easier as it took up less space and weighed far less.

The Distributor would fill out a legally binding statement that X amount were sold and Y amount was destroyed and pay the company for what was sold. 

As many distributors were mobbed up, they didn't destroy the books as promised and sold them out the back door. These books effectively cost the distributor near nothing so any profit was gravy. Since these extra profits were unreported, it usually meant there were no tax consequences for them.

It was a very inefficient  system and had the direct market not come along, comics would have withered on the vine.

Edited January 28, 2021 by shadroch

[Get Marwood & I]

Thanks for your comments guys 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, lizards2 said:

Perhaps their quality control department was also in charge of marketing?  

You leave the cereal box printer maintenance team out of this, you!

1 hour ago, lizards2 said:

I do wonder how these figures compare to other publishers. 

Me too - I don't recall seeing one of these 'Statements of Ownership' tables in any other publishers books - do you Liz?

[shadroch]

42 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

You leave the cereal box printer maintenance team out of this, you!

Me too - I don't recall seeing one of these 'Statements of Ownership' tables in any other publishers books - do you Liz?

 Almost every title has these statements . They were required and are published annually. 

You can find them on the MCS site, but you have to look under the content tab, and it is kind of hit and miss. 

If you had a Postal permit to mail subscription copies, you were required to publish these. 

If the book was monthly, you can find them every 12-13 issues, if bi-monthly you can find them every six months.

The Billy the Kid example you used is bi-monthly so the next one would be in issue 118.

For some reason, DC used a different form than Marvel and Charlton, as I recall and the numbers were less informative.

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by shadroch

[Get Marwood & I]

On a related theme, see if you can follow my logic here.

I recently picked up some Charlton copies with what appear to be some form of import stamps on them. Here's one example, Battlefield Action #51 cover dated January 1964 (nice cover isn't it, with the baseball imagery):

The stamp appears to indicate a fee of £130 has been paid for something:

Anyone seen the like of it before?

The book came in a large group of Charltons, the mix of which implied they could have been the stock of whoever imported them (multiples of the same issue etc).

So lets just speculate that the £130 was payment for one month of Charlton comics. Charlton were producing around 20 titles a month back then and a company called RV (who I don't yet know anything about) were importing Charltons to the UK at the time, as evidenced by their own unique 9d price stamp which appears on most titles throughout most of 1964 and 1965:

According to Google, £1 in 1964 would be the equivalent of £17.37 today so £130 was just over two grand (£2,258).

In 1964 we were still using old money in the UK so one pound would have comprised 240 old pence (d). The Charltons were stamped 9d. Let's speculate that our importer secured them at one third cover cost - say 3d each.  No idea if that's reasonable, but let's see.

£130 x 240d = 31,200d

31,200d / 3d = 10,400

So £130 may have bought him around 10,400 comics. At 20 Charlton titles per month, that would equate to around 520 copies per title. That actually sounds quite accurate to me, that we in the UK would have received around those numbers for each issue. I probably know better than most how scarce Charlton UKPVs and the subsequent RV imported copies are, based on my extensive research. It certainly feels like the numbers would have been that low if extant copies are any indicator. 

The US print numbers were around 200K per month per issue, based on our afore-posted Statement of Distribution tables, which would make our 500 copies one quarter of a percent of the total print run. Whilst no one knows for sure, Marvel UKPV numbers have always been considered to be around 1-5%, and likely much lower in the first half of the 1960's, so there is some sense to a lower Charlton figure given that it was less popular and had patchy UK distribution. 

I know this is all 100% speculation and possibly fantasy. But there is no way we will ever know what went on here so it's worth taking a punt based on the scant information to hand. I don't even know if the cover stamp is what I think it is so it can't be anything other than a wild punt.

By I enjoyed making it nonetheless. 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

16 minutes ago, shadroch said:

 Almost every title has these statements . They were required and are published annually. 

You can find them on the MCS site, but you have to look under the content tab, and it is kind of hit and miss. 

If you had a Postal permit to mail subscription copies, you were required to publish these. 

If the book was monthly, you can find them every 12-13 issues, if bi-monthly you can find them every six months.

The Billy the Kid example you used is bi-monthly so the next one would be in issue 118.

For some reason, DC used a different form than Marvel and Charlton, as I recall and the numbers were less informative.

 

You haven't got any examples to post have you Shadroch?

[shadroch]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

You leave the cereal box printer maintenance team out of this, you!

Me too - I don't recall seeing one of these 'Statements of Ownership' tables in any other publishers books - do you Liz?

 go to MCS and look up Billy The Kid 118.

As they were annual reports, I'd guess one would appear around Spiderman 12 and then every 12 issues later. 

 

Fantastic four 85 has one, so you can expect to find another in 97, 109, 121, ect, ect, as long as the book was monthly.

Going backward, I'd look in 73, 61 and 49.

 

Edit- I see the FF was published monthly except semi-monthly one month for a few years in the 60s. I'm not sure if semi-monthly means twice a month or once every two months

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by shadroch

[the blob]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

You leave the cereal box printer maintenance team out of this, you!

Me too - I don't recall seeing one of these 'Statements of Ownership' tables in any other publishers books - do you Liz?

they're all over. it's a fun little hunt. once a year. i assume shad is right that they spread them 12 issues apart. they become much more informative in the 80s when you can see the split between newsstand copies and direct distribution. 

Edited January 28, 2021 by the blob

[Get Marwood & I]

3 minutes ago, the blob said:

they are published once a year in every comic that had newsstand distribution if you have every issue for any comic from then for the year you will find one of these.

I've only got Charltons 

[the blob]

5 minutes ago, shadroch said:

 go to MCS and look up Billy The Kid 118.

As they were annual reports, I'd guess one would appear around Spiderman 12 and then every 12 issues later. 

 

I guess a couple of the westerns lasted a long time for charlton and it looks like there may have been 100,000 or so regular fans of billy the kid. Imagine that? 100,000+ regular readers of that 11th tier book

[the blob]

Just now, Get Marwood & I said:

I've only got Charltons 

you only own charltons or you've only found them in charltons?

they're definitely all over as it is a thing I like to look for when I actually open up an old comic. DC was really having a rough time with unsold copies later in the decade.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, the blob said:

I guess a couple of the westerns lasted a long time for charlton and it looks like there may have been 100,000 or so regular fans of billy the kid. Imagine that? 100,000+ regular readers of that 11th tier book

Don't diss the kid Blob 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 minute ago, the blob said:

you only own charltons or you've only found them in charltons?

they're definitely all over as it is a thing I like to look for when I actually open up an old comic. DC was really having a rough time with unsold copies later in the decade.

 

Post me a DC one Blob, go on 

[shadroch]

2 minutes ago, the blob said:

I guess a couple of the westerns lasted a long time for charlton and it looks like there may have been 100,000 or so regular fans of billy the kid. Imagine that? 100,000+ regular readers of that 11th tier book

Westerns were huge in the 50s/early 60s. It seems like half the shows on tv were westerns, so I'm not surprised western comics sold well.

I think kids graduated from Batman to westerns and war comics, 

 

[steveinthecity]

As an example for those wondering, here’s one from the letters page in MTU #116.