Charlton Print Run vs Sales Numbers 3 3

[Get Marwood & I]

15 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

You should appreciate Wolverine 98, then!

That's better!

 

He looks like you a bit Lazyboy, as it goes 

[Lazyboy]

1 hour ago, ThreeSeas said:

I remember reading, years ago, that any publisher that uses the US Postal system to deliver their comics or magazines has to include these statements once a year.

Specifically, it's a certain class of USPS mail, which is why DC stopped publishing Statements of Ownership in the late 80s; they changed how they mailed their subscriptions.

[Shrevvy]

The Standard Catalog of Comic Books from Krause/Comics Buyers Guide collects the statement of ownership sales data for the titles that published it. If you are just looking for sales figures, it is easier than fidning each specific issue with the data. Don't recall if they have the sell through data. I don't have mine in front of me. 

[shadroch]

These numbers are nice, but they are far from accurate.   The Mile High 2 collection was some million and a half comics, all of which had been claimed as being destroyed and that was from only one mid-level news distributor.  There was an entire comic shop in Queens- The Memory Bank that opened with nothing but books that were returned and supposedly destroyed.  The brothers that sold Chuck the MH2 collection routinely showed up at shows with a trunk load of books that were supposed to have been destroyd. I picked up hundreds of TOS and TTA books from them 3/$1. 

I'd imagine the copies printed and copies officially sold would be pretty accurate, but the number of unsold copies they claimed were destroyed is almost certainly way off.

[the blob]

1 hour ago, Lazyboy said:

No, that never happened. It's always total numbers.

No, I am almost certain the ones in the 80s give a split, unless I am merging the comochron data and newsstand data in my head from some analysis RMA did for some book. Now I have to look..

 

[the blob]

2 minutes ago, the blob said:

No, I am almost certain the ones in the 80s give a split, unless I am merging the comochron data and newsstand data in my head from some analysis RMA did for some book. Now I have to look..

 

ok, looking at the one from volverine above I guess now i remember, RMA would back out the newstand distribution #s by deducting the comichron/diamond data ... so for the book pictured above, the newsstand sales were horrible ... 200K+ unsold on a 550K print-run. How many of the 550K went to comic shops? You might be talking 200K newsstand returns vs. 100K sales ?? and 250K to shops?  And I am guessing by the mid 90s those newsstand returns were getting pulped, otherwise we would see huge numbers of newsies out there.

[the blob]

1 hour ago, shadroch said:

These numbers are nice, but they are far from accurate.   The Mile High 2 collection was some million and a half comics, all of which had been claimed as being destroyed and that was from only one mid-level news distributor.  There was an entire comic shop in Queens- The Memory Bank that opened with nothing but books that were returned and supposedly destroyed.  The brothers that sold Chuck the MH2 collection routinely showed up at shows with a trunk load of books that were supposed to have been destroyd. I picked up hundreds of TOS and TTA books from them 3/$1. 

I'd imagine the copies printed and copies officially sold would be pretty accurate, but the number of unsold copies they claimed were destroyed is almost certainly way off.

But I think by the 90s those returns might now have been getting fraudulently kept anymore given the data in that Wolverine comic .. 230K returns on a 550K print run ... otherwise I think we'd see a lot more newsstands of these 90s books 

 

[the blob]

"I picked up hundreds of TOS and TTA books from them 3/$1."

I am guessing these were the issues that Big Apple comics had in their bins forever in many multiples at $3 each into the early/mid 90s that I eventually cleaned them out of when they had a 50% off sale.

[ThreeSeas]

Ok, I went and grabbed ten of my scans from my Mickey Mouse collection. Let's see if I can load these Statements of Ownership here. This will provide a little info on what was selling in the late 50's/early 60's. Now the earlier SOO's didn't really have any good data, but I'll post them anyways.

First up, from Mickey Mouse # 58...okay, this is not working how I would like it to work, so I'll put the issue numbers here.

First MM 58, then 70, 76, 92, 99, 111, 121, 125, 129 and then 134

Just a quick edit - MM 134 is dated February 1972 to give you all an idea of the date range

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by ThreeSeas

[Crimebuster]

I like how that issue of Mickey Mouse has an ad for back issues of Playboy. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, Crimebuster said:

I like how that issue of Mickey Mouse has an ad for back issues of Playboy. 

No wonder it sold so many copies 

[vheflin]

As to why Charlton printed double what they sold, didn't distributers demand that publishers print a minimum number of copies?

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, vheflin said:

As to why Charlton printed double what they sold, didn't distributers demand that publishers print a minimum number of copies?

 

Go on 

[vheflin]

1 minute ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Go on 

The James Warren bio, "Empire of Monsters", discusses some of the struggles that publishers had with distributers.  IIRC Warren had to meet certain minimum print runs or the distributers wouldn't distribute his mags but this required print runs far in excess of what could be sold.

Warren cooked up a deal that made the distributer happy while somehow getting the unsold copies returned to him without being remaindered.

Only read it once, maybe I'll go get it out.

[ThothAmon]

Always loved reading these when I was a kid. Can’t help but think all these numbers are rife with errors. Could advertising rates be higher with inflated numbers?  Wonder how many of these ended up with Chuck?

[Get Marwood & I]

5 minutes ago, vheflin said:

The James Warren bio, "Empire of Monsters", discusses some of the struggles that publishers had with distributers.  IIRC Warren had to meet certain minimum print runs or the distributers wouldn't distribute his mags but this required print runs far in excess of what could be sold.

Was that so that they could make a buck on the unsold copies by contriving to keep them? I've still yet to see a logical explanation for printing double what you know you can sell, even when you (presumably) had enough sales data to be able to reduce the numbers significantly without affecting sales. And also, were the sell through percentages based on sales vs print run as I mentioned earlier? If so, the bigger the 'unnecessary' print run, the worse your percentage, no?

[shadroch]

5 hours ago, the blob said:

But I think by the 90s those returns might now have been getting fraudulently kept anymore given the data in that Wolverine comic .. 230K returns on a 550K print run ... otherwise I think we'd see a lot more newsstands of these 90s books 

 

 I think as comics got more expensive and comics became a part of much bigger companies that kept better records, this stuff disappeared.

[the blob]

1 minute ago, shadroch said:

 I think as comics got more expensive and comics became a part of much bigger companies that kept better records, this stuff disappeared.

It sure does seem like 230,000 newsstand copies of wolverine 98 did get pulped because there aren't a zillion of them on ebay. can you imagine, EVERY MONTH that many books for a SINGLE (albeit popular) title getting pulped? Over all the marvel books are we talking about 2 million or so (maybe 3) books a month going unsold and pulped...amazing, like the whole inventory of mile high ... so the guys who provided the MH2 books, really, they were only stealing the tip of the iceberg it seems

[shadroch]

The MH2 horde came a magazine distributor whose area was SouthWestern Queens, South Nassau, and Suffolk County west of the William Floyd.  I can only imagine how many thousand distributors could have done something similar. 

[themagicrobot]

The statement of ownership was definitely in all titles from all publishers annually until quite recently. Well quite recently for me at any rate. I remember posting something about the scary low figures for Fantastic Four before it was cancelled (a decade ago?). Even a great comic like She Hulk in 2003 only sold 27,000 issues on average I recall. And as I'm idle I'll post something (just slightly amended) here I already said on the Interweb many years ago regarding DCs Adventure 404:

So the print run was over 600,000. Yet only 350,000 were sold. A massive 250,000 were "left over"!! And only 511 people subscribed. I would have sacked the whole subscription dept immediately or begun a new campaign to increase the number of subscriptions taken out. DC was missing a trick. I read somewhere that Charlton's "left over" comics found their way to the UK. I read somewhere else that for stores in the States at that time to get their money back on unsold magazines they had to tear the front cover/logo off for proof. So what did happen to those 250,000 unsold/returned issues? Did they ever leave the warehouse? Were they pulped? Were future production runs amended to reflect how many issues per month were actually required? Did some of them end up in T&Ps Leicester warehouse?