Charlton Print Run vs Sales Numbers 3 3

[Kromak]

Just to add that this "print 2x as it sells" might be a fairly universal thing Here for instance, it was and still is that way (at least the newest data I got, from 2017, shows more or less this pattern, even worst). And a direct market doesn't exist here, not in remotely close dimensions to the newsstand one.

[Lazyboy]

On 3/21/2023 at 4:43 PM, Kromak said:

Just to add that this "print 2x as it sells" might be a fairly universal thing Here for instance, it was and still is that way (at least the newest data I got, from 2017, shows more or less this pattern, even worst). And a direct market doesn't exist here, not in remotely close dimensions to the newsstand one.

Yeah, the newsstand distribution system has never been efficient as far as sell-through goes. That had nothing specifically to do with comics and has not changed since comics left that system.

[Malacoda]

On 3/21/2023 at 7:35 PM, themagicrobot said:

Off topic really but I never realised/noticed that  Gold Star Books (no relation to the UK Gold Star) were owned by Charlton. My father had a stack of these paperbacks in the mid 1960s reprinting text stories from long-forgotten pulps.

Were they ever distributed here?  They're actually from the 50's. Charlton seem to have taken a swing a most things to keep the presses turning including publishing books under the Gold Star and Monarch imprints.  I think the demise of the book publishing piece was what made Ed Levy get out of the business. It would be interesting to know what the book says about that.  Supposedly the closure of the Monarch line was something to do their mob connections but I don't know what.  

When I read (on Wikipedia) that John Santangelo met "Waterbury, Connecticut, attorney Ed Levy"  while serving a year in New Haven Jail and they founded Charlton there, I kind of imagined a Donenfeld-Liebowitz relationship, between a criminal and an attorney, but actually Levy wasn't there in his capacity as an attorney, he was doing a stretch having been disbarred as an attorney.  All Donenfeld, no Liebowitz. 

I'd also be interested to know what it says about the flood in 1955.  I just read that the business was flooded out in 1955, but by all accounts it was absolutely biblical. 

 

[themagicrobot]

There are 4 pages about the flood which apparently was many feet deep throughout Charlton's vast premises yet receded immediately and by the afternoon of the same day the sun was out. They got the presses working again within a week but all paper stock was ruined. 

For the record Gold Star paperbacks were published between November 1963 and December 1965. My father bought his from a T&P paperback spinner rack in a newsagents in Norfolk, possibly Cromer, when we were on holiday. It would be the very late 1960s. I remember this fact particularly because he kept going to the shop daily to buy more of these paperbacks and I went with him happy to get a couple of comics each day too whilst he was in a good mood.

Monarch paperbacks were more successful lasting for 8 years and 521 books. This Charlton Companion is full of facts and figures, names and dates.