Returns and DC's Minx Line
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on January 30, 2007 Sign up now!
by Douglas Wolk, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 1/30/2007
One of the original principles of the comics industry and the direct market (or comics shops) was nonreturnability: comics stores traded off the ability to return unsold product (the way bookstores do) for better discounts on the titles they stock. However, in the past few years, a few comics publishers have tried making some comics and books sold through Diamond Comic Distributors returnable, either by overshipping them (sending extra, returnable copies beyond the nonreturnable copies a store has ordered) or by offering returnability as an incentive for higher orders.
Most recently, DC Comics announced that orders through Diamond for Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg's The PLAIN Janes, the first graphic novel from the new Minx imprint (aimed at teenage girls), would be returnable.
It's the most recent in DC's experiments with returnability. Following a 2002 market-saturation survey, the publisher's "Share the Risk" program, which ran for nine months in 2003, allowed retailers to return up to 20% of initial orders above a set threshold on a few titles each month. Last year, they made the first 12 issues of the weekly series 52 partially returnable so that stores could take less of a risk on the untested weekly format. As for The PLAIN Janes, "the returnability decision was made about a minute into a pitch to [DC president and publisher] Paul Levitz," said Bob Wayne, DC's v-p of sales. "Fastest approval ever!" he joked.
The goal was to "maximize the orders on the launch title from Minx, and to lessen [retailers'] financial exposure in supporting our new imprint," Wayne said. "We consider targeted returnability one of the ways we can increase the sell-in of our nonreturnable comics and graphic novels. Last year we offered a returnable option on the softcover of V for Vendetta tied to the release of the movie, and it helped make V the bestselling graphic novel of the year through Diamond." Beyond The PLAIN Janes, Wayne notes, DC will also be making its Frank Miller graphic novels returnable in a tie-in with the March release of the 300 movie.
DC's recent adoption of a final order cutoff program (which allows retailers to adjust their orders until immediately before titles go to print), Wayne said, "doesn't replace the need for other ways to work with our customers so we can all sell more comics and books. At final order cutoff, our retailers probably won't know the exact number of copies they'll need of The PLAIN Janes to meet the demand. With our returnability program, they can place a strong opening order."
Comics shop retailer Ralph Mathieu of Alternate Reality Comics in Las Vegas said that returnability initiatives are particularly useful for new titles and new imprints—products for which stores may not have a solid ordering precedent. "Prior to DC offering this return program," he said, "I would have ordered 10 copies [of The PLAIN Janes] and just relied on their overprinting [the same as overshipping] this book and my doing weekly reorders to restock books I sell out of or am low on." Mathieu said he's planning to order 20 copies now: "Their show of support will allow me to create a display for it and give it more attention."
Alan Giroux of All About Books and Comics in Phoenix, Ariz., said that DC's support for The PLAIN Janes has persuaded him to "easily triple" his order for it, "because the future of this business is getting children and preteens into the stores with projects like this." Giroux argued, though, that "when a publisher is 100% behind a project" returnable books are a good idea, but "the benefits of a higher discount far outweigh the benefits of returnability" for a business like his.
"We lose money on about 10 out of 100 comic books ordered, on average, but I'll take that 10% on the chin any day," Giroux explained. "We are still in a very finite niche business, and 100% returnability would produce more comic shops than the market could support."
