Warren Ellis recently wrote on his website and interesting snipet about the current status of the direct market of comic books (ie: sales through comic book stores):
"For as long as I’ve known him, Dan Didio has believed the key to a resurgent DC is reclaiming all the readers the commercial medium lost in the 90s… It’s all about accessing that hypothetical lost fan base. The impression the recent statements have left is Dan saying “comics used to sell loads back then, let’s do that again.” And that can’t happen in print.Comics used to sell loads back then, yes. But a big part of that — and this is the part he isn’t mentioning — is that there were ten thousand comics shops back then. And now there are, optimistically and rounding up, about two thousand. There simply aren’t the number of outlets left to sell the kind of volume comics could shift in the 90s.
The gamble here is this: that hypothetical lost fan base is older, has credit cards and disposable income, and an internet connection that can bring the DC Comics section of a notional comics store right to their desks. That, in fact, digital comics services will do the work of those eight thousand stores that don’t exist anymore."
It's a shame, but true. Comic book sales are very limited to the number of comic book outlets actually open to sell your merchandise. The 1990s were a comic book boom, because, well, as you read above, there were 5x more stores actually open, so, theoretically, that would mean 5x more sales.
Interesting to see where the comic book industry will be in 10 years.
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