Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Every week, I get the Publishers Weekly Comics Week email. It's a neat enough thing, usually, providing links to previews (this week, it was the upcoming Eddie Campbell graphic novel The Black Diamond Detective Agency,) a few reviews, and news items. However, what caught my eyes this week was the item on the right. I know a few comics retailers who sling the wares, and I seem to remember that "Top Seller" was a modifier they'd not apply to this title, so I did a little digging. Here's the numbers sales numbers for each issue from CBGXtra.com: #1 - 8200; #2 - 6400; #3 - 5500; #4 - 5400; #5 - 4900 . Looking at those figures, I think it's safe to say that these are not "top sellers" by any stretch, at least not in the direct market.

In fact, it appears that the creative team is fairly sure of the title's sales status:

"IDW's CSI series have tended to do well in collection in the bookstore market but not terribly well in the comics market," said Steven Grant, writer of CSI: Dying in the Gutters, originally released as a five-issue miniseries and due out in trade paperback March 25.

So, the collection may well do a bit of business in the bookstore and direct markets, but that's not for another couple of weeks. It's apparent that the headline chosen here means one of two things: 1) Publisher's Weekly has a time machine and has been very impressed with the figures that this CBS Series tie-in comic has been doing, or 2)Somebody got a bit overzealous while typing up the teasers for the articles at the Publishers Weekly site.

I know that we're not talking about Time or even Entertainment Weekly here, but calling this book a "top seller" looks like it's just an out-and-out fabrication for the sake of a jazzy-looking headline. Disappointing, especially for the well-respected organization that claims to be "The International Voice For Book Publishing And Book Selling."

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Edit: In the comments for this post, Heidi MacDonald states:

Sloppy reading, Kevin. You missed two paragraphs down:

>>>After the general scenario was laid out, Grant was brought in and took over the writing. IDW editor Chris Ryall got permission for several actual comics creators to appear in the story, adding an intriguing new element to the mystery. "Ted's plan seems to have worked," said Grant. "This series was the most ordered CSI series in the comics [direct] market."

I wrote that blurb and I stand by its accuracy.

While Dying In The Gutters may be the top seller within a franchise, the headline is still misleading as it comes from a weekly email that covers the industry at large. "Best Selling Yet" would be a much more accurate tagline that both provides the publisher-friendly teaser and manages to avoid implications that it was somehow pushing out Civil War numbers. I do a lot of press releases and the like as part of my day job; one of the things I am very careful to avoid is the use of phrases like "top" or "best-selling" unless it applies across the industry or sector.

I wrote this blog entry and I stand by my disdain for this sort of thing.