Gauging Dark Towers' Impact

It seems appropriate to talk about Stephen King on Halloween.

I really liked Jason Rodriguez’s post (read it and the comments as well) over at the DC Conspiracy regarding opportunities presented by a Stephan King authored DARK TOWER comic book. I’m totally on board with Jason on this one: big opportunity – and not just for creators to do a bit of bandwagonning.

King’s name will certainly drive sales, particularly if those Barnes & Noble spinner racks materialize. With proper placement you’re talking about an incredibly appealing impulse buy. However, I do agree with Mark Fossen’s comment (in the comments of Jason’s post, not on Mark’s blog) that the LCS’s may not see a tremendous increase in sales numbers, but in my mind one of the big opportunities is to further validate the viability of distributing floppies in ways outside the norm. Unfortunately, the numbers that we usually use to judge comics are calculated from Diamond’s sales indexes and since Marvel distributes to B&N and other mass merchants directly (as I understand it) we may never get the complete picture on this book.  So the reported numbers may check in at the 300K range but there could easily be another 300K sold through the mass market bookstores. And if Marvel could secure rack placement within Target and/or WalMart I think a million sold for the first issue would be realistic, although I’m not sure we’d have anything beyond a Marvel press release to find this out.

Here’s another thing: as comic book insiders we all know the trade version is coming and to reaffirm that Marvel has included this information in its general press release. But I’m not so sure the general public understands this concept and I doubt Marvel will be bending over to make this known when the actual release date (April 2006) approaches. So while many regular comic book readers may decide to wait for the trade release, people outside of our little sphere of influence may feel the comic is the only way they’ll get to read the story or at least not be aware of how quickly the first six issues will hit in graphic novel format (almost immediately).

I also agree with Jason that to the casual reader (and Indy creator) this won’t be about Marvel. Hey, this King fellow must be good, he’s got his name on a Marvel comic. But on the back end it’s very much about Marvel. If this is bungled in some manner (poor marketing, weak distribution, foil covers…) it may do more harm than good.

Remember King’s THE PLANT? It was released electronically with King promising to keep producing later chapters only so long as 75% of those who downloaded paid a $1 per chapter fee/contribution. The program failed, leaving readers stuck in the middle of what was reportedly a good novel and casting a pall on the whole notion of “e-publishing”. There were several legitimate reason why this didn’t work, but the method for delivery -- electronic/ebook -- was not one of them. That didn't stop publishers, who were hoping the ebook model would fail, from leaping on this as vindication that electronic distribution would never work. (I can personally attest that this lack of support dropped several projects dead in their tracks.) If Marvel doesn’t move the meter with this, the comic book form could shoulder the blame.

There’s going to be a great deal of buzz surrounding this project, here’s hoping it’s an overwhelming success from every angle.

Comments

[Jason Rodriguez]

However, I do agree with Mark Fossen’s comment (in the comments of Jason’s post, not on Mark’s blog) that the LCS’s may not see a tremendous increase in sales numbers, but in my mind one of the big opportunities is to further validate the viability of distributing floppies in ways outside the norm.

As well as Mark's point that even if the book does do the industry standard event book 250-300k it'll be a Western, forcing a new genre onto people who read nothing but superhero books.

Anyway, thanks for checking it out and the plug.