You may have noticed over the last couple of years that we have nearly stopped all announcements about sell-out issues and second printing runs. It’s not that we don’t want to announce the success of comics, but often the announcements are due in part to low print runs. Image Comics also recognizes this, and have announced it is upping print runs on many of its titles.
According to Image, the decision to increase print runs was due to the feedback the company received from retailers at the ComicsPro meeting last mont in Portland, Oregon.
“We’ve been listening to the feedback from the Direct Market, and we would like to take this opportunity to announce that we are now increasing print runs to make sure we don’t find ourselves and our creators in a position where we are constantly going back to press so quickly, or hopefully, at all,” said Corey Murphy, Director of Retail Sales at Image Comics in a prepared statement. “We don’t want to spend our creators’ money carelessly, but that being said, we understand how essential it is to the health and wellbeing of our retail partners, the creators we work with, and Image itself, that we make the necessary investments in our series.”
Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson added: “This is an issue we’ve wrestled with for some time now, but in all honestly, we’d love it if this announcement was the last press release we ever had to send out about sell outs or second printings. It’s more important to us that these comics are in stores when readers come looking for them.”
This seems like a good move on Image’s part, but as pointed out in the above statement, increasing the print run does take money out of the creator’s pockets, and over printing could have an overall negative impact for creators. While Image doesn’t talk numbers, it is hoped the company ran the numbers to figure out the exact increase needed on its books rather than an arbitrary amount across the board.
