The Numbers
A brief conversation discussing the trends, between Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise:
Doom DeLuise: What do you figure accounts for that big bump for both at Week 13?
Jim Doom: I really don’t know.
Doom DeLuise: Weird. The Week 13 bump in Countdown came after an issue where absolutely nothing happened, featuring the cover of Karate Kid chopping through the Oracle’s glass or whatever. There’s no logical explanation for that.
Jim Doom: Maybe check news releases that week. I was wondering, since both came about the same time, if DC had some three-month point news release barrage that they planned for both books. Maybe by that point they had info on the first month’s sales. Was that when they started releasing more details about where the series would go and what it meant, perhaps enticing more readers to think they were missing out?
Doom DeLuise: Maybe.
Jim Doom: And then they read it and were like “Yeah, I’m okay with missing out on that.”
Doom DeLuise: Maybe that was the week after ComicCon or something.
Jim Doom: It’ll be fun to see how this changes as time goes on.
Doom DeLuise: And, after quickly checking, yes, that was after the weekend of the San Diego Comic Con.
Jim Doom: Ok, so the news from the panels probably got interest back up.
Doom DeLuise: Yep
Jim Doom: I think one of the more telling statistics is how big of a drop there was between 52 #52 and Countdown #51. I think that shows that a lot of 52 readers were like “Hey, I’m going to stick this out to the end because i bought this many issues, but after that, I’m done.” I think maybe that demonstrates just enough product satisfaction to keep people from dropping the series (unlike what has happened to me with Countdown) but not enough to overcome some kind of weekly fatigue.
Doom DeLuise: For sure. I think the big bump up in the sales for 52 Week 13 can be attributed to me starting to write the weekly blogs for it.
Jim Doom: That huge spike at week 11 followed by the huge drop at week 12 and the next spike at 13 is very strange. Was that also around comic-con in 2006?
Doom DeLuise: I’d be willing to bet.
Jim Doom: Any idea what happened in week 11? That seems to be the unusual one there. Debut of Supernova, maybe?
Doom DeLuise: Debut of Batwoman.
Jim Doom: Ah. Okay, then I think we have a one-issue spike for Batwoman’s debut and then a dip back to normal for week 12 before Comic-Con boosting it back up at week 13 to sort of reset the norm.
Doom DeLuise: How the hell do I remember all of these things?
Jim Doom: You’re the resident historian.
So, what you are trying to say is… what are you trying to say?
Oh, that Countdown sucks! But I thought you guys loved it.
Actually, considering how much Countdown is being panned, I’m surpised that the two curves are mostly parallel. I was expecting the Countdown graph to be plummeting.
I read online (I think it was those month-by-month sales charts on the PWBeat’s website), that what might have happened is the sales were being reported as lower the first 12 issues because the retailers could return unsold copies, and so the numbers were possibly underprojected to account for that. After #12 that offer expired, and so the numbers stopped being underprojected (as much).
I think that might have something to do with it, if I’m remembering right.
That would make sense. Doom DeLuise and I had a conversation for a podcast *ahem* that should be posted *ahem* any minute now, and we speculated that Comic-Con generated hype that renewed interest in both series. But that unsold returns theory would seem to support that relatively smooth decline after the sharp increase.
It was the return policy. That’s not a myth.
The numbers were much more steady without the discounted figures.