The Comics Rack

It's All in the Numbers

   I was recalling the other day a conversation I had with gentleman who worked for the magazine distributor we dealt with back in the days I worked as a comic and book store manager. This fellow had been around for many years, was nearing retirement, and always had a good time relating stories of the "old" days of comic and magazine distribution.
   To fully appreciate this particular story, you have to understand that prior to the early 70s, there were no comic book stores. All comics were distributed to newsstands, drug stores, grocery stores and the like by the magazine distributors and were sold on a returnable basis. The magazine distributors handled the comics just like they would magazines like Time and Newsweek: delivering them to stores on a weekly basis and picking up the returns of unsold product at the same time. If a comic was not selling well in one location, it was not delivered there in subsequent months.
   Overall, most distributors, and publishers, considered sales of 80% of the total print run to be a good, solid figure for any title, with 90% and 100% not uncommon. Usually, if a title dropped below 60%, it was dropped by the distributor, which would lead to its cancellation by the publisher. Stores were not able to pre-order a set amount of a title, nor were the distributors. As a general rule, the number of copies of a particular title sent to a distributor was based on the distributor's previous sales and it was up to the distributor to divvy up these copies as they saw fit for maximum sales. Not the most efficient system, but one that was begun back in the 30s and continues to this day (although most distributors, and publishers, now consider 30-50% newsstand sale of a total print run to be a more reasonable number).

AN INTERESTING FACT: To the best of my knowledge, the total print run on most current comics is so low numerically that, under the old distribution system, less than 10% would be carried by any distributor. As an example, Superman and Captain Marvel were selling in the millions of copies each month during the 40s.
   So, back to my conversation...we were talking about how comics were now sold non-returnable, etc. and my friend chimes in with, "Do you remember those Disney summer specials?"
   "Sure," I replied.
   "Well," he says, "I used to work a route in the mid-west in the 50s that included many tourist stops. We used to go through those Disney books like you wouldn't believe. In fact, we used to pick up the Disney comics from our surrounding accounts and put them on the truck for the tourist locales. Sometimes, I'd even pull them off the racks along my route, so I could restock the sold out places."
   "What were your total sales?"
   "Well, I don't know. But, I can tell you that each summer, we used to sell 100% of our allotment on the Disney titles and could have used more!"
   Ever wonder why you missed a particular issue of your favorite comic? This may be part of the answer!