Phil Kost over at JoeReloaded.com had a chance to talk with Andy Schmidt and got together a fantastic Q & A session with the IDW editor who is responsible for nearly all of the G.I. Joe books produced.
The conversation ranges from the ARAH continuation by Larry Hama, to the status of the Trade Paperbacks, and touches on many new projects that are waiting in the wings.
Check out the full Q & A session right here!
Hmmm, interesting. No outward sign of stress yet, eh? With sales still plummetting and other IDW titles (True Blood, D&D and Angel) now selling a fair bit better than the Joe titles (which wasn’t the case 6 months ago)you’d think there would be some indication of change coming.
Last month Larry’s title led the pack as I would assume it always will with around 14,000 copies sold. The main GIJoe title keeps dropping like a rock towards the 10,000 and under threshold and GIJoe : COBRA continues to hover around the 9,000 mark.
I still say the big problem is that even these numbers are misleading. Lots of people, myself included get both cover versions of the titles they buy. The problem there is that when I stop buying, I’m not dropping 3 copies each month, I’m dropping 6. I think this helps explain how the Joe titles are dropping fans so quickly. Sure not everyone buys both cover versions but many do.
The return of Brandon Jerwa would guarantee my loyalty. I didn’t care all that much about most of the DDP stuff but Brandon wrote GIJoe just like I love it to be. The fact Andy expressed interest in working with him has me hopeful and I’ll probably hang on a bit more just to see what comes of it.
GIJoe Future Noir? Wha? Who cares? I wish they would concentrate on making the main titles better instead of adding irrelevant additional titles (regardless of how they turn out).
And I for one would LOVE to see Michael Goldens new version of the Yearbook. I’ve heard some inside info on this one thanks to a fellow artist and it will be worth the wait!
A personal thank you to Phil, great questions and I’m especially thankful you asked about Brandon Jerwa, even if just to plant the seed that we are interested in him writing more Joe. Thanks!
Hey Hawkwinter, do those sale include the digital downloads available on Itunes? For that matter, does anyone know how the digital sales of the books are doing? IDW was on the forefront of digital downloads via the Iphone/Ipad, and I’d be curious to see how that is working out for them. I know I tend to buy the downloaded version way before I pick up the print version.
Its a shame G.I. Joe Cobra is selling the least, as it is by far the best. Although I respect everything Larry Hama has done with G.I. Joe, his work as of late has been lacking. The new ongoing Joe book just took too long to get moving, and probably suffered readership because of it. I think another reason the books are suffering is the price tag. $4.00 for a comic you can read in 10 minutes? 2 bucks more and you can buy a G.I. Joe figure. IDW should really consider lowering the quality of their paper stock, and getting the line back into the competitive $2.50-$3.00 range.
As far as I know Andrew they do not. There is no mention on any of the sales sites I visit of them tracking downloads. I think this is kind of the same as the big issue was for a few years with TV ratings and TiVo and things like that. Many shows, especially Friday night shows seemed to suffer huge ratings drops but once TiVo and such started being calculated a different story started to emerge as people were out and about Friday night but still recording their favorite shows to watch when they had time.
With the iPad selling strong I see this as a similar situation slowly unfolding. We download games, movies, music and now comics as well, just makes sense. Cheaper too. (Well, if you have an iPad or similar type device that is)
I also agree on the GIJoe:COBRA title. While I am enjoying the new Hama book (even though I didn’t much care for most of Hamas work in the last few years) COBRA deserves to be much higher in sales ratings than the mediocre main title. My guess would be that Robert Atkins has a LOT to do with the main titles continued sales. He has a very strong and VERY loyal fanbase (well deserved at that).
Thanks for bringing this up, it totally slipped my mind as I was a little dismayed by the lack of any news regarding some changes to boost sales and interest. I tend to dwell on the negative.
I do wonder sometimes if they are even aware of how many of us are still reading the main title but on the edge of saying “Ok, this is going nowhere, I give up” ?
I’ve often thought the pricetag is an issue as well. I think it was mentioned in Justins iPad article that IDW titles are only $1.99 when downloaded through IDW’s app. That makes them MUCH more attractive. As far as hard copies though, I think IDW is too small a company and sells too few copies to agressively push a possible competitive $2.99 price point. They also have to pay for the use of licensed franchises like GIJoe, while companies like Marvel and DC often own their biggest titles trademarks.
I know top selling titles like Avengers and Green Lantern cost $2.99, but they also sell in the 80,000 – 90,000 range, about 7-8 times as much as the average Joe title, so there is that to take into consideration. I know that a lower pricepoint may sell more copies, but a certain level has to be reached before it is possible to do that. Either that, or the company backing the titles has enough money to push the title at no gain, or even a slight loss, to try and get to that higher readership level. Again, IDW is far too small for that.
However, with all the licensed books they are putting out and going to be putting out, they are certainly trying to grow.
Good points, Hawkwinter. I didn’t even consider print volume and licensing when griping about the price point of the books. Thanks for the imput!