Pretty To Think So

djeroon asked: I sometimes fear for the future of comics when I see how many (or how few) copies a comic sells. 100.000 copies sold is a best seller right? So does that number also include international sales? And how about digital?

brianmichaelbendis:

the numbers you see online are wildly inaccurate. complete guesswork. people take a sales chart, from only one distribution platform, without sales numbers  attached mind you, and make an educated, or sometimes very uneducated, guess how they think things are selling.

 and those numbers are only what that one distributor orders at a preorder level. they do not show what the readers are actually buying. very rarely do they show reorder activity unless the new printings are put into the system a certain way.

  other revenue streams include foreign, digital, bookstores. and so on… sometimes these numbers are significant. and you’ll never see them.

nobody knows the complete picture except for the publishers and in the world of creator owned the creators.  and sometimes even that is murky unless it is self published.

the diamond charts are at best a vague description of what is popular in regards to how other books are doing but in no way do they show the entire picture. 

basically, support your favorite books my preordering them, spread the word by spreading the word, enjoy them and don’t worry about the sales numbers because you don’t know them.