I've been watching the marketing efforts of Ken Marcus, creator and writer of Super Human Resources for the past few months. Marcus seems like a pretty savvy guy, having an active profile on various message boards including the Comic Book Industry Alliance, active interviews all over the place, and not to mention that he's an associate creative director at an unnamed (though I think it's the Martin Agency) advertising company.

Not only that, but he also sent out a nifty press kit to a number of stores (this pic posted by James Sime of Isotope Comics in San Francisco):



As he explains, "...the whole mailer cost me a little under a grand. A 10 page preview printed from Ka-Blam, 5 postcards, a poster and a color letter. To about 280 indie friendly stores." Lastly, he also wrote a marketing piece over at Robot 6 at tail-end of February '09, covering a lot of what he did (and well worth a look, too).

So, he's active, experienced, passionate and spent money. How did that, especially in light of Diamond Distribution's changes to their Purchase Order Minimums, effect initial orders on the first issue? Well, ICV2.com recently published their March 2009 numbers and the answer is not that great. Super Human Resources did place in the top 300, at #298, for an estimated total sales of 2,052 copies. At $3.50 US, that's a total retail order of $7,182.00, $932.00 over the new minimum of $6,250.00. Knock off Diamond's 60% cut of retail, the cost of printing a full-colour book, whatever small cut Ape Entertainment (the publisher) takes, and there would be precious little left over for the creators involved. Knock off the "little under a grand" that Marcus spent on the press kit and the first issue, at least, is most likely well short of being profitable. Worse, if orders drop by 20% for issue 2 (from 2,052 to, say 1,642), the book would be under Diamond's Purchase Order Benchmark (since 1,642 * $3.50 is only $5,747.00) and orders would probably be canceled (unless Diamond really believes in the book, of course).

It's tough out there, folks.

Von