Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Some Mildly Good News

I just want to take a second to remind you guys to double check the numbers Tom gave us this morning. The individual books are up and down, but we're only 500 books shy of the original numbers from BEFORE all the previous creators jumped ship.

Check out Amazing and FF in particular. Both are up over 80k from a starting point of 55k! That is incredible! I can't speak to Amazing's numbers historically, but aside from the 10 cent issue from a few years ago, the last time FF sales were that high was 1997! Kudos to Phil and Pat!

That means, overall, that if we can get Balance of Power and Balance of Power: Frontline to sell 84k collectively -- and nothing else blows up in our faces -- we will actually hit our goal!

And if we do that... well, I'll just be flabbergasted.

7 comments:

Patrick Cook said...

Philip, just wanted to pass on a message - David Finch says he can't figure out this whale obsession of yours. Whatever that means.....

Sean Kleefeld said...

Oh, and Mike? No pressure or anything, but don't make me start thinking I fired the wrong guy! ;)

Philip Schaeffer said...

Not to rain on your parade, but I'm going to rain on your parade.

Amazing started at 80,000 on day one. Spectacular started at 55,000.

FF did start at 55,000, but I think the 81,000 Tom gave was a mis-print/mis-thought cause I doubt Slott and Deodato would have caused such an increase based solely on their involvement.

Also, I don't think Balance and Frontline count into our sales figures.

Now you know that I am a whale-dropping downer, and I am who you should have fired.

Sean Kleefeld said...

I'm trying to keep things positive, Phil. You might note that I'm NOT mentioning that the FF issue was your over-sized #550 and we'll almost certainly get a drop from that. If I wanted to go negative, I'd have said that, but you'll notice that I've completely avoided the topic to try to keep spirits up.

Oh, wait...

And Tom made it clear on Day 1 that our AGGREGATE sales number has to rise to 504k. I can almost guarantee that he knew there was NO way to do that without putting out new titles. There are simply not enough "hot" creators or enough guest appearances that could boost sales that much by themselves.

Philip Schaeffer said...

My negativity aside, I've been giving the wrong numbers for FF in my solicitations and long term plans. I was under the impression 550 was going to be the last issue of Rise of the Defenders. I think I was basing things off of current issues on stands or something, I'm not sure, and I doubt Tom's looking at my solicitations' numbers too closely. I say that not trying to be negative but expressing that I'm concerned about a mistake I just realized.

The point of which is to say that it's absolutely your job to keep things positive and our spirits up. But it's also our job to bring to you any concerns or issues we have. And now that I've looked up aggregate, I have fewer concerns, but they're still lurking around in the dark corners of my mind.

Michael Heide said...

Well, for my schedule, I based the numbers on the previews for July. So I guess Tom used those issue numbers.

Anonymous said...

Not to be a wet blanket, but you maybe fired the wrong guy...?

Tim