Sell-Out Levels

A discussion over to Spider-Man Crawlspace brought up a point I have written articles on elsewhere (and linked here), but since it keeps coming up, I decided to go ahead and tackle it here. Originally, I had written this under the article to which it applies, but it was long and applies in general, so I figured it made a good stand-alone post.

I wanted to clarify that "sold-out at the retail level" means they actually sold-out through the distributor (Diamond). I have not worked in the industry in years and the terms and such may have changed; I should have been clearer.

"Sold-out at the distribution level" would mean Diamond over-ordered, exceeding the print run. So, say the company had an initial print-run of 1000 copies. If Diamond ordered 1500, it sold-out at the Distribution level. This can happen, but basically never does, because the company bases its print run on Diamond's order. Of course, there are all kinds of last-minute-type things and this and that - it can happen.

"Sold-out at the retail level" means retailers ordered all the copies Diamond had for distribution. There are no more copies left to distribute, meaning the entire print run is in circulation, even if every issue has yet to make it to street level.

"Sold-out at the street or consumer level" means there are no more issues for purchase at newsstand, which almost certainly means no more available at cover price.

Like I say, it's been like 1994 or so since I worked in a comics shop and I have not done any actual writing or sequential work since before then. Back then, there were three or four distributors, and "sold-out at the distribution level" basically never happened then, except with X-Force #1 (IIRC)... and maybe some of the issues of the original Dark Knight Returns.

Marvel (for a good example) bases its print run on distributor demand, which bases their order on retailer demand, which often base their orders on consumer pull-lists + back-issue stock (rare these days) + collectibility vs./and visibility, etc., etc.

So, if there are no more copies available for purchase at the local outlets (retail stores), the book has "sold-out at the street level." If there are no more copies available for purchase from the distributor, then it has sold-out at the retail level. The only reason this is news for consumers is because retailers like to snag a chunk of their available stock and back-shelf it (throw it in the office, etc.), wait until all the copies on the shelves are gone, then release 10-25 more. They do this for about a week; if demand is still high enough, they bag and board them and jack-up the price. Nowadays, with the Interweb and Pac-Man video games being all the rage, this all goes down much, much faster.

Again, if I have confused the terms, I apologize, but if the terms are different, I think I have laid-out a good reason for changing them.

The big thing I remember was when an issue lost its Comics Code. That played all sorts of hell with the distribution and ordering and could result in a short print run, but only sometimes resulted in a second-printing. First, Eclipse, Comico - the smaller presses were big on second-printings, but the Big Two got in on that game much later (I don't think Marvel did a second-printing of any title issue until the very late 80s, early 90s, though I could easily be wrong).

Nowadays, there are 2^nd-Print Variants and all that, so I don't even know if the terms I am familiar with still apply or exactly how.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008