General discussion about Usagi Yojimbo, the comics, the stories, the characters, collectibles, TV appearances, Stan Sakai, Space Usagi, Nilson & Hermy, and all other related topics.
MikeM wrote:Now also, this is all according to Diamond, who is the largest distributor of comics in North America, but not the only way of getting comics.
MikeM
While Capital City Distribution is no longer around, there are still a few smaller distributors such as Worlds of Westfield, which also buy straight from the publisher.
As far as tpbs, there are probably a lot more distribution centers than just through the direct sales comic market, places where both general bookstores and online sellers such as Amazon buy inventory, so the print runs for the tpbs are probably a whole lot higher than the Diamond listings.
Fanfan wrote:WebComics are usually very particular structure with regular publishing,
That's not true at all. You can do almost anything with webcomics. Infinite canvas, using flash for navigation or to make comics more interactive, the sky is the limit.
Fanfan wrote:only a few have a lot of readers and are printed.
True enough, but Usagi is already in print, so that's irrelevant. The point of this idea is to attract more readers. The internet is an incredible promotional tool.
Sorry i was not clear, i agree that virtually we can make everything as a webcomic (static or flash and so on), but usually webcomic that have a lot of readers have a regular publication and it impacts the structure of a story (you can disagree but i truly think that the support influences structure). Only a few people play game and buy when they have liked it free online.
Perhaps we should consider only international sales, and expansion in other countries : Spain, Poland, France...
Cosmo did light out a very good thing about sales: in France Usagi was very confidential with the first publication in big size ed, and now with the manga size ed sales are quite good (and pretty soon excellent ) . And in france there's an audience for japanese stories (older than the current audience) that i think is not still hooked by Usagi only because they don't know it does exist.
I think like most of you that Usagi Yojimbo is one of the best title ever written. Each month is a gem. If more people were simply exposed to Usagi they would be easliy convert to regular fans.
Here's the Challenge:
Starting with issue #95 I will be buying 2 copies of Usagi per month. One copy for me to keep and one issue that I give to someone who doesn't buy the book regularly. If we all pitch in an extra $3 per month maybe we can get those numbers up to a respectable 8000 copies per issue.
The key to the Dimond distribution numbers is preorders, so I have contacted my comic shop to increase my order we don't want to take all the store copies off the shelf. That would not help the numbers and might take copies from the causal readers.
This is actually what i did and do with the french edition (which is really cheap), i regularly buy the volume 1 or 2 that i offer to people who don't know. Some (not all...) of these new readers are regular onesnow.
) . And in france there's an audience for japanese stories (older than the current audience) that i think is not still hooked by Usagi only because they don't know it does exist.