Posted in: Comics | Tagged: brian k vaughan, charlie adlard, Comics, East of west, fiona staples, image, jonathan hickman, robert kirkman, saga, walking dead

Saga #13 Sells Out 62,000 Print Run, Walking Dead #113 Of 76,000 And East Of West #5 Of 41,000 – Jonathan Hickman Tells Us Why.

Normally when Bleeding Cool runs a sell out notice, we like to give an indication of the print run of the comic. And note that the publisher did add a significant overprint.

We can't that with East Of West #5. We know the print run, just about. But Image did not do a big overprint on that title. And here's why.

Co-creator Jonathan Hickman told me;

"Orders for East of West #5 were, to say the least, bizarre. The day before FOC*, they were around 44k. After FOC, the orders dropped to around 39k.

Frankly, I've never seen any kind of adjustment down like that before. The long slog of declining sales on a title, sure, but not this. Especially on a book as well received as East of West.

And with the trade coming out the month following, there really wasn't any way we could do a significant second printing because it would show up the same time as the trade and wouldn't move with the collection on the shelves (which compounds the problem here because we normally do a pretty healthy second printing making the overall drop even steeper).

We guessed that perhaps the reason for this was because early orders showed (now confirmed) that stores were taking a pretty strong position on the Trade. So, Nick and I, along with Eric [Stephenson, publisher] and Ron [Richards, Director of Business] at Image decided that the best thing to do was print roughly what was ordered of #5, forgo a second printing, over print the trade, and then incentivize the hell out of issue #6…and we're doing that.

There are thresholds, but we'll be making East Of West #6 one hundred percent returnable.

I'm sure someone will find some fault with our decision making, but we tried to do the fairest, most practical thing across the board."

Bleeding Cool has confirmed a 41,000 print run for East Of West #5. And it sold out yesterday.

Saga #13 and Walking Dead #113 also received sellouts this week, for other reasons. Because they did do big overprints.

In Saga's case, the comic had the biggest print run the title has received in its entire run so far, totalling 62,000 copies. Twenty-four hours later it was all gone.

For Walking Dead, it was a central issue leading up to the massive #115, with All Out War beginning and the book going bi-weekly… 76,000 copies were printed and again, boom, out of the door.

Will orders increase for the next issues do you think?

*Final Order Cut-Off date, the last date for which retailers can adjust their orders for a book, up or down, without being penalised.

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