Anonymous asked:
brevoortformspring answered:
All cover prices are recommended prices to begin with. Any shop can charge whatever they choose for a given book–which is why certain shops can offer discounts for subscribers and club members.
In the case of variants, they are relatively rare, and so their price tends to get marked up based on their scarcity.
Variant Covers are called “retailer incentives” because they are sold at varying different rates to the retailers.
For example, a variant cover for Superman that is 1/25 can only be ordered by the retailer after they order 25 copies of Superman. That means that, logically, some retailers could charge as much as 25x the Cover Price for that variant, because of that ratio. But, you then factor in things like customer satisfaction which would lead to repeat business. Retailers order their comics from Distributors like Diamond, and they pay a discounted rate per issue because they are retailing the comics. The sale price is intended to recoup those costs and allow for a profit margin. The issue is that some books sell and others do not.
Let us that the same issue of Superman that the given retailer ordered 25 copies of did NOT sell very well. Like, they only sold 15 copies. The retailer would then probably have to absorb the cost of the unsold books.
Long story short: variant covers exist partially to showcase the artwork, but mostly as incentives so that the fans continually support their LCS.
Variant covers exist because publishers worked out that most comic shops that have been around for a long time base their orders around cycle sheets. Mostly they’re distributed on a ratio basis (1 in 25, 1 in 100, etc.) but recently those variants are also being offered on a percentage of previous comics ordered, such as getting 1 Iron Man ‘Arm Cover’ from the ‘Build Your Own Iron Man’ variant set for every 50 copies of Spider-Gwen 4 you ordered, for example.
Cycle sheets are a log of how many copies of your new stock have sold. At the end of a three week count, the amount of unsold copies you’ve been left with is what you cut your order by (not counting any copies you want to keep for back inventory.)
Variants are designed to make retailers ignore their own data in order so they order copies of comics they might not be able to sell for the quick gain a variant comic might profit. The reality is many shops are still stuck with the overstocks they ordered for those variants, typing up money and space in their stores.
Most shops that have survived have ignored ordering around variants and simply order to sell. I personally would love to see Marvel & DC have one month of product in Previews with no variant incentives, just to see what their actual pre-orders are.
