Ted Adams
IDW to publish Dave Sim’s High Society Audio Digital collection
Following a Monday visit to Dave Sim’s Ontario home by CEO Ted Adams, IDW Publishing has struck a deal to release a hard-copy version of the Kickstarter-funded Cerebus: High Society Audio Digital as part of its new IDW Limited program. The company had already announced this week that it will publish a collection of all 300 Cerebus covers.
“I was coming here more as a decades-long Cerebus fan than as a publisher,” Adams said in a statement. “Scott [Dunbier, special projects editor] was describing all the amazing cover material he’s been scanning since Friday night and — talking to Dave on the phone — I said, ‘I’m the CEO. Why does Scott get to have all the fun?” So I booked the same commuter flight Chicago-to-Kitchener that Scott had taken last week.”
Comics A.M. | IDW Limited launches; Swedish libraries grapple with Tintin
IDW Limited
Publishing | IDW Publishing CEO Ted Adams discusses the company’s new IDW Limited program, which will produce small print runs of deluxe editions that will be marketed direct to the consumer. How small? The print run for the Blue Label edition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vol. 1 Deluxe Limited Edition will be 10 copies. “The only fair thing to do is to give the fans direct access on a first come first served basis,” he said. “We’re putting an incredible emphasis on quality, and that directly affects the quantity of books IDW Limited can produce. We’re designing new covers, building custom cases and paying the artists to do hand drawn sketch work to go with these books. The reality is that that’s all very expensive and unfortunately it makes it difficult for us to offer this line at the deep discount needed for traditional retail distribution.” [ICv2]
Libraries | Following the firestorm sparked last month when a youth library in Stockholm briefly removed Tintin comics because of their racial caricatures of Africans and Arabs, a survey finds that 10 percent of Swedish libraries have removed or restricted Herge’s books due to “racist content.” [The Local]
Comics A.M. | Todd McFarlane cover sells for record $657,250
The Amazing Spider-Man #328
Auctions | Todd McFarlane’s original cover art for The Amazing Spider-Man #328 sold at auction Thursday for $657,250, shattering the record for a single piece of American comics art set last year by a splash page from The Dark Knight Returns #3 ($448,125). However, the price falls well short of the $1.6 million shell out last month for the original cover art for Tintin in America. A 9.8 graded copy of X-Men #1 was also sold by Heritage Auctions for $492,937.50, more than twice the previous record for that comic. [ICv2]
Publishing | Lily Rothman takes a look at iVerse’s newly announced comics-only crowdfunding platform Comics Accelerator, which will allow immediate delivery of digital rewards in a more sophisticated format than an e-mailed PDF and cap its share of the take at $2,500. As Laura Morley of Womanthology points out, it can go both ways: Being on Kickstarter, a trusted platform with wide visibility, helped boost the project, but on the other hand, “Any site that’s able to take advantage of the fact that comics online already work as a big community, as a place where people talk to their friends and promote things they’re interested in, is likely to do well.” [Time]
Comics A.M. | Remembering Maurice Sendak; IDW’s digital sales
Where the Wild Things Are?
Passings | The Comics Journal collects tributes to Maurice Sendak, the legendary children’s book author and illustrator who passed away Tuesday at age 83. Philip Nel, director of Kansas State University’s Program in Children’s Literature, also writes an obituary for the influential creator of Where the Wild Things Are. [TCJ.com]
Publishing | In an interview with the retail news and analysis site ICv2, IDW Publishing President and CEO Ted Adams says that while digital sales are at 10 percent of print sales, both are going up: “There’s just no question at this point that selling comics digitally is definitively not impacting [print] comic book sales. If anything you could make the argument that the success of digital is driving more print comic book sales. The correlation at this point is that increased digital has resulted in increased print. Whether or not that is a direct correlation, I don’t know how you would figure that out. I can say with no uncertainty that our increased digital revenue has come at a time when we’ve had increased comic book sales.” [ICv2]
Comics A.M. | Impact of Borders bankruptcy; Comic Relief’s return?
Borders Group headquarters
Retailing | Borders Group began liquidation sales over the weekend at 200 stores, discounting items 20 percent to 40 percent. As Publishers Weekly and Blogcritics chart the 40-year rise and fall of the retailer, PW’s Jim Milliot looks at the effects the bookseller’s bankruptcy will have on the publishing industry: “The trickle-down impact will affect everyone from manufacturers to agents. Borders accounted for about 8% of overall industry sales, a higher percentage in some categories. A downsized Borders means publishers are likely to receive smaller orders and in turn place smaller first printings, resulting in less business for printers. The likelihood of lower print sales, one publisher said, means that books acquired one or two years ago when Borders was much bigger will have a more difficult time earning the advance back and that less shelf space could mean lower advances.” [Publishers Weekly]
Retailing | Tracey Taylor has details of retailer Jack Rems’ plans to resurrect Berkeley, Calif., institution Comic Relief as a new store called The Escapist — a nod to the Michael Chabon character — possibly at the same location. [Berkeleyside]
IDW: Fending off imaginary cannibals
ICv2 starts off the week with a marathon interview with Ted Adams of IDW Publishing. Part 1 focuses on the current comics and graphic novel market and IDW’s place in it, which is pretty solid — sales held steady in 2009 and 2010, and last year IDW became a Diamond Premier Publisher, meaning they get featured in the front of Previews each month. Part 2 covers their digital strategy, which has been quite aggressive, and in Part 3, Adams talks about IDW’s plans for new comics and collections in 2011.
It’s all interesting reading, but of course the part that’s most interesting to me is Adams’s reflection on the digital comics market in part 2. Digital sales doubled last year, he says, but the number is still small—”an insignificant part of our net revenue.” And it seems to be new revenue: