Which now begs the question, why additional printings were made? I can apply common sense that some shops sold all their first printings but I canāt see a reason why or how it went beyond a second printingā¦
Because they know new printings of books are hot, and they will sell?
Oh, I have zero doubts that BOOM! will print new āprintingsā as just a marketing technique to make their books seem āhotterā than they really are. They definitely know how to market to the FOMO and Spec crowdsā¦
So 97,500 copies returned?
Ćf it wasnāt for the reprint I wouldnāt have been able to get that awesome foil 3rd printing of issue 1, so they can reprint all they want if the cover art is cool Iām a buyer 
That same mentality is what almost destroyed comics in the 90s 
key word is āalmostā 
itās a very different industry now and doing something like this isnāt going to make a huge difference when there were already 600k+ copies printed anyway. So for me I donāt correlate this to the 90ās nor see it being an issue going forward.
I think it is though. Yes, itās not the 90s over again as things have changed since then but printing books and creating false demand is not the way forward I think.
Sure you like the new variant art but we just found out that 97k of that initial 600k were sent back (just a waste of paper, ink, shipping of said product to and from, back and forth, and production costs) all because they wanted to push retailers into qualifying for a 1:1000 which they didnāt have to return. Why not just come up with another or better way to market a super limited edition variant without the over production of another product they were hoping no one would bother returning?
BOOM! just wants bragging rights on print number and sales. Now we got Image doing the same thing with Spawn (buy X, get Y), all because they love those gimmicky marketing terms they can thrown in press releasesā¦ Itās just dumb, all of it is just dumb. Thereās no demand for 600kā¦ they printed and sold 600k because retailers drooled over the idea of owning a 1:1000 signed by Keanu Reeves they knew could sell to suckers to cover most if not all of their cost of their order, then just send the rest back that donāt sell. Just bad for businessā¦ rant over!
Itās not false demand, they disclosed the print run, they could have hidden that and created false demand but they didnāt they merely just made reprints, sure the 3rd print they fād up with the way it was distributed but in no way do I see it as Boom creating fake demand for the book.
The media and collectors do that for them with little effort needed just like every other book, Boom just distributed it.
No, the false demand is creating a variant (ratio/exclusive) by forcing retailers to buy X amount to get Y. Thatās false demand for a product, when you buy based on qualifying amount on purchase for X to receive Y in return.
If retailers took pre-orders on the book from actual people interested with then maybe a few shelf copies, I doubt this would have even broke 100k print run as itās an indie book, from a small publisher who rarely sells any other book that even comes close to 100k in size.
BOOM doesnāt distribute, they had the printers ship it to Diamond to distribute.
Which is every comic with a ratio incentive.
Yupā¦ but some are a little more āextremeā than othersā¦ likeā¦ BRZRKR was not suppose to have an initial print run of 600k. No wayā¦ nuh uh!
That is creating demand for the ratio/exclusive, there is nothing false about it and no underlying pretext. Itās pretty straight forward with no hidden Tās and Cās
It is though, I know thereās no hidden or underlying pretext, youāre missing my entire point though on why this is false demand.
Are retailers buying because they got X amount of pre-orders or are they buying to receive Y for buying X amount? The publishers create false demand because retailers are and should act like wholesalers, not consumers. If the consumers are not demanding it yet the retailers are chasing the exclusive insert/chase variant, then yes, thatās false demand because publishers like BOOM! then go off and brag in their Press Releases that this book is āawesomeā because we had to print 600k of them to meet demand, which the actual demand for the book without a ratio or retailers acting like consumers in the wholesale buying process would have been much smaller.
I donāt know but if thatās not false demand on a product, then thereās just no such thing then if we treat the entire process chain from publisher, to distributor to retailer to consumer as if theyāre all consumersā¦ We might as well just declare there is no distributor or retailer/wholesalers, everyone is a consumer!
Basically, āfalse demandā is the same as artificial demand which is defined as: " ā¦constitutes demand for something that, in the absence of exposure to the vehicle of creating demand , would not exist."
Buy X, get Y = artificial demand (false demand).
I guess you can call me old fashion as well. If you really want to sell 600k or more copies of your book, make it the most spectacular book ever, make people want to buy it for itās actual intended use. Let the actual product sell itself.
This is another reason why chasing ratio incentives is a false (artificial) demand in this marketā¦ people are buying because they want Y by buying X. True organic demand for a product would beā¦ people are buying X because the story and art inside is amazingā¦
I donāt understand how they create false demand for cover A when the publisher themselves said hey return whatever you donāt sell. Nothing was being hidden or ordered falsely everything was provided with no hidden information.
In addition of the 650k copies that got ordered 15% got returned, this math already proves that statement incorrect as clearly there was a demand, 85% of it was in demand.