That’s all hearsay though with logical fallacies. Just because 15% was returned doesn’t indicate that 500k other people or so demanded this book. Some retailers might opted to just sit on the book. Some consumers likely bought multiple copies to qualify for ratios as well. Maybe some retailers decided to give some away cause it cost less to just give away then send back (yes, there’s % deducted and most retailers have to pay return shipping), etc.
Doesn’t matter what happened after the fact. The problem here is, would there have been 600k+ print run if there was no 1:1000 ratio incentive? It’s smart marketing by BOOM! to create this false/artificial demand for their product. Make something so desirable, get retailer XYZ to buy 1000 copies of a book that his shop might normally only sell 50 of on a good week. That’s what happened, doesn’t matter if 100k or 400k were returned, BOOM! still pushed press releases about their 600k+ print run for the book to make it seem as if it was in demand, which is artificial demand.
One has to think, if any book is returned, that’s a telltale sign that retailers ordered copies they could not sell and only backs the notion that the book was sold with artificial demand becuase true demand would tell us no book would be returned, because retailers had no issues selling them all.
I agree that it’s smart marketing I just don’t agree it’s false demand, the demand is there and can be seen by how few were returned out of the overall crazy amount ordered in this day of comics.
If retailers only ever ordered copies they could sell then we would never have back issues and I’ve never seen a comic store with no back issues, so using that to prove false demand is not accurate it’s part of the industry.
False demand would be announcing a movie/series which gets people out to buy the book only to never have any intention of making a movie/series to begin with, that’s creating false demand. Things like KCC create false demand all the time as an example.
That could be the result still. Sure they announced it’s going to be a movie but there’s just as good a chance of it never becoming a movie. Yes it has a big name celebrity attached to this particular book but it doesn’t have to have a movie attached or announced with no intention of making to make it false. That’s exactly what I’m saying, promising a ratio incentive if you buy X and you get Y in return is in itself creating artificial demand. It causes retailers and wholesalers to buy more copies than they can sell or normally sell if there was no incentive to buy X amount of copies. This is false/artificial demand through marketing gimmicks… hands down!
Buying a lot of copies doesn’t create false demand though, no one is going damn my LCS has ordered 1000 copies of this book I better go buy it or at least I have never met any comic buyer that thinks this way.
When I see that I just say nice they will never sell that many I will wait for a sale because these will still be available. I’ve done it with plenty comics in the past with much smaller orders so in my view ordering so many kind of pushes me away from buying on release instead of creating a demand to get it now because I know they will be readily available when the right time comes to buy them.
Now on the reverse the store got the 1:1000 or any other ratio, a demand was never created for that it was always there, it’s human nature to want something that is more limited or seen as the better version of something else, the demand was there as soon as something limited became available, nothing falsely needed to be created, that’s just how people are and stores can use that demand for that specific book to sell for big bucks and in turn pay for the majority if not all the books they ordered to get it. So now they sit with books that even if they sell for 50cents will make profit later down the line.
You’re not following, the false demand or artificial demand is occurring before it even reaches the actual consumers hands. It’s a form of artificially making something in demand when a publisher boosts their sales numbers for a product based on an incentive. Any shop that ordered more copies than they could actually sell based on their own customers, pre-orders, etc is now buying based on artificial demand of such product just to get the incentive from buying X amount of extra copies.
Anyways… I feel like I’m repeating myself at this point.
