Comics sales charts may be a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still sales successes. The Devil’s Cut, the debut publication from new publisher DSTLRY, has had orders of more than 50,000 copies in comics shops, the publisher revealed today.
The Devil’s Cut is an 88-page $9.99 magazine sized anthology of short comics stories by an array of DSTLRY’s founding creators. 50,000 copies shifted is certainly an impressive number for an anthology comic in an unusual format. And DSTLRY was quick to shout it from the rooftops, claiming it’s one of the best selling indie comics of recent years.
According to direct market sales data available via Comichron.com, The Devil’s Cut would have been the top 13 highest-grossing independent comics of 2021 and 4th top-grossing independent comic of 2019. If categorized as a graphic novel, DSTLRY’s debut would be 5th top-grossing independent graphic novel of 2021, and the number 1 top-grossing independent graphic novel of 2019. Indexing of sales data stopped in mid 2020 and 2022, so there are no available rankings for these years.
Edited by Will Dennis (Y: The Last Man, Snow Angels), The Devil’s Cut includes work by Mirka Andolfo, Brian Azzarello, Marc Bernardin, Elsa Charretier, Becky Cloonan, Lee Garbett, Jock, Joëlle Jones, Tula Lotay, Jamie McKelvie, Junko Mizuno, Stephanie Phillips, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, and Ram V alongside friends Francesco Francavilla, Ariela Kristantina, Eduardo Risso, and Christian Ward.
What made this such a hit? Well, the promise that some of the stories in the anthology would be the debuts of ongoing series, didn’t hurt, with eight series spinning out of it. The stellar line-up of creators surely helped. Also, it’s fully returnable to comics shops, an always attractive offer that allows retailers to take a gamble. In addition, the book will “never … be reprinted in this format again…making The Devil’s Cut an instant collector’s item and key issue.”
A solid launch then! You can learn amore about DSTLRY at their website, www.dstlry.co or via their social media at @DSTLRY_Media.
Point of order in that headline: NO copies have “sold” yet; that can’t happen until it, y’know, goes on sale.
That many copies have been ORDERED, but the book was 100% returnable, with multiple ratio variants attached. I have no doubt that there are a meaningful number of stores ordering to get the 1:100, and expecting to actually return ninety copies of cover “A”. Every ten stores that did that reduce sales by 1k copies.
Any messaging (and press reinforcement!) really should be about the quality and content of the package, and not statements of success before they get the returns back.
-B
Interesting.
Comments are closed.