And I think to say that DC is doing any "marketing" of any of these books is being generous to say the least.


You misunderstand -- I'm not talking about "advertising," I'm talking about the way these books are packaged and sold. To use my previous example: a book with the title The Greatest Jimmy Olsen Signal Watch Stories Ever Told gives everyone -- book buyers, Direct Market retailers, consumers who are familiar with comics and those who aren't, casual bokstore browsers, book reviewers, everyone! -- at a glance, at an instant, without even reading past the title, they get far more information than Jimmy Olsen, Volume 7 could ever give them. (Even the more generic The Greatest Jimmy Olsen Stories Ever Told would do the job better.)

So right there, Jimmy Olsen, Volume 7 is at a disadvantage, before it even gets as far as a store shelf.

That's not to say that every "series" of books is doomed to instant failure, of course -- but I can understand why DC has chosen not to go that route with its' infrequent Silver Age trade paperback program. (That, and there are lots of other practical reasons, too.)


Really? So DC could just slap together random stories in black & white and they'd sell just as well?


Certainly. Well, perhaps not at random, no (though that would be an interesting idea, a sort of "shuffle" mode for a book), but a collection that goes through more or less the same selection process as one of the "themed" collections? Absolutely. Without question. Why wouldn't it? To read an generous variety of stories that could cover thirty or fourty years over the course of 500-pages? For $20? Do you honestly believe most people would pass that by because it wasn't "complete"? (Do you think many people are passing on the Silver Age "themed" trade paperbacks for that reason?)

Of course, they're not going to do that -- that would add editorial costs to the process, and probably make it virtually impossible for DC to publish these books with the frequency they have been. (That's part of what I meant when I said that packing the Showcase and Chronicles books that way was largely a matter of convenience.)


Sorry, I don't think you're giving the buyers enough (any?) credit here


How so? I'm sure the "sequential" quality appeals to some people (perhaps even most of the people here), but I don't think it's necessarily representative of the audience for these books as a whole. I don't see it as a factor that's driving sales -- just something that's taken for granted.

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Last Edited By: Fin Fang Foom Aug 11 09 12:39 PM. Edited 6 times.