Too Much Cool Stuff – Not Enough $$$ – October ‘09
by KC Carlson
We’re entering into that time of year where the pickings are slim for exciting new products. Most all of the cool new stuff for year-end holiday sales has already been solicited in the last couple of months. Long-standing sales wisdom says that people don’t buy for themselves during December, and nobody buys anything in January (and maybe February) since most folks overspent the holidays and are scrambling to pay off those bills. So the conventional wisdom for publishers is not to release anything too exciting. This is not just true for comics, but for most of pop culture. You’d be hard pressed to find many blockbuster CDs or novels or new movies (except for Christmas Day releases). New TV virtually disappears for much of December and early January, giving way to holiday programming – old and new – and end-of-season Bowl Games. I personally think the conventional wisdom is crazy – it’s actually the perfect time to sneak something cool out there when it doesn’t get buried by a dozen different similar things!
So let’s see what we can find this month…
