Why Can't We Wait To Process The Success Or Failure Of Comics-Related Projects?

There's an article up on New York Times this morning about the print runs for graphic novel efforts focused on successful prose efforts from Stephanie Meyer and Janet Evanovich. Something about these articles hits me as funny, however. While I prefer this kind of article to those about celebrities doing comic books, as there's at least a print run that's resulted from these projects and with the celebrity comics it's generally just an assumption of copies sold or status transfered that usually doesn't materialize, I'm still a bit weirded out by folding a success/failure mechanism into the PR for a project that has yet to hit the stands. Complicating matters is that these companies tend not to participate in any business story tracking the success or failure of this kind of investment unless there's further PR gain as they define it; ask after a project that seem to have a heavy presence in the discount bins and you get defensive posturing and no comments and a real push to go do something else. Some companies reap PR benefits through claims while following a policy of obfuscation when it comes to providing any kind of standard information that might lead to a more solid conclusion from a third party. There's also nothing in these initial articles about the sorts of contractual issues that could weigh heavily on the ultimate success of even the biggest print run. So, you know, good for these companies and their giant print runs -- which isn't anything new in the French market, by the way -- and I imagine they'll be successful. It just strikes me as odd that we can't wait until it actually happens to say so.
 
posted 7:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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