OK, so today I finally got back my order numbers for Farlaine the Goblin #1.
They came in at 1,344 copies.
I'm not sure how to feel about this.
On the one hand, my original expectations were lower than that, figuring a minimum of 700 and ideally 1000, which makes 1,344 seem downright spectacular!
On the other hand, my original expectations were based on 2 year old sales data that showed a comic crawling in at the bottom of the charts would sell about 700 copies. Using present day figures it looks like the numbers would be more like 2,400, hence why I'm not sure how to feel about this.
What makes this doubly frustrating was that some of my marketing efforts were lost in the shuffle of paperwork. The book was supposed to be listed as 'Buy 5, Get 1 Free' and to 'Overship', which in effect meant that some stores would have received additional copies beyond what they ordered. It appears neither of these actually happened, which certainly would have improved numbers. Oh well.
On the positive side though, I sent off 300 free copies to retailers in advance, sold 60+ last weekend at the Boston Comic Con, and when combined with the books I sent off to family, friends, reviewers, and random strangers, that means there will be ~2000 copies of the book in circulation by September.
So it's not all bad:)
Now to try to improve on those numbers!
