smisaacs asked:
I just realized my last note wasn't really question... My question is, how do you balance building a fan base for new properties with publishing books that are established? Do you feel or worry that "over-publishing" an existing popular property will inadvertently harm another of your own "new" properties with respect to readers finite budget? Is it just better that it's your books selling, established or new and not other companies?
Well, first off, we don’t view our readership as robots who’ll follow us blindly. And there’s absolutely no evidence that if you eliminate one book, all of those readers will shift to another one—if anything, there’s evidence completely contrary to that.
So with that in mind, it all comes back to Darwinism. We put out the best books that we can, hopefully for a diverse audience, hopefully all with the potential of finding a specific audience, and then the chips fall where they may. But if there’s a market for, let’s say another WOLVERINE book, that doesn’t mean that if we don’t do another WOLVERINE book all of those readers will follow IRON FIST instead. More likely, some will spend their money on other titles, and many will spend it on other things entirely.
Just like an established property, a new property needs to be able to stand on its own feet and survive in a hostile world. Because even beyond the boundaries of Marvel, that’s what the landscape of publishing is.
