The Variant Cover Conundrum Part 3

Last time around, we looked at different types of variant covers and their impact on the marketplace.

Now, let’s get back to the retailer who’s loaded up with a thousand or more variant covers, which I touched upon here. You may be asking yourself, what exactly is the point of that?

The answer has to do with the retailer exclusive variant – that is, a variant a retailer can order that would be sold exclusively at their stores. Some retailers like this idea because it gives them something their customers can’t get anywhere else. Of course, printing a variant cover isn’t easy or cheap: besides paying an artist to create a new illustration, which usually includes several levels of approvals, there are plate change fees and other expenses imposed by the printer. That means most publishers set a fairly high minimum order on a retailer exclusive variant.

The upside is that when you order a thousand copies of your retailer exclusive variant, you also qualify for that one in 1,000 variant – you know, the one you might be able to sell for several hundred dollars. Does that make up the cost of your store variant? Not entirely, but it helps, especially when you probably have also ordered some 1:500 covers, 1:250s, 1:100s, etc., each of which have their own inflated market value. (And if you hadn’t figured it out yet, retailers order these variants at about 50 percent off cover price, which is about $3.99 these days.)

The only problem is…what do you do with a thousand or more store variants? Not a lot of shops have a thousand regular customers who each want the same thing.

Fortunately for these retailers, there are platforms like Whatnot that make it easy to sell off massive overstock on variants at relatively low prices. Over the past two years or so this has led to a devaluation of retailer variant covers. As several retailers have told me in recent months, the market for retailer variant covers has just about collapsed. Unless you can put a top hero like Spider-Man or Batman on the cover, or a half-naked woman drawn by an A+ artist, interest in retailer variants has dwindled dramatically.

There are those who can still make this business work, like the retailers who set up at conventions with space dedicated to selling their exclusive variants, or who sell them on their websites. And some retailers quietly split their exclusive print run with other retailers, sharing the costs along the way. Still, these business models aren’t for everyone.

And the sheer number of variant covers on a single comic can get out of control. Remember that store logo variant I described earlier? I once had to wrangle over 100 of these for a DC Comics title. This, of course, is where a well-organized spreadsheet is your friend. More recently, I have it on good authority that a title recently launched with dozens of variants any account could order if they hit the qualifiers, plus over 100 retailer variants. (Something I didn’t mention earlier – if a retailer likes his exclusive variant enough, he often will order different versions of it, like ones with no trade dress or in black and white. These can add up fast.)

All of this can cause multiple headaches for retailers. So what, if anything, can be done about it? The obvious answer is that if retailers don’t like variant covers, they shouldn’t order them – but that’s not always practical when you have customers asking for them and competition that carries them.

Ultimately, the answer can depend on what kind of a store you want to run. There are shops that promote themselves as “reader stores” – that is, they focus on graphic novels, manga, and YA books, and don’t bother with the collectibles and back issues. And when it comes to comics, they order the main couple of covers and skip the rest. It’s not for everyone, of course.

At the end of the day, it all depends on what you want out of the market, what kind of customer base you’ve built, and what kind of store you want to run. It’s not a great answer, but we have to live and work within the realities of the marketplace if we want to keep our heads above water.

What does the future hold? If past is prologue, one thing we can count on is publishers putting out more variant covers with more inventive ways of offering them. By all accounts, launching a new comic book not based on existing IP is harder than ever, so a few clever variant covers can go a long way to boost interest in a new project, especially when it’s not headlined by a brand-name superhero.

Before I close, I want to say thanks for reading. This was the longest sustained writing I’ve done in a while, and it was challenging and fun. More to come!

Next: Navigating a crowded marketplace.