There’s an anniversary coming and some reading this may even want to celebrate it.
The newest British comic to be regularly found on the shelves of newsagents, Quantum, launched in April 2023. Not a special, or a one-off, or a (shudder) bookazine, but an actual new British comic coming out every two months, as regular as clockwork and sitting alongside the long established 2000AD, Commando and Panini Marvel reprint comics that have been the stalwarts of traditional UK comics publishing for many years.
Now on 18 April 2024 Time Bomb Comics will mark the date of Quantum’s first birthday by releasing the seventh issue of the anthology comic and beginning the title’s second publishing year. For those more used to ’85 years of Beano’ or ’45 years of 2000AD’ milestones when it comes to British comics, a first anniversary might not seem that big a deal.
But for me and all the team involved with running Time Bomb it’s a huge achievement, so I hope you’ll forgive me wanting to shout about it.
I don’t mean the stories Quantum has or the creators that have collaborated on them. The proof is in the pudding there, be that in WHS or some of the indie newsagents that have it on their shelves. No, I want to shout about something else.
You see, beyond the fact that a small UK indie comics publisher has managed to produce six consecutive issues of anything within 1 year, we’ve done it through a channel that a lot of people with any professed interest in British comics had decided was pretty much dead in the water when it came to publishing new comics.
One year on, I can kind of understand why they think that. You see, traditional comics publishing into the newsagents is both hard and expensive.
First of all, there’s the SOR rule – Sale Or Return – which every title you see in the newsagents is subject to. That’s the big difference from the comic shops and crowd funder distribution models that most UK indie comic publishers work with, and it pretty much means what it says on the tin.
For example, if Trevor’s Comics orders 20 copies of your comic through Diamond, Trevor needs to sell them, ideally before they go into his back-issue boxes next month. He’s bought them, so he’s stuck with them. However, if Trevor’s News takes 20 copies then Trevor can return to his distributor any that he doesn’t sell, at no penalty to Trevor, when they need to come off the shelf. And if that means it’s the publisher that loses money? Well, them’s the breaks.
Honestly, this was the biggest thing we had to get our heads around, especially when we found out that the good sell-though level for titles in newsagents from a distributor perspective is just 22% – so for every 100 copies out there on the shelf 22 are expected to be sold with the rest being pulped. Blimey.
Thankfully, Quantum has had a consistently higher sell-through – we average between 35% and 38% per issue, but of course that still means at least 65% do get returned.
Luckily we’ve also been able to avoid a mass regular pulping, arranging with our distributor for 60% of those Quantum unsolds to be returned back to us every two months. We have to pay the return carriage costs, but here Quantum’s perfect-bound format works in our favour as 80% of those returned comics have (so far at least) been unmarked, undamaged copies that we can use elsewhere.
The other big challenge – the biggest, really – has been the costs involved in getting each issue of Quantum out there. There’s the aforementioned return carriage fee, but also the upfront printing and distributor costs needed to get the comic published every 2 months. Add into that the creator payments, storage fees, marketing and promo, ancillary costs: it all adds up!
The nature of publishing Quantum bimonthly also means that while we have to pay the upfront costs 1 month before each issue goes on sale, we don’t see any sales return until 1 month after that same issue goes off sale. That’s really made us focus on the Quantum cash-flow!
Thankfully, Quantum seems to have found a steady and regular readership, which also means that the sales payments back to us have been welcome and regular. Also, during Quantum’s inaugural year Time Bomb has still been publishing other comics for the already existing audience that we reach through conventions, crowd-funders and our webstore, so even outside of Quantum we’ve been keeping busy and maintaining turnover.
One year on, do I think those commentators and nay-sayers are right about comics not being viable in the newsagents anymore? It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I don’t, although I’ll concede that it’s not the easiest of routes to take.
Ultimately, publishing Quantum has been a Nemesis-like roller-coaster of learning curves with some unexpected and terrifying twists, but like any good thrill-ride continues to be breathlessly exciting.
If you’ve been with us so far for the Quantum ride, thank you. If you haven’t, do consider jumping on, but time it right as we’re not stopping.
Stopping? We’re not even slowing down.
Quantum is available from all good newsagents. Truth.
Steve Tanner
This article is part of the testing phase of the new Comic Industry Directory coming live to kickstarter in May , giving creators involved a listing online and in print and being able to include their illustrations, video, digital comics on the website to share.
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