My Little Pony Hits 90,000 Preorders

The big news to me this week was that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Issue 1 has hit 90,100 advance orders through Diamond; I was also amused that Rich Johnston has access to Diamond preorder numbers but that’s not our focus today. That simple news item was then embellished and pontificated upon across the internet, giving credit to Bronies and other nefarious groups. This tweet from IDW has been cited repeatedly as confirmation.

I don’t see mention of the number in that, do you? Anyhow, what’s striking is that comic shops have committed to that large a number of a comic that has the potential to sell outside the comic market. The key issue there is that those young girls and moms aren’t normally wandering their local comic shop looking for new all ages material. Unless IDW can market this book outside the normal avenues it’s not going to hit that magic audience.

My daughter has a large collection of the toys and enjoys the cartoon so I can see this being a hit, but in a digest format selling at the local grocery store, not as a standard size $3.99 comic. And IDW is offering the book in six different covers, plus subscription and 1-in-10 variants and a slipcase version for $24.99 containing all six standard covers. Who exactly is IDW marketing these to anyway?

I hope that’s a frothy rootbeer…

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Scott VanderPloeg
Scott VanderPloeg

Scott works in I.T. but lives to eat and read. His other ramblings can be found at AE Index and eBabble. Art collection at Comic Art Fans.

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4 Comments

  1. I confess we went big on My Little Pony #1 at the Comic Book Lounge — we have a large number of customers who expressed interest, and we are planning a release party akin to the Marvel release parties of late on November 21st, the day that IDW is estimating that #1 will be shipped to us for. With the large number of multiple covers, our customers have expressed interest in getting all of them, and a few have already opted to get the slipcase edition.

  4. We went big at Big B. Every cover we could get and as many as we could! The first wave will sell like crazy for people like me, adults and teens who love the show and the fandom who will buy it like crazy.

    Then there’s the followup, a book like this has no shelf life. It’s always going to be appealing and appropriate for kids which means that it will be an easy sell to a mom and dad who want an appropriate, kid friendly comic to introduce their children to.

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