Why do you doubt it? Probably because you're just being contrary, Alias. Time has over 30 million readers worldwide.

I too would be interested to hear if Time's review of Eightball results in a bump in sales. I'd be even more interested to hear if the Ghost World movie results in a bump in sales.

But... if it doesn't, I don't think that would prove anything about Eightball's appeal. The book's only available in about 500 stores nationwide, right? No amount of publicity can induce a person to buy a product if the product's not there for them to buy.

>>But... if it doesn't, I don't think that would prove anything about Eightball's appeal. The book's only available in about 500 stores nationwide, right? No amount of publicity can induce a person to buy a product if the product's not there for them to buy.<<

The Time review includes the publisher's name. The publisher has a website, and a mail-order operation. Sales are not limited to retail.

Best, Pat

The hypothesis (whether it's Kim's or not, I'm not sure) could only be accurately tested by looking, first, at the sales increase of books reviewed by Time (establishes a base line for comparison), second, the recognized availability of those books by Time's readership (despite media hype, most people don't turn to the web for shopping) and, only then, comparing pre-Time and post-Time sales for Eightball.

And I would add that one write up in Time probably wouldn't increase the sales of anything too drastically. Only constant, widespread exposure, will bring about enough awareness to make any signifigant rise in sales.

Everyone repeat after me: Pat is wrong. The printed TIME review does NOT include the publisher's name. There is even a link to the article earlier on this thread so that Mr. I-Am-A-Journalist-Not-A-Critic could have checked before planting his foot in his mouth yet again.

In any event, Pat's challenge is silly. A review in TIME does good only so long as The Averange Reader who sees the review in TIME can easily pick up a copy of EIGHTBALL. (Only a small fraction of people order over the web, and people rarely order stuff they're unfamiliar with over the web; if you're buying new stuff, you go to brick-and-mortar stores and paw over it first; at least I know I do.) Moreover, the cultural graveyards are littered with the corpses of books, movies, and (yes) comics who got great reviews and still didn't sell.

Where TIME will have some sort of effect, most likely, is in the sales of the Fall's Pantheon edition of DAVID BORING (and it'll have an effect in indirect terms of bookstores stocking it more than in direct terms of readers picking it up), but since we don't have a baseline measurement as to how a Pantheon-released Dan Clowes book would do WITHOUT a TIME review as opposed to WITH a TIME review, it will be impossible to trace the specific effect of the review.

Of course, I'm sure comic shop owners can weigh in with reports on whether the TIME review created any sort of spike, and whether this spike came from "real-world" readers as opposed to fans.

Not that any of these facts will shake Pat from his conviction that EIGHTBALL is unreadable boring pretentious bilge whose reputation is artifically inflated by a combination of self-serving Fantagraphics shills and media poseurs and which, when deposited into the objective marketplace, will die a quick and deserved death because The People are smarter than the critics and will continue to read such superior comics as SPAWN and X-MEN, which have stories that make sense and everything.

God, I love Pat.

>>Everyone repeat after me: Pat is wrong. The printed TIME review does NOT include the publisher's name. There is even a link to the article earlier on this thread so that Mr. I-Am-A-Journalist-Not-A-Critic could have checked before planting his foot in his mouth yet again.<<

The issue was off sale by the time I started looking at this thread. Sorry. I didn't check the link because usually Time doesn't keep out-of-issue-date pages operative.

And a review of a published work that DOESN'T include the name of the publisher? That's virtually unheard of.

Fine--the Sacco piece in last week's Time, which I did see, definitely includes mention of Fantagraphics as its publisher. Shall we use THAT as the sample, instead?

>>In any event, Pat's challenge is silly. A review in TIME does good only so long as The Averange Reader who sees the review in TIME can easily pick up a copy of EIGHTBALL. (Only a small fraction of people order over the web, and people rarely order stuff they're unfamiliar with over the web; if you're buying new stuff, you go to brick-and-mortar stores and paw over it first; at least I know I do.) Moreover, the cultural graveyards are littered with the corpses of books, movies, and (yes) comics who got great reviews and still didn't sell.<<

So, IOW, you're admitting that I'm right--the public has no great interest in the content of Eightball, no matter what the intellectual elite think of it. Thus, works like Eightball and its ilk are NOT the savior of the comic-book business.

>>Where TIME will have some sort of effect, most likely, is in the sales of the Fall's Pantheon edition of DAVID BORING (and it'll have an effect in indirect terms of bookstores stocking it more than in direct terms of readers picking it up), but since we don't have a baseline measurement as to how a Pantheon-released Dan Clowes book would do WITHOUT a TIME review as opposed to WITH a TIME review, it will be impossible to trace the specific effect of the review.<<

How does a review of an earlier, serialized, version of a work have any effect on the sales or orders of the collected work SIX MONTHS LATER, Kim? If the Time readers aren't going to go out of their way to find the work as its reviewed, what makes you think they'll even remember the review this fall, let alone connect it to the Pantheon edition?

>>Of course, I'm sure comic shop owners can weigh in with reports on whether the TIME review created any sort of spike, and whether this spike came from "real-world" readers as opposed to fans.

Not that any of these facts will shake Pat from his conviction that EIGHTBALL is unreadable boring pretentious bilge whose reputation is artifically inflated by a combination of self-serving Fantagraphics shills and media poseurs and which, when deposited into the objective marketplace, will die a quick and deserved death because The People are smarter than the critics and will continue to read such superior comics as SPAWN and X-MEN, which have stories that make sense and everything.<<

No, the people aren't smarter (but neither are the critics). It's just that the people know what they want, and all the intellectual praise in the world won't change that.

Best, Pat


God, I love Pat.

Uncle Kim,

You wrote:

"A review in TIME does good only so long as The Averange Reader who sees the review in TIME can easily pick up a copy of EIGHTBALL."

What does averange mean? Please enlighten me...

Thank you

Your nephew Sam

Y'know whut average is Sam, it what the school counselor said was beyond yore reach.

I guess that some people working in bookstores who actually order graphic novels might order DAVID BORING because of the review. The specific effect for DAVID BORING will be minimal since you need a carefully planned media hype to boost comic sales but only Time/Warner would have the money to do this.

Possibly there will be a general effect of the review : people interested in good work will be reminded that there once were things called comics. Those people were all little kids at the time. Comics were great to read as kids but the kids grew up only to discover that seemingly all comics are actually very lousy. After having read the review in TIME those people might think to themselves that comics could actually be good if someone tapped into their POTENTIAL. They might even walk into a comic store if they accidentally passed one in the street just to see how those supposedly mature comics look like but they would walk out disgusted since comic shops TOTALLY suck (Pokemon and Star Wars merchandise and the overload of superhero titles with some issues of Love and Rockets and Peep Show on the porn shelf).

AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT AVERAGE MEANS TO SAM CATALINO

Average is the high, versus the low all added together to make a consistent overall number.

For the Jews during WWII, the number was averaged to be 6 million, give or take a few hundred thousand, something you DENY ever occurred.

It is a shame that you are a Nazi propagandist and holocaust revisionist. You should find another place to spread your hate.