brevoortformspring:

Because, as always, the numbers you’re throwing out are complete crap nonsense. No numbers that you will ever see online are right.

Have to remember perception is important, though. There’s obviously a lot of unknown factors, to be sure: digital sales probably being the biggest unknown that’s only going to get more relevant over time.

But people work from the info they actually have. Because people get really protective of their series; particularly people who’ve suffered stuff getting cancelled and discontinued on them before. They worry about how their various series are doing, and in the absence of hard info they start speculating. And if the info makes it look like a series is doing bad, regardless of whether it really is or not, that’s going to affect people’s perceptions in a bad way. 

One, it could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy: People think a title is doing badly, so they start already writing it off, leading to it actually doing badly. Especially if there’s little to no positive marketing buzz for the title to counterbalance it.

I mean, to pick on these two titles, I’ve seen very little about SB&NM that Weisman and Stanton haven’t done themselves on their Twitters, and likewise Black Knight’s biggest media push that it got was the announcement that it was cancelled. A number of other titles have also gotten little obvious buzz outside of people taking betting pools on which of them will get cancelled next.

Two, it leads to resentment like this: Why did this series I like get cancelled while this other one seems to be doing much worse and is still going? It’s not fair! Which then hurts perceptions of other series as well even if they don’t deserve it. (I mean, as much as I’m sad to see Black Knight go, I’d be equally sad to see SB&NM go; I don’t want it to be a misery competition.)

I think it might help to one, be more open with how various series are doing so the people following them don’t have to worry/guess, and two, work to generate more positive marketing buzz! We fans can only do so much, especially those of us with tiny audiences.