One of the things that I’ve been talking about, that I’m really passionate about is trying to figure out ways to introduce comic books to new readers and then redirect those readers into the direct market. Most of us figured out comic books, we got it at our 7/11 or our newsstand and eventually fell in love with the medium and we became direct market customers. And I think at IDW we’re very unique sin being able to expand the market in that way. We’ve been doing things like the Micro Fun Packs which are miniature comic books. We had really broad distribution of the Fun Packs so they were at every mass retailer—WalMart, Target, Toys R Us—and our sell-through was crazy. On the first Fun Packs our sell-through averaged about 60% at mass which is unheard of for any product. It’s an extraordinary sell-through. And that Fun Pack has marketing collateral to back, it drives people to the direct market. So if you’re a mom and you picked up these Fun Packs to put in your kids stocking for Christmas and the kid likes it, they’re not going to go back and get more fun packs, the only place really to get that content is through the direct market and our marketing collateral in there is very clear about that.
Ted Adams of IDW talks about different ways to grow the comic audience. In addition to the fun packs – which sell in the hundreds of thousands, he says later in the interview – there’re also the books that the publisher sells through Scholastic, which he says have had “virtually 100% sell through in significant six figure quantities.”