As a participant/Silver Sponsor, there are a couple of questions I get each year about Free Comic Book Day: Is this a new issue? The answer to that is “yes”. Then I get asked: Why are you giving away a brand-new issue?
That’s a much longer answer.
Every company has to do what works for best for them. For some people, that’s reprints or for others, samplers. For me, it’s a new issue.
Financially, the FCBD edition, and it’s follow-up retail issue, do almost as well as a regular run of the book. That’s because of a lot of things, from being able to gang the printing of both versions and bringing down my per-unit cost, to being able to sell advertising based on the higher circulation numbers that I can’t for the regular run. As a participant, we’re asked to provide the books at cost. I actually provide mine below cost, to compete with the bigger companies.
From a reader’s point of view, I don’t want my readers to be upset that a book they bought X months ago would have been free if they’d just waited until Free Comic Book Day. Especially since I publish quarterly, I don’t have as many issues between a year-old issue and a Free Comic Book Day issue to lessen that feeling.
And from a philosophical point of view, I just think FCBD should be about giving away a product that’s as close to the regular product as possible and that means a full issue. Free Ice Cream Scoop Day, on which FCBD is heavily based, gives you a full scoop of ice cream. Not a little taster spoon. And not a scoop of mint chocolate chip with a little less sugar and no chocolate chips, but trust us the real thing is even better. It’s the full experience.
None of this is to take away or insult the choices other publishers make. You’ve got to do what’s right for you. Doing a full brand-new issue of Love and Capes is right for me.