Incentive Variants: How they work.913

Originally Posted by DocBrown
Quote:

Originally Posted by Oxbladder
What they are: A means of encouraging and reinforcing retailer ordering behaviour

Where the come from: Historically? Reward, limited, and incentive (different set-up but still incentive such as Uncanny X-Men 354 1:4 Bachalo Phoenix cover) started in the 90's. Doc may disagree and be correct that it is different now but this IS where the current practice was born.

That book was a 1 in 4 variant; that is, for every 4 copies of Uncanny X-Men that a retailer ordered, they would receive 3 copies of the regular, and 1 of the variant.

However...I checked out my copy of Previews from that month, and there's no mention of any variant cover for the book. In fact, I checked all the way to Mar, 2004 and Superman #205, with the Turner cover, and there's no mention of the variant there, either.

1997 was the year that Marvel established the "2 for #2" variant program, that is, each new regular #2 of a title would have two covers, in a 50/50 split, and those are all (or almost all) listed as being available to order from Previews at least from June of 1998. The listing of X-Men #354 doesn't show anything, but, of course, that isn't proof, as the other variants (#2s) from 1997 and early 1998 don't show in Previews, either.

In fact, because this was during the "Distributor Wars", Marvel doesn't even show up in Previews for much of this timeframe.

What I'd really like to see is a retailer order form. That would give us more information. If the #354 variant is not available to order by retailers, then it is not a retailer incentive.

I'm speaking specifically of the incentive variant program, not the rewards programs of the past, though that was certainly the ancestor of this program.

The rewards programs of the past did not incentivize retailers to order more product at the time to place orders. In most cases, they were a complete surprise to the retailers, as a "thank you" for supporting the publisher's products. That was the case with books like Spiderman #1 platinum, Venom Lethal Protector #1 Gold, etc.

For example: Prophet #4 (1994) was, apparently, a "surprise" variant, also a 1 in 4. Retailers had no idea it was coming until it actually showed up.

That's how it worked back then.

Giving retailers rewards FOR ordering isn't the same thing as giving them incentives TO order.

Originally Posted by JLS_Comics
and for other books, a retailer has to by X number of a random title to qualify for the retail incentive books