If it seems like the only updates happening these days are from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, well, you aren’t wrong. It’s partly ongoing pandemic, partly not having the time in the day to run down minor happenings and spin them into 600 words, and partly the realization that if I want there to be another 16 years of Fleen (given that 15 December is the traditional observation date for Fleenmas), I’d have to reduce my writing until I felt compulsion to resume.

And largely some things that I haven’t discussed publicly yet; some of you know the deal, and thank you for letting me share the news at my own pace and discretion. It’s a time of transition for me — don’t panic, nobody’s dying — and things are very much up in the air. I’m not going anywhere, but the pace that I’ve maintained for more than a decade and a half is not, for the moment at least, sustainable. But as long as Stuff is Going On for me, FSFCPL has been more than kind enough to provide us with news from the BD scene¹ and keep the lights on in the interim.

So without further ado, let’s turn it over to FSFCPL for this week’s update.

We weren’t the only ones to pay attention to last week’s story, and further developments call for a followup.

First, creator Souillon (through Maliki) had to put out a clarification to counter a narrative full of shortcuts that was developing in the reactions: in essence, the creator’s message is that, no, their managing to sell these 800 copies in a single day would not necessarily prove the publisher was incompetent for failing to sell these before Maliki intervened, as online selling and traditional distribution tend to be different markets². The real responsible party, if anything, would rather be the culture of overproduction in the current market where everyone attempts to get bigger in order to compete, at the expense of individual creators. Moreover, it would hardly translate to other creators who don’t necessarily have Maliki’s community.

And if I might add, other creators don’t necessarily have the cash on hand for such a transaction (team Maliki directly credit their Tipeee patrons for providing that), and even if they did, they could be forgiven for not willing to risk that much money in a way that may never be recouped, or only years later. Do not underestimate how much of a leap of faith this transaction was for team Maliki.

Second, I made a few shortcuts myself last week in the estimate for when the investment would be recouped.

• The first factor I forgot is the taxman, and not any tax Maliki’s business or any of its principals has to pay, but the tax the buyers do: the value-added tax, or VAT. On books, in France, VAT is 5.5%. Fortunately, we know that Maliki’s added value as a retailer here is 40%, which means that out of the 19.90€ they collect, 19.90 * 40% * 5.5% = 0.4378€ will be remitted to the public treasury, regardless of whatever else happens.

  So the operation would cease being a net loss only once 513 copies (rounding up) had been sold, not 503 as previously implied.

• The second assumption I made was that the book hadn’t earned out: in that hypothesis, we can stop now. But what if it had? In that case, each sale not only results in a net 19.4622€ increase in cash from the viewpoint of team Maliki’s finances, but also in royalties being paid out, this time to Souillon as a creator (fortunately, Souillon is the sole creator in that instance). This is triggered by declaring the sale to the publisher. By their own admission, we know the royalties to be 8 to 12% of the retail price before taxes, which here amounts to 19.90 * (100 – 5.5)/100 * 8-12% = 1.50444 to 2.25666€

  So we can now estimate the number of copies that would have been necessary to sell in order to recoup the initial expense to be between 461 and 477 copies. Still more than half of them, even though team Maliki took almost all the risk here while everyone else was willing to write off this batch as worthless.

  (Of course, there are other factors here, but for which we don’t have information, such as credit card transaction fees; this is the best estimate we can put out with the information we were generously provided.)

Speaking of the batch, Becky was kind enough to share a photo of the 800 books they now have to sign and ship. Individually. Each and every one of them. We at Fleen wish them protection from cramps and other musculoskeletal affections …

Thanks as always to Pierre Lebeaupin for keeping on top of the story. It really is fascinating to see what the differences in publishing are in the European model.

Spam of the day:

Dear Madam, Dear Sir Are you looking for splendid X-mas gifts for your loved ones and friends?

Nope. All about the crappy gifts myself. Thanks for asking!

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¹ Bandes dessinées, you pervs.

²For instance, this is the assumption Oni Press made when they simultaneously published both a Kickstarter edition of Lucky Penny — a Kickstarter which relied largely on the existing Johnny Wander community — and a regular edition for bookstores.