As reported here earlier, There are complaints that there will not be enough The Complete Calvin and Hobbes books for the holiday rush. Editor and Publisher has printed a retort by non-other-than Andrews McMeel’s CEO Thomas Thornton.
“The Complete Calvin and Hobbes”‘ first three weeks on sale show units sold of 34,329, per Neilsen Bookscan numbers. We’re delighted with that and think it supports the 250,000-copy print run and will provide the single digit returns risk that we are striving for. We have ten more weeks of on-sale time before year-end so will need to average 21,567 copies per week to sell out (250,000 less 34,329 sold = 215,671 divided by 10). Since we have averaged 11,443 for the first three weeks, you can see your lead premise is incorrect. We need to sell a lot of books in the balance of the year!
It get’s more number detailed as you go on.