Despite pre-release hand-wringing in the comics fan press about Lost Girls' $75 cover price and questionable erotic content, the book's publisher, Top Shelf, reports that the entire 10,000 copy first printing sold out in one day, and that they have enough advance orders for next month's 10,000 copy second printing to call that a sell-out as well. A 20,000 copy third printing of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's masterful study of sex and literature is scheduled to be released in December.
Those numbers may not sound like much in comparison to CDs that sell hundreds of thousands of copies, or movies and TV shows that have millions of viewers, but in the alternative comics world–heck, in the mainstream publishing world–those figures are strong. Never underestimate the public's hunger for art-porn, or the power of on-line retailers like Amazon–where Lost Girls was briefly in the Top 20 best-sellers, and currently sits around number 100–to bring it to the masses discreetly.