SO WHERE'S ARKHAVEN?

     This week's Stock Market correction in social media stocks has the Manosphere's Red Pills giddy with excitement. They've been banned on many of those sites---mostly for doxxing, trolling, harassment, etc. They have their collective hopes up that Facebook, Twitter, and others are headed for financial oblivion. These corporations are nowhere near economic collapse---their stock values were hyperinflated---but the Red Pills can always dream, can't they?

     Vox Day has been flapping his arms lately, hoping that Tor Books will collapse soon too. Tor won't publish Vox' less-than-mediocre science fiction, but does publish works by John Scalzi. Scalzi is actually a good writer whom Vox bitterly envies. Now Vox is especially exorcised because another Tor author dared criticize Arkhaven Comics---the Vox Day-run front that's supposed to overthrow the 'hegemony' of publishers Marvel and DC. It seems that Jon Del Arroz, an Arkhaven operative and Vox toady, referred to himself as a 'bestselling author' and a Tor writer disputed that appellation. Whatever Del Arroz said in response got him suspended (again) from Twitter. 

     But this brings up an interesting point; one that all of Vox' disciples would do well to consider. What has Arkhaven really got to show for all that crowd-sourced income?

    Well, it seems that, as of June, Arkhaven is sharing less than 4% of comic market share with an unknown number of 'less than top 20' publishers.  These all currently have less than 0.3% of market share apiece. That's hardly much of a challenge to Marvel (38%) or DC (32%). Vox doesn't even rate a per cent; he's in per mils. 

    Vox boasts that Arkhaven is a top-seller on Amazon. But that's Amazon retail where there is little or no competition. As it happens, Amazon has a dedicated site for comics called Comixology. What happens when you search for Arkhaven there?

    By the way, the same thing happens when searching online with other major retailers and distributors like Comix Zone:

Or Dreamland Comics:

     Then searching for Alt-Hero; Arkhaven's flagship series, we find that Midtown Comics, one of the largest retailers in the US, knows nothing about it:

    And even on the Comic Books Subreddit, one of the nation's largest discussion forums on the subject, Arkhaven hasn't even been noticed:

    I wonder if all of those donors to Arkhaven's crowd-sourcing can demand a refund? Because it doesn't appear that Arkhaven is actually doing much to promote sales. If they're going to be competitive with other publishers, they need to start competing. 

     But the Arkhaven fiasco is nothing new with Vox and his cult of fanatics. A little over a year ago, Infogalactic was going to dethrone Wikipedia as the online reference source of record. It hasn't even come close. 

     Unfortunately, fanatics are rarely discouraged by reality. But the next time you see a Vox-related project on a crowd-sourcing site, caveat emptor.