General Category > Comic Related Discussion
DC Gone Digital
Yoc:
I agree the price remaining so high while overhead drops seems greedy.
I hope someone tracks how many shops close their doors, especially if Marvel follows the DC lead.
John C:
I think that's actually WHY the price is so high, Yoc. It's not greed--we're talking about peanuts for Warner Brothers, who'll keep DC's doors open forever just to have movie ideas to grab--but rather a sort of informal bargain with the comic shops or possibly a formal deal with Diamond that they won't undercut price.
My worry isn't so much for the customer, but about the customer. This sort of pricing could make their comics entirely unprofitable, meaning they and other companies will look at it and say, well, if DC couldn't make money with digital comics, then there's really no point in trying.
Yoc:
--- Quote from: John C on September 03, 2011, 08:11:07 AM ---I think that's actually WHY the price is so high, Yoc. It's not greed--we're talking about peanuts for Warner Brothers, who'll keep DC's doors open forever just to have movie ideas to grab--but rather a sort of informal bargain with the comic shops or possibly a formal deal with Diamond that they won't undercut price.
--- End quote ---
Ok so DC is sorta trying to keep the shops half alive by continuing to gouge the ever dwindling customers.
The customers who seem to be the last thing they worry about. ie- giving them the best deal for their dollar. Sure publishers care about them trying to milk them dry as fast as possible but they seem to forget they started as a cheap disposable entertainment that was afordable to collect once apon a time and now readers really have to think 'is that book worth $3-5 bucks for just 20 odd pages?' The answer is 'no' more and more.
I wonder how many more people show on a Free Comicbook Day than a normal day? Is dropping the price and quality of the paper, etc perhaps an idea? When shopping at the grocery store a VERY prevaling trend is 'give them less' with a slightly cheaper than normal price and let them think they are saving money. The optics of a higher price just doesn't work there. Perhaps comics need to figure out how to give more for less. Hell, huge b&w manga collections sell like crazy from what I hear, how about trying that in America? As long as they made sure the Story was top notch why wouldn't that work here too? What's another X-men book to Marvel? Call it the X-Men Manga Collection - sell it dirt cheap and maybe include a free prize like they do on UK magazines?
Blockbuster just called it quits when they couldn't see the writing on the wall when it came to ease of use and distribution. Comics have managed to avoid becoming the next 8-track but come on guys, you are circling the bowl fast here. People are only loyal so much and you are far from 'the new thing' here.
Roygbiv666:
I do find it interesting that DC's game plan doesn't seem to address what every nerd on the interwebs says are the problems with the comics industry. Instead, they focussed on new #1s, high collars, and changes to continuity. Did they even try to address the issue of comic availability (in remaining mom and pop shops, 7-11 type stores, Wal-Mart, etc.) and the basic concept of supply and demand - if they can get demand up, they can get the prices down? No. Or maybe they did and it just didn't work.
How much does allocating about 2 square feet for a spinner rack in a store cost the store in order to recoup it with sales.
Also, take a lesson from drug dealers (at the least the kinds I know about, the ones on "Law & Order" and "CSI", and ... "Barney Miller"): get the kids hooked with free samples and make them a customer for life.
No, those high collars and no undies will really save the market.
John C:
What I meant, Yoc, was by keeping the digital prices high, they aren't taking any move that can harm the shops. It's stupid, but this is the sort of thing businesses pull. Rather than evolve, the publisher refuses to give discounts so that the shops are "competitive."
But yes, I think it would also kill the shops (by frying their profit margins to pennies), but going back to cheap paper, high availability, and low prices should be able to pull some nice distribution. Sorry, I mean that would work IF the stories were readable (Justice League #1...wasn't).
Actually, you know what might work well? Use the gift card model. I'm not sure how to handle the security aspect, but as long as we're talking digital anyway, imagine the something like a greeting card (also a scam business, but whatever...). You get a mini-cover and the other three "pages" might be a well-designed preview of the issue. You get to the counter and the magnetic strip inside gets "activated" like a normal gift card, except that you can now use it to access the full comic.
Paper costs are negligible, or should be. Stores (supermarkets) don't worry about kids loitering around reading the comics instead of buying them. The preview is usable as something to occupy the kid for a few minutes while checking out. Geeks have something to collect and stockpile. Marketing gets someplace they can use their variant covers and junk that nobody really cares about. They can be dumped if not sold. And if the price can be low enough, you should be able to do frequent give-aways to the little kids and otherwise make up the lost margins with volume.
The opposite model I could see working well is the Showcase Presents model recast as sort of a mega-anthology: Rather than a few bucks per issue, just give me the entire week in one enormous volume (cheap paper, possibly no color) for a low price. It could easily work out to most customers paying more, overall, but I think most people would go for it. I mean, at fifteen bucks, sure, I only bought it for the Blue Beetle story, but there's probably a bunch of other decent stuff in there that I wouldn't have read otherwise...
(A Showcase-style format also gives the opportunity to stabilize production problems. If an artist is running slow, one month, just grab some old story from the archives and herald it as a special treat. Since there's no real "theme" for the book, it doesn't even need to be related to the missing feature!)
Anybody know what modern comic budgets look like? Page rates for writers and artists could easily make either model more or less sound, obviously. I mean, if you get a quarter per issue (sell at a dollar, the retailer takes about half, and the distributor half again), that could require too big a volume if the production costs are too high.
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