Digital Comic Museum
General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: misappear on June 02, 2012, 10:23:18 AM
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I was trolling around and stumbled on a site call The Comics Beat. (comicsbeat.com). The have the sales charts for most of the big publishers. I was looking at the numbers for some of the DC titles and I was stunned. It appears that the average "52" title sells about 32,000. There are 18 titles at less than 20,000, of which a handfull are at less than 10,000.
I don't know what I was expecting, but certainly not that abyss.
I worked in the Direct Sales department at Marvel Comics in the early 1990's, and I remember the numbers we used to generate. How can this industry survive?
I remember one discussion over the possibility of reprinting Surfer #50. We couldn't justify it unless we could sell 35,000 copies of the reprint!
Maybe I just can't get past how thing have absolutely disintegrated in the last 20 years.
Wow.
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Was that counting Digital Sales?
I was reading The New 52 Superman on Comixology until I finally tired of the technical problems I had with their reader on my pc.
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It's basic attrition. When you pay more attention to "fresh starts" or "rigorous continuity" (or both) than to putting out a good product (that is, telling fun or important stories), you lose any hopes of finding a new audience. And with the same audience that's been around for a few decades, economic or literal attrition is going to start setting in eventually.
But I don't think DC or Marvel are even in the comic book business anymore. I think they're basically low-rent marketing think-tanks. Try out ideas on the captive audience, and push the ones that work out to a big-budget theatrical release.
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Slim,
It just said sales. I didn't investigate enough to know the perameter
-D
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But I don't think DC or Marvel are even in the comic book business anymore. I think they're basically low-rent marketing think-tanks. Try out ideas on the captive audience, and push the ones that work out to a big-budget theatrical release.
That, and intellectual properties. It's easier to maintain a trademark on a character's image by publishing a monthly comic than coming out with a movie.
How do they keep going? They (DC, Marvel) are basically subsidized by Warner Brothers and Disney. They don't need to make money. Kinda like Old Lady Carlson and WKRP. WKRP? Anyone?
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Let's look at an imaginary, hypothetical, couldn't have happened, "Al Gore won Florida" scenario. Suppose back in the early '90's when Marvel went public, and the Spiderman movie project was still up for grabs but gonna happen, someone floated the totally untrue but delicious sounding rumor that the big dog of the day, James Cameron, was going to direct the soon to be finalized Spiderman movie. Imagine the bump in the stock price, I mean, theoretical bump in the stock price. Probably a little more business worthy than Reed getting a vasectomy or something.
So what is being suggested is that Marvel and DC are just sounding boards for future movie projects? It's an interesting conjecture, but wouldn't you want people with at least a modicum of talent actually writing the stuff?
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I can't resist the setup...
They have a modicum of talent. No more, but that's all they need.
I'm not sure how serious I am, exactly, but my understanding is that studio executives basically just get a feel for the character and decide whether it'll work on the big screen. That doesn't involve actually reading the comics, just getting a quick thumbnail. The script writer might want to read, but also might not.
Roy's right, though. They're also trademark warehouses. After about five years of disuse, or one flubbed court case where the defendant explains that you can't damage an inactive brand, the Superman name is up for grabs. For that, you want less than a modicum of talent, because it's cheaper to produce those books.
Anybody know what the current page-rates are at DC/Marvel? I'd be interested in seeing how well their costs match up to their revenue, figuring they get about a dollar per comic sold, I'd imagine.
(And the real question is, do they know what their purpose is? They talk a lot about marketshare and whether certain books are profitable, which is at odds to common arithmetic. Three quarters of nothing isn't much.)
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I was thinking that at $4, the companies would gross about 40%, or $1.60. I can't see a comic costing more than 25 to 30 cents to print, and that for a fairly deluxe format. I don't know what the creative people make anymore. I do know that many small companies cut the creators in for a percentage of net, with literally nothing upfront.
See that's where it gets confusing to me. You've got pencils, inks, script, letters, and production costs. Does that mean that if the big two make a couple of thousand off a monthly comic, then that's ok?
Course there's ad revenue. But really, how much can ads cost these days with such poor circulation?
Ironic twist. When the various scanners post up new stuff on torrent sites, they usually cut out the ads. Advertisers can't get no love.
I really would like to know the extent of the impact of illegal downloads. Not that that will ever go away, but just curious. Course illegals would decline if the cost/benefit of the product wasn't so ridiculously out of line.
Like i'm ever going to actually pay $60 for an archive reprint of some dubious second banana hero from 1941.
-D
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Some quick math.
Say a title sells 20,000/month @ $4/book. Over a year the total sold is $960,000. Assuming DC/Marvel gets 40%, that's a $384,000.
Say 25 titles/month is $9.216M, or $9,216,000. I'd like 9 million dollars please, but for a company is that a lot?
Of course, DC/Marvel get their money from merchandising too - t-shirts (why can't I get a straight-up Captain America shirt that looks like Cap's? Too expensive to make given all the designs on it?), action figures, statues, etc.
Where was I going with this?
Lessee, at its peak I think Captain Marvel sold about 1 million copies per month back in the 1940s. That's .. $1.2M/year @40% = $480,000. For one book. In 1940. 72 years ago.
If the 'average' title sold half that, that's $240,000/book/year. Say 25 titles, that's ...$6M/year. In 1940. 72 years ago.
Yeah - WTF?
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Interesting numbers, Roy,
but I think you need to reconsider "25 titles per month". Fawcett MAY have had a dozen books/mo at the circulation heights of 1943/44. Fiction House had about half that many titles. DC MIGHT have had 25 titles/mo in the early '40s but I am leery of that. Marvel perhaps a dozen. Different times. Big companies were not that big back then.
Also, the wholesalers were not paying 4¢ per comic to the publisher. More like 1.5¢ and you have to subtract the printing and production costs from those big numbers.
Still...
Peace, Jim (|:{>
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Interesting numbers, Roy,
but I think you need to reconsider "25 titles per month". Fawcett MAY have had a dozen books/mo at the circulation heights of 1943/44. Fiction House had about half that many titles. DC MIGHT have had 25 titles/mo in the early '40s but I am leery of that. Marvel perhaps a dozen. Different times. Big companies were not that big back then.
Also, the wholesalers were not paying 4¢ per comic to the publisher. More like 1.5¢ and you have to subtract the printing and production costs from those big numbers.
Still...
Peace, Jim (|:{>
In both cases, there is also the advertising revenue to consider (and, I have no idea what that is.) Some early books had little or no ads in them; modern books seem to be 50% ads.
(Edit: Oops, I guess I should read the whole thread before replying. Ad revenue has already been discussed, I guess...)
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In terms of advertising revenue, I can't guess at fixed numbers, but it seems likely that the rates are inversely proportional to the price of the comic. If you buy a comic for four bucks, that has to be to compensate for something. And that makes sense.
(For what it's worth, looking up newspaper advertising, with a couple of wild four-digit aberrations, a column-inch doesn't generally go for more than three hundred bucks. The overwhelming majority are less than twenty, which seems to also generally be about the price for papers in smaller, affluent areas that might match comics. Does a column-inch match a page? Do we need to find out how many column-inches to a page? Anybody want to just call DC or Marvel in the morning?)
Now, best I can figure bumbling around the Internet, it looks like page rates are roughly a hundred dollars per page for a typical nobody writer/artist. So, figure it costs somewhere on the order of eight thousand (script, pencils, inks, each at a hundred for twenty-five-ish pages, plus miscellaneous worker bees and a cover). It could be lower, but it's also higher in cases where you hire a superstar type, so that seems like a good starting point.
For printing costs, I see estimates (from Mexico, which sounds like a good lower bound) of about thirty cents. And Diamond gets a 60% cut (I thought they took more--I come from a world where every middle-man takes half the profit, so expected more like 75%). That leaves DC or Marvel with somewhere around $1.30, assuming their printer (Quebecor, was it?) can match the Mexican prices.
Assuming all of that is right, and ignoring advertising for the moment, a book needs to sell somewhere around six thousand copies to break even. That seems like a more convenient unit of measurement than trying to guess how much money is "good." Every extra six thousand issues moved is a failing book that could be floated for another month, basically.
Also consider that office space in midtown Manhattan is about seventy bucks per square foot (advertised, so assume higher after some bait and switch), which is equivalent to about fifty comics sold. I'm not saying that DC covers that cost, but rather that Warner could get that much by booting DC out and renting the space to a shady hedge fund, so they should ideally make that much money. That means that the 32k originally cited, minus operating costs, allows them to cover the equivalent of rent for roughly ten standard office cubicles (32k - 6k, /50x50).
Advertising-wise, I'll hazard a guess that the rate for a full page can't be much more than a thousand (figuring the above column-inch of twenty, times 6x10, gives $1200), so ten pages of advertising is another four or five cubicles (or two books that can be floated).
It's not a terrible business to be in, but as Roy points out, that's less revenue than before inflation, and the direction isn't suggesting much growth.
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Well, I did say "quick" math. ;-)
Y'know, when I was a kid, I obviously didn't think too much about the finances, but in retrospect, I'm pretty sure that I thought that writers/artists lived in mansions. Because those guys that hit the little ball with the stick and run around in circles get paid lots of money, therefore someone doing actual important work (making comics) must get paid more.
If only. Robert Downy, Jr. stands to clear at least $50M from the Avengers alone (not saying he doesn't deserve it, it's not some tax imposed on me by the government, so who cares). So comics make money indirectly for their parent companies, just not much actual profit on their own. If only the switch to digital had happened/started 10 years ago and they had an actual strategy to get them in the hands of kids (Playstation Network, XBox360, gaming sites - wherever kids go online), then act like a pusher - first taste is free, etc.
Of course, comics aren't written for kids/all ages anymore, just inbred fanboys in a continually dwindling and self-absorbed market.
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'inbred fanboy' is pretty harsh there Roy. Likely everyone here was one for a while. Just sayin'
An interesting thread guys.
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Sorry, by 'inbred' I really meant that the fanbase doesn't seem to be admitting new members, so its just the same group of people, not literally 'inbred'.
'inbred fanboy' is pretty harsh there Roy. Likely everyone here was one for a while. Just sayin'
An interesting thread guys.
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Yoc, "inbred" in a non-genetic sense is pretty accurate, I think. Comics are almost exclusively created by people who identify themselves as "fans first." So it's a situation where comic stories are only about things that happened in other comic stories, and the remaining comic fans are the only people who like that sort of thing.
The term "intellectual inbreeding" is used at a lot of schools to explain why they won't hire professors who were students there, for very similar reasons. It's not meant to imply that the person comes from a checkered past, just that they're stuck in a degrading cycle of utility.
If only the switch to digital had happened/started 10 years ago and they had an actual strategy to get them in the hands of kids (Playstation Network, XBox360, gaming sites - wherever kids go online), then act like a pusher - first taste is free, etc.
One problem is that Hollywood has convinced everybody that protecting Intellectual Property is critical to survival, and just one pirated copy brings the financial empire down on its ears. So the companies weren't waiting for the Playstation (which would be a great distribution point), but something like Comixology, where you never download anything and they have Apple-like control over whether you're still allowed to read the book.
Another problem is that the markets have been so polluted. In a sane world, entrepreneurs would look at the state of things and say, "hey, let's do really obvious things" and disrupt the market. There's plenty of space for a comic company that makes sure the stories are good and allows downloads, but for some reason, everybody who sells comics wants to compete with the embedded companies that are thrashing around, as if the big money is in selling at comic shops that nobody has been to in twenty years or otherwise following the same conventional wisdom that's driving the existing companies into their graves.
The big problem with piracy, though, is that it's showing the companies exactly what customers want: Clear scans, standard formats, optional advertising, and easy access. Ideally, a low price, too, but I'd pay full price to never again have to deal with another half-assed Flash viewer and maybe (gasp!) be able to read when I'm away from an Internet connection, especially if the other criteria were acknowledged.
(I never went anywhere with it, business-wise, but I actually did put together a system a few years back that hit the high notes of what I'd want in a comic-selling tool. It allowed potential customers to read low-resolution/color pages, real customers to not only read the good stuff, but also download a CBZ file. And since I do think copyrights are important, it also subtly watermarked the pages so, if scans were redistributed, you could figure out what user leaked it and disable their account.)
Of course, comics aren't written for kids/all ages anymore, just inbred fanboys in a continually dwindling and self-absorbed market.
Also see above. More than the straightforward business issues above, this depresses me. So many potential creators complain about the immature way comics handle mature issues as well as the general lack of storytelling ability. But when given the opportunity to reveal their vision to the world, it's the same old recycled tropes, and they wonder where their readers are.
Like the above, you'd think a company with a commitment to comprehensible, all-ages stories would be able to make a killing over the obsessive "fan service" of the existing lines. There seems to be something terribly wrong with the economics of comic books that this hasn't dawned on anybody with the capital and talent pool to make it happen.
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In the early 90's. the comics industry experienced hyper growth, the effects of which, I believe, began its slow death march. If you were there, you'd have to recall X-Men #1 "selling" 7.2 million copies. By selling, I mean ordered by retailers in the direct sales market. That number includes #1a, #1b, #1c, #1d, and the $3.95 version including all cover variants. Most retailers ordered in ridiculous quantities because their retail customers pre-ordered the book as such. Remember, perceived comic values were going through the roof, and customers were treating the product as negotiable bonds.
Around the same time, Valiant released Bloodshot #1 which tripled in "value" within a few weeks of release. People were hunting these books down and paying astronomical prices for them. Do you remember the black-bagged Superman (death issue)? I saw copies actually selling for $60.00 within 45 days of release. The major comics companies "fed this frenzy" by issuing variant covers, foil covers, and all manner of gimmick to generate alarmingly high per issue sales. The point here is that the majors are/were culpable, in part, for their own demise.
I already mentioned Surfer #50, with its foil overlay. There was X-Force #1 bagged, with its trading cards. The after-market treated opened copies as damaged goods. Retailers only dealt in unopened (and unread) copies of the bagged products. It was so common for retail customers to purchase multiple copies of everything they bought (for investment) that when one considers the actual number of copies being read, you'd have to reduce sales numbers by (at least) 50%. Based on what I saw traveling the country, I'd estimate that 75% of the sales represented a non-existent market. I'm not trying to equate the current market size with the number or readers in the early 90's, but I can state unequivocally that the market was falsely inflated by 200 to 300 percent.
Then the perfect storm hit. Turok #1 and Adv. of Superman 500 were at the same time. I can't remember if they came out on the same day, but if not, within a week or so. Retailers ordered absurd amounts of these comics, and customers were not buying. The customers ordered them all right, but they didn't pay for them, sticking the retailers, who over-ordered gigantic quantities, thereby sticking the distributors, thereby sticking the publishers. The cycle of unbridled greed ended rather abruptly.
Ever since the 1970's. many, many comic fans bought comics, or extra comics as investments. For the most part, these little hedges against inflation actually accomplished their goal, and rose in perceived value, which attracted more customers which kept the direct market growing in size, but not in readers. In the industry, the annual release of Overstreet's price guide was treated like payday, as retailers went back to their inventories and marked up unsold back issues. When I entered the market as a comics retailer in 1978, Fantastic Four #1 in mint commanded $400. When I left in the mid 90's, it was being auctioned for tens of thousands. I could wax nostalgic on this topic for hours, but you'd be more bored than you already are reading this.
Fact is, when Turok/Superman bludgeoned the market, it never recovered. Potential retail customers started to realize that with the exception of certain new comics of dubious quality being propped up by desperate retailers (Lady Death comes to mind) new comics were not a guaranteed investment anymore. The twenty-year party was over. All that was left in the market were actual comics readers. Distributors went unpaid, then out of business. Comics stores closed. You could hear the faint notes of taps being carried on the winds.
Folks, I was there as a comics retailer, then as a publisher rep, then as a distributor rep. People didn't talk about story quality, they talked about value and scarcity. Sure, many people read what they bought, but the value aspect kept them around.
Think about something. The scanners here are scanning some outrageously valuable comics, posting them up as digital files of absolutely no monetary value. But they're getting read! This site, along with Comic Book Plus is exactly what the medium was supposed to be. Cheap (The price of your internet connection) entertainment.
Last point here: You may not be aware, but when the market was in hypergrowth, comics creators were being paid base plus royalties. You would not believe how much money guys like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Rob Leifeld, and others were making. I remember speaking to Chris Claremont at a party in New York and he, being older than the wunderkind just mentioned, said "This can't possibly last."
Correctamundo.
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Thanks for sharing that misappear, it was far from boring.
I recall the fateful day when Marvel Fanfare #1 came out with (kettle drum roll) Baxter Paper and a $1.25 cover price!
Sticker shock ensued but the amazing Michael Golden cover won me over. But I reasoned to my feeble self, 'oh well, it's the only book at that price...'
Today $1.25 would be a bargain.
Nobody I knew demanded anything more than cheap pulp paper but they told us it 'had' to be better paper or we'd stop buying. Guess they know best.
*cough cough*
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Yoc,
I'm very interested here: When Marvel Fanfare #1 came out, did you buy just one copy? Now I promise not to be judgmental.
I gotta tell you, as a comics retailer back then, I sold a ton of those. What really surprised my jaded mind back then was Marvel Graphic Novel #1 (Death of Captain Marvel. One of the few times quality and hype actually collided). With the countless reprints of that, I can only imagine what it would have sold in the "Fanfare" format. Of course, economies of scale, GN #1 did just fine in the 8 1/2 by 11 format.
The sleazy fact about GN #1 was that the type of interior ink used made it very easy to erase the "2nd printing, 3rd printing, etc." notation on the title page. I couldn't believe how many of my fellow retailers stooped to that.
-D
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I can't recall for sure but I wouldn't be surprised if I bought two copies of MF#1. I didn't buy the Death of Marvel as I wasn't reading that character at all before hand. There was a time I bought two of any #1 issues I bought. Not ALL #1's though, I wasn't that bad.
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I recall the fateful day when Marvel Fanfare #1 came out with (kettle drum roll) Baxter Paper and a $1.25 cover price!
Infinity, Inc., was where I first saw the "high quality" books. It wasn't just the money, either. They were direct market, don't forget, which meant finding a comic shop. Considering that the convenience store was two blocks away and my parents were heavy smokers, whereas the comic shop was two towns away, that was not an improvement to the reading experience.
That's another "guess they know best" scenario. "Let's move our product away from where people can find it to shady little specialty stores."
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I bought GN1 and later sold it for a profit. I also bought Cerebus #1 and sold it for a hefty profit. I bought ten copies of Jason Monarch #1 does anyone need one?
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It wasn't just the money, either. They were direct market, don't forget, which meant finding a comic shop. Considering that the convenience store was two blocks away and my parents were heavy smokers, whereas the comic shop was two towns away, that was not an improvement to the reading experience.
Hey, my closest comic shop was in another country! (Okay, I lived in a border town)
One thing to be said for the comic shop was that they reliably had all the issues of the titles I liked. I couldn't make that claim about the convenience store.
BCing you
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Hey, my closest comic shop was in another country! (Okay, I lived in a border town)
Oh, I do know people had it worse than me. My real point was the business move, though. They went from making it impossible to not know that comics existed (because the spinner racks were everywhere, even if it was just a few titles) to making them impossible to discover by hiding them in stores that look like mob fronts.
The one I went to had no sign on it--a trademark dispute, I believe, that never got fixed--a big piece of plywood over the picture window to protect the comics from evil sunlight (but not the fluorescent lights they lit the place with), and had wildly varying and ever-shrinking hours. If I remember correctly, by the time I first stopped reading (because it was literally too inconvenient to buy books), their hours were something insane like late Friday afternoon and two hours on Saturday. And they didn't close down!
I know that a lot of the business decision involved returns, of course, so the revenue per book probably jumped. But I can't see how the limited audience (and, without returns, the lesser risk taken by the retailer) compensates for it.
One thing to be said for the comic shop was that they reliably had all the issues of the titles I liked. I couldn't make that claim about the convenience store.
True. And back issues were a nice upgrade. But I still strongly suspect that shift marked the end of new customers.
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I think that 99 cents marks a good price point for digital comics. No overhead other than paying the creators or giving them royalties. Next would be advertising or product placement. Then the most important would be a good plan to promote digital comics. Digital comics could be the salvation of the industry if done right. I wonder how much creators are making via Wowio, DrivThru,graphicly, etc.
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Oh, I do know people had it worse than me. My real point was the business move, though. They went from making it impossible to not know that comics existed (because the spinner racks were everywhere, even if it was just a few titles) to making them impossible to discover by hiding them in stores that look like mob fronts.
Hm. I'm not sure. I mean, I didn't discover comics by seeing them on racks -- I discovered them from other kids in schools.
The one I went to had no sign on it--a trademark dispute, I believe, that never got fixed--a big piece of plywood over the picture window to protect the comics from evil sunlight (but not the fluorescent lights they lit the place with), and had wildly varying and ever-shrinking hours. If I remember correctly, by the time I first stopped reading (because it was literally too inconvenient to buy books), their hours were something insane like late Friday afternoon and two hours on Saturday. And they didn't close down!
Zowie.
But think of it this way! That's a much more entertaining story than just saying, "I went to the local convenience store and bought some comics from the spinner." :)
More seriously: I take your point. Comics shops have also been notoriously unfriendly to women who buy comics.
I know that a lot of the business decision involved returns, of course, so the revenue per book probably jumped. But I can't see how the limited audience (and, without returns, the lesser risk taken by the retailer) compensates for it.
Jim Shooter's blog had some interesting comments about the impact that mob schemes had on distribution. He argues that the original distribution model would have put them out of business. He also now argues against the current model.
BCing you
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Hm. I'm not sure. I mean, I didn't discover comics by seeing them on racks -- I discovered them from other kids in schools.
I guess that makes sense. I wasn't in school, yet, so that wasn't an option. I grew up glued to the TV, and could easily have planned my day around when Batman reruns or cartoons were on, if anybody had let me. If I remember correctly, my mother picked up a Batman book on a cigarette run.
(Best guess, sifting through the GCD, was that this would be late 1980, if anybody's curious. I actually would've been in school, first grade. Which is odd, because I was reading paperback novels by then, and I'm not particularly visual, so what sense would comics have made? Oh, well. I'm not disappointed, just a bit confused how that all worked out.)
And they didn't close down!
Zowie.
But think of it this way! That's a much more entertaining story than just saying, "I went to the local convenience store and bought some comics from the spinner." :)
True, but such a pain in the neck. I'm surprised my parents didn't throw me out of the car! I'm also surprised I never got there to see the place wrapped in police tape...
The other good shop story (which I think I've mentioned), when I was probably fifteen, I went into a magazine shop, and it turned out that they had crates of older comics in the back dirt-cheap under a table. I bought a few and came back a few weeks later. The comics were gone, and when I asked, the clerk claimed that they never sold comics or even magazines, and had always sold adult videos.
(I occasionally wonder both why nobody had a problem with a minor shopping in their store and why I didn't notice what they were selling.)
Today (no, I haven't gone in; I pass it on the way to work), it's actually still there, now named "Adult Video," which is probably a bit clearer.
More seriously: I take your point. Comics shops have also been notoriously unfriendly to women who buy comics.
If it were just women, I could almost accept it (not in an "it's acceptable" way, but in a "most men don't wonder what it's like to shop in a skirt" kind of way). But a lot of shops seem to go out of their way to alienate everybody they can. But I can go on forever about that, and I need to get cranking on dinner soon.
I will say that I also had the pleasure of shopping regularly at one of the best comic shops I've ever seen. They were in a mall, off the food court, oddly. The place was well-lit, all the new comics were within arm's reach of any adult (no bending, no stretching) on custom easels, plenty of room to walk around, and a very friendly staff with well-rounded backgrounds. Little kids would come in to talk to the guy who was getting his degree in archeology! Older kids would come in to drool over the pretty manager, too.
No back issues, but other than that, very, very well done, and they did a ton of business.
That fell victim to corporate shenanigans. Somehow, the owner sold the place to a video store (a few doors down) that wanted to target a younger demographic. Somehow, that meant adding video games to the mix, which slowly expanded and ate up the space, eventually dropping the comics. That took about two months, and the place closed about two months after that.
And the manager married her boyfriend. Grrr...
Hm? Where was I...?
Jim Shooter's blog had some interesting comments about the impact that mob schemes had on distribution. He argues that the original distribution model would have put them out of business. He also now argues against the current model.
It probably made more sense for Marvel. I think their distribution was always shakier (including the years they were distributed by a DC-owned company), so a tiny problem could easily have killed them, yeah. With the power of Warner Brothers behind them by then, though, I can't imagine DC needing to circle the wagons.
That's something that baffles me today. With DC owned by (AOL?-)Time-Warner and Marvel by Disney, why do they even acknowledge the presence of Diamond or Comixology? They could accidentally distribute better than they are now, relying on flaky and adversarial third parties. It probably wouldn't cost them more than pocket change to make sure half the kids on the planet were buying their books every month, and letting the smaller companies ride on their coattails (and taking a small cut of their business).
I think that 99 cents marks a good price point for digital comics. No overhead other than paying the creators or giving them royalties. Next would be advertising or product placement. Then the most important would be a good plan to promote digital comics. Digital comics could be the salvation of the industry if done right. I wonder how much creators are making via Wowio, DrivThru,graphicly, etc.
The real problem with digital is that you need to get it in front of people, literally right in their face, to make the sale. I think there's potential, but it's hard to get around the enormous obstacle that they need to know to look for you. It's like moving to direct distribution, except the comic stores are all invisible and not listed in the phone book (you guys all remember phone books, right...?).
The best thing about digital is that you can do some pretty fancy market segmentation. You can sell at a higher price on the release date, for example, and drive the price down as the content grows stale. This way, the addicts (and pirates, if that's a worry) pay a premium, and the people who heard about the title and want to try it out can get a couple of issues for peanuts, and you can get that lower price forever.
If it was entirely up to me, I'd say that a scale from $2.50 down to about fifty cents would be a pretty good deal, lower on the low end, if you're very worried about piracy (because you're competing with free), lower still if you don't do downloads or insist on copy-protection. A really fancy system would let the user spend another couple of bucks to get a printed-on-demand copy shipped in, maybe signed by someone relevant.
(Sorry, I'm a programmer. Half my professional life is kicking around ways to distribute digital stuff.)
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Hi John,
Grade 8 in 1980? You're younger than I figured.
I like your distribution ideas, now 'make it so.' :)
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When you watch a blu-ray, they often have links to other content. Couldn't Warner Bros. include some free digital comics with the superhero Blu-Rays so that people get them in front of their faces? Hook 'em for free and all that.
The real problem with digital is that you need to get it in front of people, literally right in their face, to make the sale. I think there's potential, but it's hard to get around the enormous obstacle that they need to know to look for you. It's like moving to direct distribution, except the comic stores are all invisible and not listed in the phone book (you guys all remember phone books, right...?).
The best thing about digital is that you can do some pretty fancy market segmentation. You can sell at a higher price on the release date, for example, and drive the price down as the content grows stale. This way, the addicts (and pirates, if that's a worry) pay a premium, and the people who heard about the title and want to try it out can get a couple of issues for peanuts, and you can get that lower price forever.
If it was entirely up to me, I'd say that a scale from $2.50 down to about fifty cents would be a pretty good deal, lower on the low end, if you're very worried about piracy (because you're competing with free), lower still if you don't do downloads or insist on copy-protection. A really fancy system would let the user spend another couple of bucks to get a printed-on-demand copy shipped in, maybe signed by someone relevant.
(Sorry, I'm a programmer. Half my professional life is kicking around ways to distribute digital stuff.)
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great ideas John and Roy. Another idea would be to include them as product placement in their cartoons. No reason some of Young Justice should not be reading a comic on their Kindle and commenting on how cool it is.
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Digital Downloads. The more I think about this, the more my brain hurts.
Switching gears just for comparison's sake: Every year I ask my high school classes questions regarding music purchases. I first assure them that I'm not a music narc, but just really curious, and they seem to trust that.
I ask my classes, normally about 30 kids, how many of them went to the store and bought a CD in the last 6 months. I usually get 1 or 2 (girls) on that. I then ask who in the last 6 months spent roughly a buck a song to download from whatever music provider. 5 to 10 on that one. Then I ask how many download music illegally through the various pirate sites. Nearly the whole class responds in the affirmative. Maybe 1 or 2 not doing it.
Back to the topic: I agree with the idea that digital comics may be the next, and maybe only next step, but I'm wondering how we convince a generation of kids who have come to accept illegal downloads as the norm, that they should pay......anything?
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Only way to survive is with product placement and ads. Ads could be on the side or top of a page or bottom and would be hard to miss. Most would not bother to remove them from the digital download. If readership could be big enough ads could support it.
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Grade 8 in 1980? You're younger than I figured.
First grade in 1980. Born in 1973. I only sound like a crotchety old man. I'm actually a crotchety middle-aged man in disguise! I'm told I've loosened up since I was a kid, too.
When you watch a blu-ray, they often have links to other content. Couldn't Warner Bros. include some free digital comics with the superhero Blu-Rays so that people get them in front of their faces? Hook 'em for free and all that.
Could be. My concern is linking the free sample with the vendor. Could be done with Blu-Ray, maybe, but I'm not familiar with the things. I'm still in the dark ages of a DVD player that doesn't need to call home to ask if I'm allowed to watch my movie...
There's a similar problem with Jim's product-placement idea. In a cartoon, there are so many fake products floating around on the background that you need to overcome your audience's suspension of disbelief to convince them that everything else is fake except this thing over here.
One angle...in the background when I cook dinner, I've been watching '80s cartoons on Netflix. (He-Man is surprisingly not-bad, and the music is pretty good for such a low-budget/Filmation production.) At the end, they have the parent-appeasing "button," where someone tells you the moral of the story, because you're too dang stupid to realize that blowing up buildings is uncool. A surprising amount of quasi-fascist "always obey authority" morals, when the episode was clearly about the authorities being wrong, too, but never mind that.
Anyway, I wonder if it might be a thought to revisit the "button," but make it a comic history lesson. Give a minute or two to focus on the week's guest star or villain, and have the main characters talk about how long he's been in comics, where he's appeared...and where you might be able to find him RIGHT NOW.
On the other hand, the United States does have laws about advertising to minors, so that might not fly. Might be why there's no product placement, too.
Back to the topic: I agree with the idea that digital comics may be the next, and maybe only next step, but I'm wondering how we convince a generation of kids who have come to accept illegal downloads as the norm, that they should pay......anything?
That's probably not too hard. You do it by making the comics easy to buy and add more value than the pirates can. For example, you can't ask the writer questions when you download a torrent, nor can you check the book out before you buy it. Imagine a low-resolution, low-color version of the existing Flash viewers, but free--you can read any book to get a sense of the action, but to get the details (or maybe the last couple of pages...?), you need to pay. And since it's only a click away, it's easier to spend the dollar than go find a free download.
Keep in mind that kids are going to download because it fits their demographic. They have plenty of time, but little money and no credit card. When the option is download for free or convince the parents to give them a dollar for music they think is atrocious garbage, guess who wins? I think you could do good business by having the parents subscribe to a monthly budget for the kids. Let them buy what they want within that budget, and if they want more in one month, either save money leading in, or send a request (through the system) to the parent, showing them the book and explaining why you (the kid) want it.
But people also grow. When I was a kid, we had the earlier home computers, like the Commodore 64. Nobody bought software for that thing. We had literally thousands of disks with pirated software, copied from one machine to the next across the country at full-day meetings, where parents duplicated the disks endlessly. Today, I don't know many people who are downloading software illegally except to try it before paying. Some went completely legitimate, some stop buying new versions, and some bail for free software. I think most of that is just because buying software is much easier than it used to be, and we ex-kids now have an income. (Software piracy is rampant in Asia and Africa, but that's because we claim that we want them to use it to become part of the economy, but it costs a year's salary.)