For What It's Worth: Random Thoughts on Comics

Saw a sarcastic post this morning (not calling anyone out by name though, so don't ask) saying that since a major pop culture staple was on the way out (Funko Pops, though I don't agree, still see them all over the place), maybe the next comic book store trend to save the LCS should be... comic books. 

It's a great thought, but let's be honest. Comic books, particularly monthlies, will never save the LCS until there's a major overhaul in several things:

1. Distribution 
2. Cultural perception (IP mines, either for kids or for "mature" as in dirty, not as in regular adult-focused literature)
3. Format to make them more evergreen (which manga and big primarily non-comic YA and tween pubs are doing well)
4. Getting over the reliance on the serial model of monthlies
5. Cost-to-value ratio (see comment about evergreen above)
6. Getting over the "sell for a college education one day" collectible mentality

Appreciating and building devices for digital comics as an equally valid way of enjoying the books.

Now, I know a lot of folks who still see comics the same way they did in the Silver Age and early Modern Age will disagree, but sorry, the world has changed. The landline is dead, replaced by pocket communication computers. Let the old way of doing comics die and be reborn as something better too. Don't let nostalgia get in the way of the medium being able to grow from Homo Sapien to Homo Superior (to borrow the X-Men metaphor).

The End Of The Comics World Is Nigh

New York Post writer Reed Tucker is on a mission to explain what’s wrong with the comics industry.

Did you miss the good news? According to ComiChron, comic book sales in 2012 were at their highest level in two decades. It was a good year, with funnybook publishing raking in some $715 million. Add that to the other mainstream media stories popping up (regrettably with a headline containing the word “Biff!”) about the rebounding market and the superhero’s growing presence in mainstream culture, and geeks should be popping the bubbly.

So why doesn’t it feel like a time to celebrate? Why does it feel like it’s one of the worst eras to be a reader since the days of The Clone Saga — at least when it comes to the big-two titles? Inflated prices, desperate reboots, an even greater flood of tie-ins, crossovers and other publishing gimmicks have become the order of the day.

Overall sales may be getting better (though when you take into account inflation, that’s debatable), but in the end, it hardly matters. Comic books long ago became a niche hobby reaching few outside the circle of hardcore Wednesday crowd. The frustrating thing is, DC and Marvel seem to have thrown in the towel on this point, and most everything they publish has become in service of that ever-narrowing crowd.

In Business 101, you learn that there are really only two ways to make more money as a company: You can sell to new customers, or you can squeeze more money from your existing customers. Increasing ARPU, they call it: average revenue per user.

The publishers (Marvel more-so than DC) seem to have decided that broadening the audience just ain’t gonna happen, so they’ve opted for the latter, raising prices and gambling that their current customers will shell out more money each month for an ever-expanding line of branded books or for big events that promise to break the Internet in half.

Do you like Batman? Well, you’re gonna love him in 13 other monthly books. Or, were you moved when that one character actually died back in the 1980s? Well, we’ve got a boatload of shocking new deaths for characters that will definitely not be resurrected in six months with some plot fudge involving a time gun.

So far the strategy seems to have worked, in that it has helped the publishing market rebound slightly and allowed the big-two publishers to pump up their bottom lines. But these are most likely only short-term gains. This is not the way to build an audience for the long-term, and this is certainly not the way to ensure that comic books exist as anything other than a niche hobby.

Sales are supposedly up, but anecdotally, it sure seems like a lot of long-time readers are fleeing the pastime. “I love me some comics, but I finally had to quit this addiction,” wrote one commenter recently on Ain’t It Cool News, whose opinion was quickly echoed by others.

Now is the time to fix it, lest it goes the way or the dodo or the pet rock. A few decades from now, a kid will find a dusty copy of The Weird #3 in grandpa’s attic and wonder what the hell it is.

If someone were to put me in charge of DC or Marvel for one day – Anyone? Anyone? – here’s what I’d do.

Continue reading: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/05/06/the-end-of-the-comics-world-is-nigh/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

[Link] Print Math

by Mark Waid

Some very harsh truths about comics’ current existence and its future burrowed their way into my thick head about three years ago, back when I was Editor-In-Chief of a comics publisher called BOOM! Studios. I learned a lot at that job about the current state of comics publishing--not just from BOOM! but also from comparing notes with friends-turned-bigwigs like Nick Barrucci at Dynamite Comics or Filip Sablik over at Top Cow. Here are two especially big and scary bits of math.

Print Math
Posted on: April 4th, 2012 by Mark Waid 60 Comments

Some very harsh truths about comics’ current existence and its future burrowed their way into my thick head about three years ago, back when I was Editor-In-Chief of a comics publisher called BOOM! Studios. I learned a lot at that job about the current state of comics publishing--not just from BOOM! but also from comparing notes with friends-turned-bigwigs like Nick Barrucci at Dynamite Comics or Filip Sablik over at Top Cow. Here are two especially big and scary bits of math.

One: American comics are distributed almost exclusively by one company, Diamond, which--whether you like Diamond or not--is, in a free market system, madness. Diamond has no serious competition (nor--given various distributor-publisher exclusives and the thin margins in the industry on the whole--will it likely ever). Therefore, it can pretty much set whatever terms it likes with publishers, particularly the smaller ones. The “Premier Publishers” --DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, IDW--can get more favorable terms because they account for so much market share, but the smaller ones have no negotiating leverage. Moreover, Diamond can decline to distribute any new comic it feels won’t make a significant profit or doesn’t show enough “promise,” as is their right. Now, none of this is a condemnation--Diamond’s built its business from the ground up and seems to be very good at what it does, and I’m not suggesting they haven’t earned their status--but because they’re a monopoly, this makes Diamond a very powerful gatekeeper in the industry, and that’s not changing. You want to sell comics to anyone, you sell through Diamond. (Newsstand publishing is a whole blogpost in and of itself, which I’ll do soon, but here’s the short version: it’s a dying racket deliberately designed to pay out less often than a slot machine. No matter how crooked you suspect it is, I’ve seen spreadsheets and can promise you that you’re underestimating by half.)

So...Diamond. Typically, a non-Premier publisher sells its wares to Diamond at 40-45% of cover price. Let’s say 40%. You’re one of those publishers. That means that if your comic is cover-priced at $3.99 (which, at the moment, seems to be the average bottom threshold), you’re making roughly $1.60 per copy. Which actually doesn’t sound too awful, right? Let’s say you’re not a Bendis- or Millar-level sales superstar but neither are you a total unknown, so you’re selling 5000-6000 copies of each issue, very respectable in this day and age. Less if you’re a brand-new creator with no track record among retailers, but for argument’s sake, let’s say 5-6K. That’s, what, eight or nine grand gross?

But here’s the big bite: at those print-run levels, that comic is costing you around a dollar a copy just to print. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. What’s that? You’ve decided to forego expensive color for cheaper black and white? You’d be surprised how little that lowers the cost. Printing, shipping, and various related charges--that’s where you’re spending more than half your income. More than half. Not on creative, not on marketing, not on advertising, not on all of that put together. On printing the damn thing.

Continue reading: http://markwaid.com/?p=759