Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.
I have some things to say about E's comments, but I'll get to them later. It's hard to make an argument one way or another because we really don't have that much firm data on how well the industry is doing, but I think you make some good points.
As for comics - I'm surprised that the cost to produce a comic requires them to a) charge as much as they do and b) require so much advertising within them (about 50%, as opposed to 25% on TV). I think it's emblematic of the industry being incapable of generating new readership. And since Zombipanda pointed it out to me, I don't think it's Marvel or DC's fault anymore. I think what we need is more publishing companies producing more material. I think, with the way graphic novels work, the serial comic is pointless as it is. It needs to be significantly cheaper, without ads, and with serialised storytelling, else if I were Marvel or DC I'd just produce original graphic novels as the product quality would be higher.
I think without question, the number one thing the comics industry needs is more diversity in publishing. We need more art house publishers, more publishers that cater to specific genres, more experimentation. I've always gathered that there's a pretty high barrier to entry for new publishers, with Diamond controlling distribution, Marvel and DC dominating the shelves, and only so much space in the comic shops (Especially since, as E pointed out and I agree, comic shops primarily seem to make their money off of merchandise and back issues). The advent of digital comics seems to largely do away with a lot of those problems. Distribution, sales space, printing costs, and even editorial are practically unnecessary with digital. All you really need is a writer and an artist. "Publishers" needn't be more than a community of creators, living off their own creations without being indebted to the companies who own the printing press, sharing ideas and branding under a common banner. I think it's an exciting opportunity and it makes me want to sit down and write.
As for a move towards exclusively hardbound collections, I don't see any real problem with it. I pretty much entirely collect in trades these days myself, as it does away with all the problems I have with the medium. But, we essentially have that already. Sure, we have single issues, still, but stories are built for trades and collected in trades a few months later. Shifting production entirely to trades would just cut off a revenue stream, right?
If I had unlimited cash flow and full creative control over DC or Marvel I'd actually go the opposite route, experiment with a many different options as possible and see what works. I'd cut out ads entirely. Ongoing floppies would be cut back to about 8-10 series. You'd take the big name books from the company, (say Superman and Action, Batman & Robin and Detective Comics, Flash, Green Lantern, etc.), tether them to big name creative teams, and release them bi-monthly as 45-pagers, on glossy, high quality stock (I'm thinking the production values used for Final Crisis). Sure, they'd be more expensive, but they'd be weighty and high quality. TPB sometimes come with "special features" that aren't in the monthlies. I'd suggest shifting that dynamic, so that when you pick up the monthly, it's going to come with something, whether it's interviews or sketches or script pages, that aren't going to be included in the trade. Essentially, you're selling them as the comics equivalent of premium vinyl, marketed to the collector and fan market. Along with miniseries that follow the same format, the equivalent of event comics or creator prestige projects, would pad weekly production of single issues to about four or five a month. The rest of the supplementary monthlies would be folded into monthly collections, printed in black and white in thicker books, the way manga is collected. So you might have Batman Family, Superman Family, DCU Universe, etc. each at a hundred some pages, on cheap stock, marketed at a low price, sold as consumables. I'd also possibly suggest a weekly anthology book like 2000 AD.
For the digital market, you'd collect everything. The individual stories from the black and white collections would be colored and sold a la carte. Same with the premium books, but possibly with a staggered release. Sprinkle your library with digital exclusives that can be used to test the waters for new series' or to draw readers into existing books.
And then, of course, collect everything in trades when it's all said and done.
