The [irrational & annoying] price of comics.

[Zombipanda]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

It's all an issue of content vs. cost IMO. Compared to pretty much any other entertainment medium out there four bucks for twenty pages of art, in flimsy magazines, stuffed with advertisements is just an unreasonable price to ask for most consumers. I don't know enough about printing to make an argument so I'll assume Jag's right on this, but that's hardly the point. The point is, the big publishers have whittled themselves down to a niche market further marginalized by the direct market system and Diamond's monopoly on distribution. Honestly, I think they've back themselves into a corner where digital is the only feasible outlet for distribution. I mean, if book stores aren't able to survive, how the hell are comic shops supposed to?

 

[E]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

The point is, the big publishers have whittled themselves down to a niche market further marginalized by the direct market system and Diamond's monopoly on distribution. Honestly, I think they've back themselves into a corner where digital is the only feasible outlet for distribution.

Again I reference Chuck Rozanski's series of articles, but he basically says exactly this (except the part about digital distribution). And that's DC's fault. It's like a race to see who can make the industry implode first.

 

[Friday]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

It's all an issue of content vs. cost IMO. Compared to pretty much any other entertainment medium out there four bucks for twenty pages of art, in flimsy magazines, stuffed with advertisements is just an unreasonable price to ask for most consumers. I don't know enough about printing to make an argument so I'll assume Jag's right on this, but that's hardly the point. The point is, the big publishers have whittled themselves down to a niche market further marginalized by the direct market system and Diamond's monopoly on distribution. Honestly, I think they've back themselves into a corner where digital is the only feasible outlet for distribution. I mean, if book stores aren't able to survive, how the hell are comic shops supposed to?

...should they? I know I'm assaulting the golden calf with a pneumatic air hammer here... but should they survive?

I'm sure we all love our local shop but if they're hurting the industry overall then maybe its time to move on.

 

[Captain Canuck]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

The shift in marketing away from kids and toward adults is at least 15 years old. SO much so that Marvel and DC have lines specifically for kids. Their "main" universe books haven't been targeted toward or appropriate for kids since just after Marvel's bankruptcy.

This!

A year or two ago, we saw Spider-Man in an open relationship with Black Cat. They snuck into a hotel room and had sex with their masks on.

Some time before that, we saw him "get drunk" (turns out it was gingerale and he just felt drunk) and hook up with his room mate. (not to mention the questionable Chameleon "rape scene" with Michelle).

Amazing Spider-Man is one of Marvel's flagship titles (if not THE flagship title), and up until recently it was rated A (all ages). I wouldn't have let young kids read those stories.

Actually though, I just looked this up and Marvel upped the rating to T (teen) starting with issue #665 - one issue before Spider-Island started (the issue where Betty gets mugged and ends up in the hospital and Spider-Man goes on a rampage to find the guy who did it). #666 was even T+ (although I'm not sure why... if anything the arc after Spider-Island with the vulture should have had a higher rating). I'm actually impressed though. Marvel's being more responsible!

 

[Bass]

To put it into perspective; I randomly grabbed a comic out of a random long box in my library. I grabbed Cybernary #2 (print date Dec 1995), its cover price; $2.50 it has 24 pages (not counting ads). Adjusted for inflation, it's 2012 USD cost $3.75.

Random draw #2; Animal Mystic: Water Wars #6 (print date Oct 1998), cover price; $2.95 with 21 pages (no ads).
Inflation value; $4.16

Random draw #3; Black Widow #2 (print date July 1999), cover price; $2.99 with 22 pages (not counting ads).
Inflation value: $4.13

The problem with these examples is they come from the 90s when the big price jump already happened and when comic sales were at their peak meaning they sold more copies at less production cost per unit.

While you seem to be right in that comics have increased with inflation for over a decade, I think the $4 price tag just makes everyone take notice and realise they've kinda been swindled for a while now. Much like how my local cinema kept adding 50p to the ticket price and suddenly it's "how much?!"

As to the shareholder & investor psychology (because I personally find that more interesting not because anyone has really mentioned it): lets say I make a comic book for $1 and sell it for $2. That's a 100% profit and that I sell say 100 copies and a $100 profit is all I need to live on happily. Now let's say I make a $10 comic and sell 100 copies at $11. My profit is only 10% but I still make enough profit to live happily. People who do investing see only the percentile margins. The amount is unimportant. 10% means "for every dollar I earn a dime" regardless of what a dime is worth to them. As such they want 100% on the comic so it now sells for $20. The money made back is nine times larger than reasonably needed to happily live on. It's greed. It's seeing how much one can get rather than how much is fair and reasonable to keep people working in a stable environment.

C'est la vie.

 

[E]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

As to the shareholder & investor psychology (because I personally find that more interesting not because anyone has really mentioned it): lets say I make a comic book for $1 and sell it for $2. That's a 100% profit and that I sell say 100 copies and a $100 profit is all I need to live on happily. Now let's say I make a $10 comic and sell 100 copies at $11. My profit is only 10% but I still make enough profit to live happily. People who do investing see only the percentile margins. The amount is unimportant. 10% means "for every dollar I earn a dime" regardless of what a dime is worth to them. As such they want 100% on the comic so it now sells for $20. The money made back is nine times larger than reasonably needed to happily live on. It's greed. It's seeing how much one can get rather than how much is fair and reasonable to keep people working in a stable environment.

I agree but you're never going to win arguments suggesting that a corporation act in any kind of moral capacity. They have no interest in doing so, and even though it is brought up time and time again I don't think anyone else really expects them to.

A far more practical argument that uses the same backing is that they are cannibalizing long term sales for the short term. There will come a time when the price is too high and the quality is not high enough and people will just say, "forget it." Is that extra dime worth alienating a customer? Especially when you can't justify the increase in any way that s/he can relate to? How many more dimes until that customer throws up his/her hands and gives up, leaving you with no dollars or dimes?

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

Again I reference Chuck Rozanski's series of articles, but he basically says exactly this (except the part about digital distribution). And that's DC's fault. It's like a race to see who can make the industry implode first.

Linkylink?

...should they? I know I'm assaulting the golden calf with a pneumatic air hammer here... but should they survive?

I'm sure we all love our local shop but if they're hurting the industry overall then maybe its time to move on.

No, I agree with you.

If they do survive, it'll be the same as the way record stores survive: as a boutique outlet for a small group of purist fans.

The worst thing comics companies could do is **** up the possibility to expand their audience by being too concerned with physical stores.

I agree but you're never going to win arguments suggesting that a corporation act in any kind of moral capacity. They have no interest in doing so, and even though it is brought up time and time again I don't think anyone else really expects them to.

Precisely this. If we want good comics, we should buy more good books that aren't produced by corporations.

 

[Friday]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

No, I agree with you.

If they do survive, it'll be the same as the way record stores survive: as a boutique outlet for a small group of purist fans.

The worst thing comics companies could do is **** up the possibility to expand their audience by being too concerned with physical stores.

Which unfortunatly is exactly what they've been doing for decades. And they seem to be perfectly happy selling to the same... what, 20,000 stores? 10,000? The same small clientell they've been dealing with forever. Any other buisness run that way would fail.

 

[Friday]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

No, I agree with you.

If they do survive, it'll be the same as the way record stores survive: as a boutique outlet for a small group of purist fans.

The worst thing comics companies could do is **** up the possibility to expand their audience by being too concerned with physical stores.

Which unfortunatly is exactly what they've been doing for decades. And they seem to be perfectly happy selling to the same... what, 20,000 stores? 10,000? The same small clientell they've been dealing with forever. Any other buisness run that way would fail.

 

[Bass]

I agree but you're never going to win arguments suggesting that a corporation act in any kind of moral capacity. They have no interest in doing so, and even though it is brought up time and time again I don't think anyone else really expects them to.

What's sad is there have been legal regulations that forced them to act a certain way or the government would dissolve the corporation (this recently was brought up in Florida I think). Corporations can be moral agents; the police force and the fire brigade were for-profit industries that were turned into social institutions of moral agency. It's doable to make companies behave, just very hard.

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

What's sad is there have been legal regulations that forced them to act a certain way or the government would dissolve the corporation (this recently was brought up in Florida I think). Corporations can be moral agents; the police force and the fire brigade were for-profit industries that were turned into social institutions of moral agency. It's doable to make companies behave, just very hard.

Well... It's hard to say how much of a moral agency the police force is, but that's a question for a different day, isn't it? We could talk about the quota system that defines so much of police funding or about the "pay for grades" programs in the school system that led to that huge Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal last year. Or we could look at the privatization of parking regulation that's happening here and elsewhere, where parking meters are sold to a private contractor for one flat sum and the contractor's income is predicated on the fact that most people would rather just pay 25 bucks than show up at court at 7 AM and appeal their citations.

But yes. Up until about the turn of the century, corporations were the precise opposite of what they are now. They were limited term organizations that required a government license to be formed and were predicated on achieving a short term objective that had to be determined as serving the public good. In short, they were contractors. Then the limitations of time were stripped away and piece by piece the corporation was legally given the individual rights of personhood without the culpability. It's not that corporations are inherently evil. It's just that they're inherently built as machines of myopic consumption. The inherent purpose of the corporation runs in direct contrast to any system of ethics and they've become so powerful that regulation is no longer really a feasible objective. But we're straying from the subject here, aren't we?

 

[Ice]

Re: The [apparently decreasing] price of comics.

I am pretty sure (though not positive) that they have, at one point, offered truly free digital downloads, including on books that were 2.99.

I'm not trying to argue, just pointing out that they are, in effect, raising prices again.

Time to dust off the "irrational price increases in comics" complaint thread.

I just remember that being said by Alonso, I think in the weekly Axel-In-Charge column he does with CBR every Friday. But I think there might be a $3.99 book or two that doesn't bring the codes.

 

[Ice]

Will We See A $4.99 Price Point In 2014?

I sat down at New York Comic Con with a senior Marvel executive who expressed frustration at DC's Hold-The-Line-At-$2.99 initiative, not for any competitive reason, but that they had taken money out of comic stores by selling some of their best selling titles at that price point, without increasing sales by a commensurate amount. And that a $3.99 price wouldn't have affected sales.

 

[DIrishB]

Will We See A $4.99 Price Point In 2014? I sat down at New York Comic Con with a senior Marvel executive who expressed frustration at DC’s Hold-The-Line-At-$2.99 initiative, not for any competitive reason, but that they had taken money out of comic stores by selling some of their best selling titles at that price point, without increasing sales by a commensurate amount. And that a $3.99 price wouldn’t have affected sales.

So they're frustrated DC aren't being greedy douchebags?

 

[Zombipanda]

So they're frustrated DC aren't being greedy douchebags?

Yes. I'm sure altruism is DC's impetus for not raising their prices.

 

[E]

And that a $3.99 price wouldn't have affected sales.

Completely idiotic and out of touch.

 

[E]

Does anyone have a link to the recent quote by Tom Breevort about $3.99 comics? It was from a week ago or so and he made a great point. I thought it was on his Tumblr but I can't find it...

 

[E]

Never mind. I found it.

Hi Tom, (PART 1) Let me add my 2 cents as another retailer. The biggest problem with maintaining sales is price. Going from $2.99 to a $3.99 price made a lot of buyers make hard decisions. If there is one thing that I wish Disney had done when they purchased Marvel it would have been, drop the price to $2.99 on all new launches. Considering what the cinema branch produces, they certainly could have subsidized the publishing branch a bit. You would've blown your competition out of the water. Jeff
timewarpagainandagain

This is a good question to address with a retailer, as you've got some strong firsthand information about it, based on your own sales history.

So let me walk you through some thinking. See if this makes sense and holds water for you.

I agree that the higher price point makes it more difficult for readers to buy as many books, and so they need to make choices about what they're going to spend their dollars on. Where I disconnect a little bit is in the thought that if the books were cheaper, tons more people would sample them and buy them—enough to make up for that difference in price.

So let me turn this around on you a little bit.

As a retailer, assuming that all other things are equal, you're making a greater profit on your $3.99 books than you are on your $2.99 books. It's pretty straightforward math—three $3.99 books bring in as much revenue as four $2.99 books.

Now increase that by a hundredfold. You'd need to sell 400 $2.99 books to make the same money as you did from 300 $3.99 books. So you'd need to entice an additional hundred readers to sample and buy, simply to remain in the same place.

I don't know the specifics of your store, but I do know the state of the market as a whole. But in your shop, do the $2.99 books perform that strongly over the $3.99 ones, regardless of content? I don't think so. You might get more readers on a $2.99 launch, but proportionate to that 400-300 ratio? I don't think so, not routinely.

This is why we do what we do.

The books that we launch and run at $2.99 as new series launches are the ones that have the toughest time, and the ones that are the most likely to be cancelled, because they need to work harder to meet the same margin. This is also why, when we have a title like SUPERIOR FOES that we think has an audience ant that we want to keep around, we'll increase it's cover price to $3.99. That's no fun for anyone—but it does ensure that the book is operating within a healthier margin more easily.

And the idea that the cinema branch should subsidize the publishing branch is nonsense. That's no way to run a business. Marvel publishing is very healthy and very profitable, and that is what will keep it around and keep it viable. Being the tail on somebody else's dog is a good way to find yourself without an industry. Marvel continues to be able to forge its own destiny because Marvel makes money, consistently and year-round. If that wasn't the case, publishing would have been shuttered ages ago.

More:

"As a retailer, assuming that all other things are different, you're making a greater profit on your $3.99 books than you are on your $2.99 books." Not quite true in our case. We have had a harder time moving the Marvel Now books, so we often will make them weekly "specials" with a larger discount. For us, the $3.99 DC books sell better than the $3.99 Marvel books, so price is not the sole sales factor. As others have mentioned, there is a perception that the DC books use better materials.
Anonymous

You are overthinking what I said there. Let's look at it again.

For the ease of math, let's assume that your discount gets you your books at 50%. So you're paying $2.00 for the $3.99 books and $1.50 for the $2.99 books, more or less, and each copy sold nets you the same amount in profit. By selling a single $3.99 title, you are putting more money into your pocket than by selling a single $2.99 title. That is inarguable.

There are plenty of other considerations that factor into the value-for-money perceptions of your clients, I agree. And those preferences will be different from place to place, and may affect how individual titles at any price and from any company may perform in your store. But the economics of the situation as I outlined them remain the same. A $3.99 book is more profitable on a per-copy basis than a $2.99 title—on a 3:4 basis (meaning you need to sell 4 $2.99 copies to bring in the same amount of profit as selling 3 $3.99 titles. Or, multiplied by hundreds, 400 copies at $2.99 to equal 300 copies at $3.99.)

One more:

Say you were able to lower the price of comics to $1.99. Do you think the increase in # of copies sold would make up for the lower price point and that Marvel and the retailers would end up earning the same amount? In other words, wouldn't you in an ideal world want to sell to more people at a lower price than fewer people at a higher?
Anonymous

No, I think we'd be out of business in a month and a half.

Again, it just goes back to the numbers. A $1.99 book brings in half as much revenue as a $3.99 book, but the costs to produce and ship it remain teh same. And every scrap of evidence I've seen over the years indicates that reducing the price in this manner will not make anywhere near twice as many readers buy it, so that you can remain in the same place. Some additional readers might, but by far not enough to offset the lost revenue. Would I like to sell to more people? Sure. But I'd also like gasoline to cost a buck and a half a gallon again—but ti doesn't anymore, the economics no longer support that price point. So it is what it is—and I either want that gasoline at that price, or I don't.

I'd like to see him address the huge jump in pricing in the 90s which was not in line with general inflation or printing costs and I think that last line is BS, but he makes strong points.

Vote with your wallet, people.

 

[Ice]

I know we addressed this somewhere, and that was that we're also paying more for less. We pay more for comics, but the pages of stories has gone down. While we're paying $4 a book (plus tax), we only get 18-20 pages. Although there are like 1 or 2 books that will have an extra page or two for that price.

They also add the AR content (though not in all the books) to give fans more for what they pay for. So what do people think about that?

 

[E]

I know we addressed this somewhere, and that was that we're also paying more for less. We pay more for comics, but the pages of stories has gone down. While we're paying $4 a book (plus tax), we only get 18-20 pages. Although there are like 1 or 2 books that will have an extra page or two for that price.

Even on the $3.99 books? I misunderstood - I thought that was on the cheaper books. Wow.

They also add the AR content (though not in all the books) to give fans more for what they pay for. So what do people think about that?

It's meaningless to me. It's not interesting or compelling enough to make me feel like paying an extra dollar is worth it.