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Guy Goodbody posted:Yeah, and they should go back to that. No thanks
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Apr 22, 2017 07:12
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Ghostlight posted:Not having events isn't a great idea because events can be really good. The issue is having them driven by marketing rather than creative. I think the part that surprised me most in the piece was the section on Marvel's marketing and how bad it was.
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Apr 22, 2017 07:12
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Roth posted:No thanks The switch to high quality paper and expensive coloring is based on the idea that monthly comics are first and foremost collector's items. It's emblematic of everything wrong with the current distribution model of American comics.
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Apr 22, 2017 07:32
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Guy Goodbody posted:American Comics should adopt the Manga distribution system. Instead of every series getting its own monthly print release, there are monthly magazines each with 5-8 series in them. They do release compilation magazines in other parts of the world. Or they were during the New 52. I used to see them listed when looking stuff up on comicvine.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:27
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Comics aren't popular enough to be sold in single issues here so they're bundled in compilations; It works sometimes like in "Guardians of the Galaxy" which has GOTG, Drax, Rocket Raccoon and Groot (76pgs, R$9,40) or "Avengers" which contains Avengers, New Avengers and Uncanny Avengers(Same) but the "leftovers" get some weird combinations like "Avengers Assemble" which has Squadron Supreme, Captain Marvel, A-Force, Totally Awesome Hulk, The Ultimates and Astonishing Ant-Man(148pgs, R$18,20). They also are constantly reworked based on what's coming out, series being cancelled, series not being popular enough, etc. which pretty much requires the existance of websites that catalogue and explain what's in each bundle. Recently though there have been some changes and some titles are instead being published in a more sensible option, usually two or three consecutive issues in a single compilation; also now that we've reached Rebirth the DC line has been changed to something similar. I don't know if it'll affect all titles or even if it's going to be a permanent change, they're not very transparent about it - and I have a hard time keeping up with local news. Personally, I abhor most of these Mixes and would rather have trades or digital issues, at a reasonable price of course. Comixology does just fine for me.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:57
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When I was a wee Lurdiak my family would buy me magazine format B&W compilations of Marvel comics in French that were approximately 15 years behind current continuity. While there's an argument to be made for the importance of color and paper that won't loving get stained with fingerprints or smudge, I can only say that I would've read far fewer comics if those reprints hadn't been available and instead my parents had to purchase floppies, especially if they had been priced like modern comics are.
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Apr 22, 2017 09:10
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I'm all for killing all physical floppies. Trades only for print and singles in digital only. Screw the comic shops. I don't think 99¢ it feasible though. You have to consider the cut the distributor takes, which is probably most of it. And the complete loss of all advertising revenue as digital comics don't have ads. The loss of printing overhead makes up a lot of that. I'd pay the same price as I'm already paying if they can guarantee keeping the ads out. It's honestly a pipe dream though. We'll have to kill the shops ourselves to make it happen. Retailers and concern about retail are what's really holding the industry back from finally moving into not just the future, but the present as well.
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Apr 22, 2017 09:26
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Right, so again, it's Rhyno's fault.
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Apr 22, 2017 09:27
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Lurdiak posted:Right, so again, it's Rhyno's fault. If Rhyno has to sleep on the street or -gasp- get a real job that's just a bullet he'll have to take in order to save the comic industry. Come on Rhyno, bring it down from the inside!
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Apr 22, 2017 09:33
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Rhyno could still sell trades and he'd just have more time judge Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments or whatever else stores do to diversify.
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Apr 22, 2017 10:38
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I hear Rhyno's store has a special room where you can cuddle with your anime pillows with other homestuck cosplayers for a small fee.
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Apr 22, 2017 10:54
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Lurdiak posted:I hear Rhyno's store has a special room where you can cuddle with your anime pillows with other homestuck cosplayers for a small fee. You jest but we've had groups of those guys ask if they can use our game room for their weird rear end meetings.
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Apr 22, 2017 14:53
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C2E2 going on in Chicago would explain why all the hotel rates were double the usual rate.  Bad weekend for The Dollop.
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Apr 22, 2017 15:08
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Unless you book through you place of work and pay $110 a night for downtown accommodations. Free tix to the show as well.
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Apr 22, 2017 15:41
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Rhyno posted:Unless you book through you place of work and pay $110 a night for downtown accommodations. Don't make me spend $50 to yell at you.
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Apr 22, 2017 15:52
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Lol, but I should get a real job.
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Apr 22, 2017 15:53
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I think an earlier version of that 30,000 word essay about how Marvel can go loving gently caress itself and eat poo poo and then poo poo the poo poo out and gently caress itself with its shitted out poo poo was circulating a month or two back? Does it still subscribe to the Jude Terror approved "you motherfuckers shoulda never fuckin' left the newsstands you fucks!" narrative? Because that's great but the direct market is the only thing that kept the US comics industry alive, it would have died in like 1980 had it not been for the direct market. In before "good lol it should have lol" UPDATE: I downloaded this essay and boy howdy it decided that if you have to decide between nuance/context/research and using a hundred colorful words to let everyone know that this knowledge dart is gonna blow everyone's mind like they were ground zero at the motherfuckin' release of the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb On Me" release party and strap yourself if and hold onto your butts because I'mma bout to real talk y'all bitchezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Well they clearly chose the latter. FURTHER UPDATE: I believe I was thinking of The Problem With Comics which is dude's previous rant-essay. This is like... ahistorical disconnected ranting? Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 16:11
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Lurdiak posted:I hear Rhyno's store has a special room where you can cuddle with your anime pillows with other homestuck cosplayers for a small fee. It would be wrong for Rhyno to close his comic shop because it is pro ably the only place that is keeping all the creeps in his neighbourhood off the street. By staying open he is doing a very important job for the community.
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Apr 22, 2017 16:25
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I feel like the main takeaway from that essay, and their previous one, is that companies should probably be more transparent about pre-ordering books.
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Apr 22, 2017 16:29
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I know it's a few pages back but that border patrol thing happens all the time and has been going on for decades. And it's actually worse going the other direction (US to Canada). Canada is ruthless when it comes to non-Canadians "working" there. I can't tell you the number of touring bands turned away at the border. I've been with some. And even in the "real work" sector - I've had to go there for a press-check years ago and two of our group decided to be honest and say it was a business trip and they were denied entry.
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Apr 22, 2017 16:50
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Edge & Christian posted:This is like... ahistorical disconnected ranting? Yo do you have time to get into detail about this? I don't have nearly the knowledge base to get into it myself.
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Apr 22, 2017 18:18
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When a comic book is priced at a quarter to entice impulse buys in children it's not going to have much of a profit margin. As such magazine stands, pharmacies, grocery stores, books stores, etc... would prioritize more profitable and reliable sales like newspapers and magazines with comics only whenever they had extra room. It was a big pain in the rear end for someone who wanted to read a particular comic every month. The distributor would send out twenty X-Men books to a location, have maybe ten of them displayed, sell two copies and have the other eighteen returned to the publisher at a loss. And that's assuming you wanted to read X-Men. Eventually somebody realized that if you put all the books in a specific location rather than scatter them across an area you would provide a place for readers to reliably get their books as well as make other titles available to them. Publishers no longer had to worry about writing off so many unsold books, distributors logistics were simplified, with a guaranteed place to buy them sales on books increased and previous unsold copies became the concept of back issues. Publishers benefited, distributors benefited, readers benefited, sellers benefited and comics didn't get squeezed out of the print medium.
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Apr 22, 2017 19:28
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Mr. Maltose posted:o do you have time to get into detail about this? I don't have nearly the knowledge base to get into it myself. 1) There's this concept that retailers having to pre-order things MONTHS BEFORE IT'S EVEN RELEASED is some sort of crazy burden placed upon them. It's not, it's something that pretty much every retailer in the world does. Diamond was pretty slow to advance, but while retailers put in initial orders months out, for the past decade they also have the ability to increase (or decrease) their orders up until basically when the books go to press, 2-3 weeks prior to release. 2) On the consumer side, the essay also portrays "having to pre-order things" as an insane onus that most people DON'T EVEN KNOW EXISTS. I find this extremely dubious, anyone who's been into a comic book shop (or Gamestop, or Barnes & Noble, or Verizon store) is familiar with the concept that if you want to be assured that you'll be able to pick up the new [X-Men/Zelda/Harry Potter/Samsung Galaxy] the day it's released, you can guarantee your copy with a pre-order. The difference here I suppose is that if you miss out on the first printing of a book or a video game or phone there is almost definitely going to be a resupply down the line, though there are plenty of second/third/fourth printings of comics happening when the market demands, not to mention trades and digital options. If you really want to give Mockingbird a shot and miss the first print of the first issue because of PRE-ORDERING it is easier than it has ever been to still purchase and read the first issue of Mockingbird. 3) Further, the entire essay seems to presuppose that all parties along this chain are gibbering morons. I am sure there are some really dumb people involved in all aspects of the comic book industry. If you run any sort of store, you should have a pretty good idea of your audience. To use an example in the essay, you should have a decent idea of how many copies of Mockingbird are going to sell to your audience. If some combination of word of mouth, marketing, and Chelsea Cain's non-comics audience result in new people coming into your store asking about Mockingbird, you'd be an idiot not to order more copies to satisfy that demand. If no one comes in over the course of 3-6-9-12 months to ask about Mockingbird, there is only so much an individual store can do to reach out to this new audience. It's not rocket science and I'm sure there are anecdotal stories about comic shops (and bookstores, and electronics stores, and clothing stores, and restaurants, etc) being short-sighted assholes and not running a good business, but how do you solve for that? Also publishers are not idiots. Let's say that after Mockingbird ends after twelve issues because it wasn't a big first-run hit, it really picks up steam. Digital sales are through the roof. Trade sales are through the roof. Mockingbird wins a bunch of awards, suddenly it's Pultizer-Prize Winner Chelsea Cain's National Book Winner Mockingbird. Contrary to the position taken in the essay, Marvel isn't going to go "well gently caress you, it didn't sell well as single issues. Chelsea Cain's career is dead, and we're not publishing a new Mockingbird book". They will absolutely attempt to capitalize on the long tail and get this newly successful writer back into the fold, publish new Mockingbird comics, try to get a sequel to the best-seller off the ground, etc. The mechanisms for this sort of thing to happen are better in the comics industry now than they were 10/20/30 years ago, same as in any other form of media. By the time the essay starts comparing the comics industry to Crunchyroll (which is essentially a secondary found-money release system for manga/anime) and just sort of starts throwing random sales charts out, sales charts that mostly come from an era where the direct market was if anything even shittier and more dominant than it is now in an attempt to make a point about how... I don't even know what the point was. I tapped out. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 19:41
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Doctor Spaceman posted:The main takeaways are that prioritising the direct market system is really bad for the long-term health of the industry, and that Marvel is currently putting short-term profits ahead of long-term growth or stability. So, what people have been saying for at least 5 years, but it's a HOT TAKE because, um, s/he says "gently caress"?
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Apr 22, 2017 21:49
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Comics can't go back to the newstands because there's too many drat comics. Barnes and Noble isn't going to make room for 50 monthly DC titles and 50 monthly Marvel titles, plus however many independents. This is another benefit of the Shonen Jump model. It's a lot easier to carry one magazine with 10 different comics in it than to carry 10 separate comics.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:58
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Guy Goodbody posted:This is another benefit of the Shonen Jump model. It's a lot easier to carry one magazine with 10 different comics in it than to carry 10 separate comics. Sure but if I had to pay for 10 titles a month and didn't get to curate those 10 titles a month, I'd be buying 0 titles a month. Even if for example Marvel released all the X-Men titles together, I'm only interested in about half of them. Having just picked up a new batch of comics today and paying $5.45 each (Ohhhh Caaaaaanadaaaaaaaaa) I'd be in favor of moving to a system that drops the floppy, still gives me a physical product, and doesn't make me feel like tradewaiting contributes to the death of a series I enjoy. Like, a mail-order service for floppies still exists for the big 2, right? If only there was a way to tie that to digital, like say I pre-pay something like $20, get to download "Awesome X-Men" every month for 5 months, and then at the end of those 5 months I get mailed the TPB of those 5 issues I paid for. I guess you'd have to factor in cost of shipping, maybe do some kind of "pile of loot" system so I'm not paying shipping for a single TPB if that's all I subscribe to... the end result is Marvel gets the up-front money, they still keep their monthly system, and people like me with a geezer mentality still get physical comics to put on a shelf and never read again but know that I at least got some gosh-darn paper for my money. And people who don't wanna pay up front for a TPB they'll get in half a year can still pay per issue under the current "digital floppy" system. That's where I'd like to see the industry go (ever since my comic store of choice shut down, anyway; RIP Unreal) but something tells me physical comics will be 100% gone altogether within a decade or so.
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Apr 22, 2017 22:19
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Guy Goodbody posted:Comics can't go back to the newstands because there's too many drat comics. And no newstands.
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Apr 22, 2017 23:11
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Diet Poison posted:That's where I'd like to see the industry go (ever since my comic store of choice shut down, anyway; RIP Unreal) but something tells me physical comics will be 100% gone altogether within a decade or so. You're probably right. Not sure if it's a decade, but I agree that it's definitely coming. I went to NYCC for the first time in a long time this past year. I remember when I was younger I would hit all the vendors and try and hunt hard to find back issues and the like. Last time? Bought some art and patches and then wrote down the new series I wanted to try on digital. I do not have the physical space to store comics anymore. I've got 15-20 long boxes at my parents house and I've no idea where to store them in my house. I get everything digital these days and I sincerely doubt I'm the only one who does that. Aphrodite posted:And no newstands. Plenty of newsstands in my city.
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Apr 22, 2017 23:13
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Edge & Christian posted:I mean I don't have the time or inclination to do a blow by blow commentary on the whole ramble, but my main takeaway (I didn't finish it) was that they're really overstating the problem with pre-ordering. This seems to be eliding over one of the main points of the essay, which is that the direct market business model doesn't just incentivize preorders, but rather is driven entirely by preorders to the total exclusion of off-the-rack sales. Is this really that commonplace? Furthermore, even if, say, the video game industry exclusively counted sales at the preorder level, it would still be the case that games are typically announced much more than three months in advance of release, with significantly more information than the cover and two-sentence synopsis found in solicitations.
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Apr 23, 2017 00:23
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Every supermarket, pharmacy, and department store has a newsstand. Retail in the US might be dying, but it's a slow death with a long way to go (and will probably just contract to a more appropriate level)
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Apr 23, 2017 00:25
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Yeah I mean I can't go shopping anywhere without seeing an issue of Go! Starz with what appears to be the same generic looking young white celebrities on the cover every time. It's not like disposable print is going anywhere. They just don't put comics in those stands anymore.
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Apr 23, 2017 00:33
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I like floppies. They're expensive but it's not like trades are all that much cheaper. Just means I have to be a bit more careful around what I buy into. Digital just does not appeal to me at all outside of a subscription model. I will happily give DC or Valiant the same money I give Marvel each month for unlimited access to their back catalog, but I'm not paying a buck per issue for a digital download of 20 pages. As far as physical being gone in ten years... I seem for remember people saying the same thing about books in general. If people are making comics, they will be making and selling physical versions of those comics.
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Apr 23, 2017 00:32
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Edge & Christian posted:If some combination of word of mouth, marketing, and Chelsea Cain's non-comics audience result in new people coming into your store asking about Mockingbird, you'd be an idiot not to order more copies to satisfy that demand.
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Apr 23, 2017 00:34
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Barry Convex posted:This seems to be eliding over one of the main points of the essay, which is that the direct market business model doesn't just incentivize preorders, but rather is driven entirely by preorders to the total exclusion of off-the-rack sales. Is this really that commonplace? 1) Maybe I have very different experiences with comic books and people who buy and sell comic books and just everything about the industry than you or Colin Spacetwinks, I don't know. But one of the things (which I now realize involves me misreading your statement, so apologies if I'm arguing against nothing here) that really confused me about the essay is the idea that NO ONE KNOWS about pre-ordering etc. 2) Again, this is acting like pre-orders and comic buying exist in a vacuum. Comics have characters and writers and artists attached to them. Comics are more complicated because they're monthly and there are a bunch of them, but to use a very straightforward example, if your store sold fifty copies of The Fade Out, it's not unreasonable to assume that would be your ballpark for Kill or Be Killed. If your store sold a hundred copies of Bendis's Iron Man books with Marquez and Maleev, they'll probably sell roughly that many copies of the new Iron Mans? 2a) With order adjustments allowed up until about three weeks before each issue, you can definitely adjust your orders up or down by the third if not the second issue. This is why you see some books fall off of a loving cliff, some have "standard attrition" and some retain a surprising amount of their initial orders. Because retailers don't just go "well I guess I'll order 100 issues of X-Men and 10 issues of Fookiller, oh no I only sold 20 X-Mens and 9 Foolkillers, I guess I'd better cut both orders in half!" This is not "to the exclusion of off the rack sales" any more than when you see 'regular' books brag about how [some book] has an initial print run of 500,000 copies. Whether that book with an initial print run of 500,000 goes on to be Harry Potter or Snooki's novel is a result of "off-the-rack sales". Gods of Egypt opened in 3000+ theaters and made $14,000,000 on its opening weekend. Moonlight opened in 650 theaters and made $1,400,000 on its opening weekend. These are both outliers but comics work the same way, Ms. Marvel #1 was outsold by Joker's Daughter #1 in February 2014, but one series getting better reviews, more fan interest, more "off the rack sales", etc. means that Ms. Marvel is still an ongoing series and a member of Champions and Secret Warriors and etc. etc. etc. and Joker's Daughter is an unpleasant footnote. quote:Furthermore, even if, say, the video game industry exclusively counted sales at the preorder level, it would still be the case that games are typically announced much more than three months in advance of release, with significantly more information than the cover and two-sentence synopsis found in solicitations. Ghostlight posted:One of the big points the essay makes is that there isn't word of mouth because comics can be announced without writers or artists attached, there's no marketing beyond material aimed solely at existing readers, and there's no non-comics audience coming in and asking about a book that isn't out yet because they have no idea that's what's expected of them rather than just turning up and buying what they're interested in when it's out. Firstly this does not happen very often, and when it does it is lovely. The vast majority of the time creative teams ARE announced. I feel like comic publishers are doing everything in their power to market to people who are not existing readers, though I can see the nebulous no-solution-offered "but they're not doing enough". Maybe every comic shop is run by a horribly stupid piece of poo poo who never orders shelf copies of things with a buzz, and when someone comes in looking for the sold-out first issue of Ms. Marvel says "get the gently caress out of my store, can't you see we're sold out? YOU DUMB BITCH" and then the potential reader just walks off sad and alienated, never to buy a comic again. I suppose this is possible. Or maybe the person is told that a second print would be in very soon. Or that it can be purchased digitally. Or that a trade would be out in five months. Maybe they didn't want any of those options and they left. Maybe they didn't. Nothing I was reading in the first half of this essay is in any way unique to 2017 or to Marvel, which was the really baffling thing to me. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to complain about regarding the cost of comics, Diamond's effective monopoly on single issue physical distribution, Marvel's creative, business and marketing practices, the industry's slow response to digital comics, all sorts of poo poo. Complain all you want, I certainly have, for years. But nothing in that essay seemed to be offering a coherent criticism, much less a good solution. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 02:16
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Jordan7hm posted:As far as physical being gone in ten years... I seem for remember people saying the same thing about books in general. If people are making comics, they will be making and selling physical versions of those comics. There's far fewer bookstores today than there were 10 years ago. It's going away - it's not quite there yet, and for certain fields, print will be around for awhile. However, my nephews in grade school were given iPads this year and several of their classes don't have physical text books anymore. It's all on the tablet.
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Apr 23, 2017 02:17
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Jedi posted:There's far fewer bookstores today than there were 10 years ago. It's going away - it's not quite there yet, and for certain fields, print will be around for awhile. However, my nephews in grade school were given iPads this year and several of their classes don't have physical text books anymore. It's all on the tablet. Be fair, the main loss of book stores was Borders closing, and that was because of incompetent management and not because of loss of book sales
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Apr 23, 2017 02:19
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I mean, a lot of industry figures are behind annoying paywalls, but total book sales (including digital, audiobooks, physical books, everything) are up from around $20b in 1995 to $28b in 2015. That's an increase, but slower than inflation ($20 in 1995 dollars is the same as $31.10 today). It also doesn't factor in the fact that online sales were approximately $0 in 1995, and that eBook sales were absolutely zero in 1995, and are now around a $3b market. There is absolutely a shrinking pie for brick and mortar sales of books, though one big area of growth in bookstores: graphic novels, which allegedly increased 20%+ in sales between 2014 and 2015 in traditional book stores. All of this is ignoring a shitload of other factors (Audible and other audiobook sales are not a part of the digital eBook slice, there's been an explosion of SKUs which works great for Amazon/online retailing, terribly for brick and mortars, etc etc) but merely the fact that Borders was mismanaged and that Star Magazine still manages to excrete issues onto the shelves every week hardly means that the print industry is doing great, and this sort of "heh, people thought this would go away WE'RE STILL HERE" talk is very familiar in terms of it being said by record stores, video rental chains, probably whale oil and horse drawn buggy salesmen, etc. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 02:33
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Guy Goodbody posted:Be fair, the main loss of book stores was Borders closing, and that was because of incompetent management and not because of loss of book sales Off the top of my head, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, and Borders no longer exist, and neither do quite a few local mom and pop book stores. To pretend that all of them had incompetent management is disingenuous at best. Amazon was a huge contributor to that - and they sell a Kindle. To pretend that digital sales have no impact also isn't fair. The medium is changing. Just like you'll have difficulty finding a local typewriter repairman - there will come a time that physical books are considered a quaint affectation.
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Apr 23, 2017 02:34
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Jedi posted:Off the top of my head, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, and Borders no longer exist, and neither do quite a few local mom and pop book stores. To pretend that all of them had incompetent management is disingenuous at best. Amazon was a huge contributor to that - and they sell a Kindle. To pretend that digital sales have no impact also isn't fair. The medium is changing. Just like you'll have difficulty finding a local typewriter repairman - there will come a time that physical books are considered a quaint affectation. People have been saying that for literally decades now, but it doesn't seem to be true? Unit sales of print books rose 3.3% in 2016 over the previous year, making it the third-straight year of print growth
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Apr 23, 2017 02:39
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Amazon approached Borders with a proposal to become their web service in exchange for use of their warehouses. Borders laughed in their faces. W all know how that worked out. Also waldenbooks was owned by Borders.
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Apr 23, 2017 02:39
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