[JVJ]

Somehow, in the back of my mind, I think this is relevant to the discussion.  DC released 133 comics in July, 2009.  At an average of $3.00, that would cost $399.00.  (Plus $49.87 in sales tax.) I started buying comics in December, 1962.  If I would have bought all the DC comics from that month, it would have cost $3.60. (Plus $0.10 sales tax) 

OK, apples to apples.  There were 30 titles in December, 1962.  To sample 1/3 of DC's wares, $1.25.  To sample 10 titles today, $33.75
(Chicago sales tax, my home town is the highest in the country)

The value of a creator's "new re-interpretation" of popular culture icons and mythos contrasted against entertainment value doesn't equate to me anymore.  Create something new.

--Crochety Old Man

NOW you're getting it, m.
but you do have to take inflation into account. According to the financial folks:
In 2008 dollars, $3.60 in 1962 is worth
        $25.61    using the  Consumer Price Index
   $20.49    using the GDP deflator
   $29.14    using the unskilled wage
   $54.39    using the nominal GDP per capita
   $88.76    using the relative share of GDP
So it's only a 16x increase, not a 111x - I mean, let's not exaggerate or anything.

For 40 years I went faithfully to first the drug store, then the newsstand, then the comic shop(s) and faithfully bought as many comics as I liked. In 2006 I finally said, enough. I found that I was FORCING myself to read the fewer and fewer books I bought and just went cold turkey and stopped buying new comics. Now I follow ONE title, Glamourpuss by Dave Sim. It's certainly not a title I would recommend to anyone. In fact, the few friends I have recommended it to have resoundingly and unanimously hated it. But, there you go. I guess you have to comparatively crazy (or a Crotchety Old Man) to like it.

I can remember buying ALL of the Marvel comics for one month for less than $1.20 (and there wasn't any California tax on dated periodicals in those days).

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[John C]

I think that each books sells so little now they have to overburden the buy everything crowd.

But even so, that's...well, weird.

Let's crunch some numbers, because I always get a kick out of this sort of thing, as it's always very illustrative.  Let's say that a comic costs four bucks, to make the math easier.  The store takes about half of that, and Diamond presumably takes another half, leaving DC with a dollar per issue.

Now, on the flip side, Google tells me that the page rate for DC pencils is about a hundred bucks (probably more, since it's $80-120 and DC loves its "superstars").  Assuming a similar budget for scripts and "everything else," let's call it three hundred per page, or over six thousand bucks per book.  It's hard to guess at corporate overhead, but let's assume a thousand more for lights, postage, editors, paper, monkeys, lawyers, and other general business expenses.

ICv2 gives me some sales figures for June 2009, where I see:
- Of the top three hundred books, DC publishes eighty-one of them.  That means that, whatever we find here, DC has another fifty-two (Ha!) books performing worse.  Maybe more, because I see continued sales or later printings listed here with new books.
- Eighteen books (plus the fifty-two, for a total of seventy) miss the break-even point I indicate above.  That's more than half the line losing money.

Since I've already stuffed this information into a spreadsheet, I can also use real numbers, and that should answer my question outright.  Here, revenue is lower, because the cover prices are lower.

So, let's see.  First things first, the top-selling book (Batman and Robin #1) gave DC a seventeen-to-one return on investment, assuming my estimates are riight.  There's another few books in the ten-to-one range.  By contrast, the number of failing books has risen to eighty-two.

Totalling the presumed revenue for the reported books (assuming the books not on the top-300 to be negligible; almost certainly true when Bang Tango #5 raked in $2407, whatever it may be) gives us a million and a half.  A hundred thirty-three titles costing an estimated $7500 gives us just about a million bucks out, leaving DC with a fifty percent return on investment overall.

So, I guess it is sustainable, but it'd be a heck of a lot healthier if they dropped everything selling worse than, say, the Solomon Grundy book.  That'd be less than a third of the titles, and their profits double with a much smaller investment (a three-to-one return).  And would anybody miss Killapalooza or even the Unknown Soldier?

And yes, it's possible that ad revenue makes up for some of the underperformers.  Somehow I doubt it, though.

[Ed Love]

Some books are loss leaders though. I have heard Vertigo has a track record of selling better in the Trade market than in the monthly. So, the serial publication of THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER may be losing some money up front, but it does recoup some of the cost of producing the book immediately (such as paying the original rates to the creators that are already getting paid) and will mean more profit when it is released as a trade down the road. It also serves as advance advertising for the trade, a person samples one issue or picks it up and goes through it in the store and decides they'll buy the trade when it comes out whereas if straight to trade, they won't be on the lookout for it and might miss it completely. And as more trades than comics make it into real book-stores (and libraries) and thus potentially to more people, it is important to try to have more material that can go to those markets. So, I can see where that might be value in keeping a book that's losing some money around, as long as it's not losing too much. I see more value in that than canceling a book that skirts the cutoff point continually like Spider-Girl but never really trying to see how trades of her stories would work that would reach wider audiences.

And, then there is the value of keeping the trademarks alive. Use it or lose it.

[John C]

All good points, and I admit that I was mostly thinking out loud in hopes of getting better information.  Still, publishing over a hundred books per month, half of which nobody seems to be buying...well, it suggests that there's something seriously wrong with the process.

I'm actually less an advocate of cutting titles (because I like my diversity) than I am of trying different models.  For example, do you know what would get me back into the comic shop every single week to buy new stuff?  Take a bunch of low-selling titles and sell them in something like the Showcase format rather than individually:  Keep the costs down and give me a lot of material for the purchase.

If it were successful, the same idea could potentially be applied to the better-selling titles, as well.  I mean, I'd much rather buy a two- or three-hundred page Batman Family book every month than wander around looking for a dozen or so different Batman-related books over the course of four weeks.  Judicious use of reprints could also save the day when some writer or artist gets behind schedule.

Or if everybody's "writing to the trade" anyway, then maybe just publish the trade (use blogs and magazines for previews) and price it accordingly.  If kids can remember to rush out for the next Harry Potter installment, surely grown men and women can remember to schedule a trip to pick up JLA.

Another way to go, especially with digital publishing, would be entirely the reverse:  Open up a subscription site where one page per title is dribbled out every day or so, then collect those pages in appropriately-timed trades.  The site could even be free, given a sufficient amount of relevant advertising.

Mind you, I'm armchair quarterbacking, here.  Obviously, DC is surviving.  It just seems like they could be doing better by focusing on the parts of their business that work best instead of growing bigger while the market shrinks.  And I assume a similar argument could be made for Marvel, too, though I know far less about what they do.

[narfstar]

If it were successful, the same idea could potentially be applied to the better-selling titles, as well.  I mean, I'd much rather buy a two- or three-hundred page Batman Family book every month than wander around looking for a dozen or so different Batman-related books over the course of four weeks.  Judicious use of reprints could also save the day when some writer or artist gets behind schedule.

That is basically what was done with the FAMILY books going to a Dollar. No longer a need to buy Supergirl or Jimmy Olsen or Lois Lane they were together in Superman FAmily. I liked Superteam Family. Not enough interest in each piece to be sustainable but if you liked two of the four features or whatever it was not a bad deal. I liked getting more for my money.

[John C]

Exactly.  I'm sort of suggesting the convergence of those, the digest books (which were similar, but irregularly published, I believe), and the existing trade paperback mechanism.

I mean, there's a lot of neat things you can do, if you're committed to pushing out a three hundred page book every month.  And like with the trades, you can also get some sales outside of a comic shop.  It's not the impulse-buy rack at the neighborhood convenience store, but it's better than nothing for getting new customers.

And yes, I definiitely suggest this with an eye out toward using the "anchor" titles to buoy the sales of characters who are popular but never seem to sell well on their own in the Superman Family vein.  Like, sure Batman and Robin raked in a bunch of cash for DC.  But wouldn't it be nice if they used that leverage to get (for example) the more marginal Spirit in front of more eyeballs?  Or a long-gone cult favorite like Manhunter?  Heck, in a slow month, you could pull out story submissions that were otherwise rejected, just to see what kind of traction they get with the audience.

[Yoc]

I think John's digital idea could work.
Share say a new story each week (page a day, whichever) and after a while when you've got enough material and hopefully generated online interest - publish the collection as a TPB.

'course this could kill the old fashion brick and mortar shops but I have a feeling they make more off TPB and Japanese material than comics anyways.

-Yoc

[narfstar]

this is being done with a variety of web comics now

[OtherEric]

Girl Genius is one of the few books that started as a comic and then went to the Web/ Collection distribution; it seems to be working quite well for the Foglios.  I don't know how it will work for a larger company, though.

[John C]

As far as the storefront comic shops go, I'll be honest that I wouldn't shed a tear over them.  We all have fond memories of the places, and some of them ARE quite good, but they're mostly unwelcoming places that only (can?) cater to people who already buy comics.  Or they diversify and realize that the video game and toy business is more worth the attention than the comic books.

Or maybe they can use the format.  Imagine screens in the front of the shop rotating through the last few days' of pages with a small map on the side to tell you where to buy the most recent collected edition, for example, or books with similar themes or audiences.  I could easily see people showing up a couple of times a week to keep up to date for free, and if they're there that often, that's going to translate to more sales than the guy who shows up once every two months for his preplanned file.

My concern with a daily page release is that everybody needs to be on the ball and the pipeline needs to be continuously full.  It also makes it hard to backtrack if something in the story needs to change.  So it's not a complete model that'll save the world, but if I worked at a comic company, I'd be agitating to at least kick the idea around.

[Ed Love]

I can only speak for myself, but if comics went almost totally digital... I probably wouldn't be reading them. If you could get them all at one site, maybe, but there are very few digital comics that I follow because of having to go to each individual site on different days, etc. I used to read the daily comic strips online, but it was a hassle to have to check the site out each day and the reading just wasn't enjoyable.

I come here because there's a whole ton of comics that I 1) cannot get any other way and 2) could not afford them anyways. If I see 5 interesting comics at a store and I've already read 2 of them online I am going to get the other three first. That's my own personal experience.

Lastly, I've not seen reader devices or monitors that really conform to the comic page, the reading experience is completely different. Eventually, you're going to see artists that create comics that truly are designed for and take advantage of the digital aspects. And those won't reproduce well in print. It's why we have comics designed for television viewing, they're called cartoons.

[Yoc]

I'm with you on several points Ed.

I too enjoy reading the printed page 1000 times more than a digital scan but it sure seems the production overhead along with shrinking audience are pointing to a doomsday sometime down the road. Selection will become amazingly limited for paper goods.  I love John's idea of more 'Essentials' b&w tomes with a variety of characters.  (Gee, don't the Japanese do that all the time?)  Digital being next to zero overhead means a second life for independents and artist/writers who have unique visions that don't fit into the mould at the big three.  It's a win-win for getting eyeballs on their work.  How the heck they make and money... damned if I know.  Selling the rights to Hollywood is the golden ring these days.  We know DC/Marvel are basically only alive for that reason.

BTW, you can set-up your browser to visit those daily comic-strip sites on boot-up each day.  Firefox allows multiple homepages, etc.

A handy scan reading device has been on my dream list going on six, seven years.  I've made several posts on the matter.  I believe Japan will likely be the home of the first one.  Fingers crossed something happens in N.A. as well.

-Yoc

[John C]

I definitely agree, and yes, print needs to be a huge part of any model, if for no other reason than you can't always guarantee access to the network.  However, I also think that individual issues are an increasingly stupid idea.  The sales are tapering off and the writers no longer write to the form, so why maintain the artifice?  If the JSA only sees two stories per year, then just publish the long-form book twice a year.

I suggest the digital idea to generate and maintain interest.  Right now, if you want to know what the Fantastic Four looks like, these days, you wander down to the local shop to flip through an issue (ahem--legally, I mean).  I figure it's just as easy to allow free access to just the most recent few pages.  Check them out, and if you like it, grab the most recent TPB or preorder the next one.  Or keep reading, day by day.  Or subscribe and let them send it to you somehow.

As for viewing on devices, I first have to mention Jim, Pierre, and the rest of the crew at the Flashback Universe project, because they're actively designing screen-based comics.

I also need to again plug my favorite toy, the XO Laptop from the "One Laptop per Child" project.  I don't believe in the project's goals (water, food, and shelter for every child, sure; Skype and Wikipedia...not so much), but the machine is wonderful for reading comics.  It has a decent resolution, for starters, the colors look nice, and the screen image can rotate to almost exactly the shape of a comic page.  Plus, besides the backlit color, the screen is also reflective at a higher resolution, meaning that it can be read clearly in direct sunlight.  It's also rugged enough that it can be dropped a few times on concrete without more than a few scrapes...not that anybody could possibly be so clumsy (cough, cough).

It just weighs a bit too much for the size, so it's a little awkward to read from walking around.  But it also has a solid state hard drive, long-range WiFi, and other goodies.  In fact, when my other machines died not too long ago, I managed to use it successfully for about three weeks as my primary computer (including editing lecture notes, thanks to a timely unofficial software drop) without more than a couple of complaints--bad Flash support, the browser doesn't do tabs, and low memory means I couldn't read enormous files without splitting them up first.

[Yoc]

A colour eInk apparatus with nigh-on unlimited battery life that weighs about 2oz.
(and folds up into a tube for storage is optional)
Is that too much to ask?

[John C]

The closest I can think of (today, at least) is a projector, actually.  You can pick up lightweight models fairly cheaply.  But then you're in microfiche territory...

I actually suspect that eInk is a pipedream.  If it had any potential, it'd be all over the market.  Instead, it's the same companies, desperately telling us that it's, once again, right around the corner.  Or as the IBM folks used to say, "Real Soon Now."

[Yoc]

Probably true put it's still a nice dream...

[Astaldo711]

I'm just speaking for myself, but I vastly prefer having an actual copy of a book in my hands than the digital version. Don't get me wrong, I truly enjoy reading the books I have. Between what I've downloaded here and the Marvel DVD's, I have thousands of comics spanning some 70 years. There's just something about being able to hold the comic that's appealing. Not to mention it's a tad difficult to drag my computer into the "porcelain library". 

[John C]

It's also smarter from the publishing standpoint, though actual publishers, like Jim for example, can feel free to tell me precisely how stupid I am.  You can't easily introduce new readers to an online magazine because it's not physically in front of anybody; it has to be SO good that it gets word of mouth buzz.  The markup is also less; people expect to pay substantially less for digital media, disproportionate to the price of the media.  That means you can charge more for supplying something physically, at least for the moment.

[Yoc]

Nobody is arguing paper is a much, much more pleasant experience for reading than digital Astaldo.  Long live paper!
But I've got a collection of digital scans that could choke an elephant and still haven't found a cheap, portable and comfortable method for reading them.  (hopefully with a battery that lasts more than two hours!)  It's all those scans that we will Never see paper versions of that still need an effective reading apparatus before they can succeed in the market place.  Amazon is doing their thing but for colour scans we've still got to find something.

[JimShelley]

It's also smarter from the publishing standpoint, though actual publishers, like Jim for example, can feel free to tell me precisely how stupid I am.

Funny - I came into this thread to kvetch about the new Doc Savage series and saw that quote.

I don't think you are stupid on that - you've actually made a good point about one of the dirty secrets of digital/web publishing, and that is you still have to hussle up viewers to your site or ipod comic no matter what route you take.

A year ago (maybe not even that long) you could rely on the sheer novelty of being on the iPod to generate heat for your comic. I actually think the success of Atomic Robo is due to it being one of the first nice ongoing comic available for the iPod.

Now the market, if not flooded, is at least crowded. I think the easy gold rush days for independent publishers going the digital route is over (which is sort of a shame.)

Anyway - about the new Doc Savage - I agree with John C - what the freak is the point here? DC pimped this thing with black and white previews in some of their top selling books (Blackest Night) and to what end? So that they can promote...

Doc Savage - a character they don't own
Batman - a character who doesn't need promoting
The Spirit - a character whose movie was so bad that no amount of promotion will ever make him usuable again.

I just don't get it.

[narfstar]

DC just does not seem to get the fan base. It has long been pointed out that Marvel surpassed DC with the attitude of keeping readers for three years while DC was going for three months. DC still seems to be living only in the now. Sell what you can now to whomever will buy it now. They do not understand us. Just look at how they take the MLJ charactes in name only. Why buy just a name there are plenty of good ones for free.