Marvel to Abandon Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores

[dupont2005]

Don't let Marvel fool you into thinking they have to charge $4.99 for 22 pages of content and 11 pages of ads. You can subscribe to Heavy Metal and get 200 pages of content with about the same ratio of ads at about $2.50 per issue.

 

The size of the print run affects everything. New comics with all original content have fixed cost. The printer setup fees are pretty much fixed. The price of the final product depends entirely upon how many get ordered and sold. Bob Layton posted online that it costs about $20,000-$30000 to produce a regular color comic. If you printed one comic and just wanted to get your investment back, you'd have to charge at least $20,000. If you print 2, you'd have to charge at least $10,000. If you print 10,000, you have to charge $2. That's just enough to get the publisher's money back with no profit!. It also cost money to distribute the product and they aren't doing it for charity. The store has to make enough money to cover overhead and turn a profit. Based upon the low volumes the publishers are able to print, $3.99 - $4.99 is probably what it cost for everyone to survive.

 

By my estimation, about 25% of Marvel's titles are making a healthy profit. 50% are just selling enough to get by. Another 25% are losing money. If you take the comics with a healthy profit and use that money to compensate for the comics that lost money, you come out with a low to moderate profit overall.

 

When X-Men # 1 came out in 1991, I think I had determined that it cost Marvel less than 10 cents a copy to print. When you print 8 million copies, the production costs get spread out over 8 million units. Marvel could have reduced prices in the 90's, but opted not to do so. They were greedy and just pocketed the extra cash.

 

Some publishers are willing to break even on the costs to produce a comic because they expect to make money on the TPB. They don't have to pay an artist to draw the pages again. Nobody is rolling in profits with the $4.99 cover price. Partly because it runs off customers. If they sell 300,000 non-returnable copies of something... yeah.

 

DG

Then why is it that back in the 80's often times indy comics would cost less, have more pages, fewer ads, nicer paper, and a higher quality reproduction? Even today, comics with big name creators but without the big name franchises sell for the same or less than a Marvel comic, always with fewer ads. The print run would be a fraction of the Marvel comic. If a Marvel comic is losing money, why not cancel it? They keep it in print to flood the walls of the LCS and to keep Marvel Zombies from considering a DC or indy title. So you're paying for that. They don't really have to charge what they charge for a comic.

[dgarthwaite-migration]

Don't let Marvel fool you into thinking they have to charge $4.99 for 22 pages of content and 11 pages of ads. You can subscribe to Heavy Metal and get 200 pages of content with about the same ratio of ads at about $2.50 per issue.

 

The size of the print run affects everything. New comics with all original content have fixed cost. The printer setup fees are pretty much fixed. The price of the final product depends entirely upon how many get ordered and sold. Bob Layton posted online that it costs about $20,000-$30000 to produce a regular color comic. If you printed one comic and just wanted to get your investment back, you'd have to charge at least $20,000. If you print 2, you'd have to charge at least $10,000. If you print 10,000, you have to charge $2. That's just enough to get the publisher's money back with no profit!. It also cost money to distribute the product and they aren't doing it for charity. The store has to make enough money to cover overhead and turn a profit. Based upon the low volumes the publishers are able to print, $3.99 - $4.99 is probably what it cost for everyone to survive.

 

By my estimation, about 25% of Marvel's titles are making a healthy profit. 50% are just selling enough to get by. Another 25% are losing money. If you take the comics with a healthy profit and use that money to compensate for the comics that lost money, you come out with a low to moderate profit overall.

 

When X-Men # 1 came out in 1991, I think I had determined that it cost Marvel less than 10 cents a copy to print. When you print 8 million copies, the production costs get spread out over 8 million units. Marvel could have reduced prices in the 90's, but opted not to do so. They were greedy and just pocketed the extra cash.

 

Some publishers are willing to break even on the costs to produce a comic because they expect to make money on the TPB. They don't have to pay an artist to draw the pages again. Nobody is rolling in profits with the $4.99 cover price. Partly because it runs off customers. If they sell 300,000 non-returnable copies of something... yeah.

 

DG

Then why is it that back in the 80's often times indy comics would cost less, have more pages, fewer ads, nicer paper, and a higher quality reproduction? Even today, comics with big name creators but without the big name franchises sell for the same or less than a Marvel comic, always with fewer ads. The print run would be a fraction of the Marvel comic. If a Marvel comic is losing money, why not cancel it? They keep it in print to flood the walls of the LCS and to keep Marvel Zombies from considering a DC or indy title. So you're paying for that. They don't really have to charge what they charge for a comic.

 

Everything sold better in the 80's. Even indy comics.

A lot of things cost more now than the 80's. Shipping costs are higher.

Diamond used to have warehouses all over the country. I think they have one now.

Geppi who owns Diamond is worth a small fraction of what he was worth.

I think some of the price increases are to help Diamond stay afloat. Diamond purged all of the low performing indy comics a couple a years back because they decided it was costing them too much money to carry them. If Diamond goes bankrupt, you can say goodbye to your local comic shops and most modern comics. There is no one on the sidelines to fill the void.

About 75% of Marvel's titles are selling worse than a good selling indy title.

 

Paper quality is somewhat subjective. Most collector's like the old newsprint paper from the 70's, but it's actually quite poor and it's not suitable for the full color glossy ads and artwork.

 

Marvel and DC cancel titles all the time. They reboot and they come out with new #1's.

They wouldn't have to charge what they charge if they actually addressed the quality issues of the product, and made long term business decisions that grew readership and increased order volume. I think they had 4 or 5 Thor comics come out to coincide with the first movie's release. Does it make sense to have that many titles competing for the same consumer's dollar? It makes a lot more sense to focus on one Thor title and make it the best stories possible.

 

Even if Marvel & DC cut back on the useless titles and streamlined their product, Diamond and the retail stores require a certain amount of product rolling through their doors each month to pay overhead expenses. It's a huge balancing act. The easiest and quickest way to address the problem was to increase prices. It's not the best way, but it was the easiest and quickest solution.

 

DG

 

[BEAUMONTS]

Could it be a "tail wag's the dog" situation. What if you bought a digital copy and had the option for putting a code in and getting a actual comic " for a additional cost" if so desired. Thus, keeping production costs down for the publisher, essentially making it a sell through every printing run?

[dgarthwaite-migration]

Could it be a "tail wag's the dog" situation. What if you bought a digital copy and had the option for putting a code in and getting a actual comic " for a additional cost" if so desired. Thus, keeping production costs down for the publisher, essentially making it a sell through every printing run?

 

I came close to posting that. If print on Demand services can make money, it would be the way to go. Unfortunately, most Print on Demand services are so expensive that they get the lion's cut of the money. A publisher would probably have to charge more like $6.99 to make any money. The problem again is the number of units sold. By my estimation, they need to be selling in the 40,000 range to be "okay", Drop below about 18,000 units and they have to start eliminating inkers or hiring more no name artists who will work for less. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure they are losing money.

 

DG

[Tony S]

I like his prospective on the industry. If comics go digital, many aspect get simpler and cheaper. Distribution goes on line and can be done a lot cheaper. Look at the software industry. It has been a couple of years since I had a physical CD for software. Everything just gets downloaded off the net.

 

What you are saying is true. But look at the software industry. Look at the music industry. If you are thinking that simpler and cheaper will filter down to the consumer, recent events in other industries suggest that isn't going to happen.

[dgarthwaite-migration]

I've been told that Marvel actually has tiers on what they'll pay artists for certain books now. There isn't one set page rate. The artist who told me wasn't even sure how they determined the different rates. I said, "Is it based upon how much they expect to sell?" He thought about and said "Yeah, that might be it" and tossed out a scenario that did seem to fit the pattern.

 

DG

[dgarthwaite-migration]

I like his prospective on the industry. If comics go digital, many aspect get simpler and cheaper. Distribution goes on line and can be done a lot cheaper. Look at the software industry. It has been a couple of years since I had a physical CD for software. Everything just gets downloaded off the net.

 

What you are saying is true. But look at the software industry. Look at the music industry. If you are thinking that simpler and cheaper will filter down to the consumer, recent events in other industries suggest that isn't going to happen.

 

Handheld devices are the tool by which everything will be stored in the cloud and rented. You won't buy Microsoft Office. You'll access a web version and rent it by the month.

You won't buy comics and download them, there will be a viewer online and the files themselves will stay on the server. You'll rent your comics.

 

Companies have their hooks baited. They are dangling it in front of everyone until they bite. Then they'll shift their model over.

 

DG

 

[dupont2005]

Everything sold better in the 80's. Even indy comics.

But indy comics were selling in the low five figures and offering more product for less cost than Marvel comics selling in the six figures. I'm not comparing comics from then to now, I'm comparing comics from then to then. Collectors might have preferences when it comes to paper, but Baxter costed more, and indies were offering Baxter at prices that Marvel was offering newsprint.

[dupont2005]

I like his prospective on the industry. If comics go digital, many aspect get simpler and cheaper. Distribution goes on line and can be done a lot cheaper. Look at the software industry. It has been a couple of years since I had a physical CD for software. Everything just gets downloaded off the net.

 

What you are saying is true. But look at the software industry. Look at the music industry. If you are thinking that simpler and cheaper will filter down to the consumer, recent events in other industries suggest that isn't going to happen.

 

Handheld devices are the tool by which everything will be stored in the cloud and rented. You won't buy Microsoft Office. You'll access a web version and rent it by the month.

You won't buy comics and download them, there will be a viewer online and the files themselves will stay on the server. You'll rent your comics.

 

Companies have their hooks baited. They are dangling it in front of everyone until they bite. Then they'll shift their model over.

 

DG

There will be another company with a program similar to Office and they won't be connected to a megacorporation. I bet they'd offer a download of their program. Hard drives are not going to go out of style. Same with comics. The big publishers may all decide to allow one digital distributor to have a monopoly, but I can already buy DRM free PDF's directly from the creator through email on certain titles. That won't go away. They aren't paying a publisher and distributor a cut, it's all going in their pocket.

[Tony S]

I like his prospective on the industry. If comics go digital, many aspect get simpler and cheaper. Distribution goes on line and can be done a lot cheaper. Look at the software industry. It has been a couple of years since I had a physical CD for software. Everything just gets downloaded off the net.

 

What you are saying is true. But look at the software industry. Look at the music industry. If you are thinking that simpler and cheaper will filter down to the consumer, recent events in other industries suggest that isn't going to happen.

 

Handheld devices are the tool by which everything will be stored in the cloud and rented. You won't buy Microsoft Office. You'll access a web version and rent it by the month.

You won't buy comics and download them, there will be a viewer online and the files themselves will stay on the server. You'll rent your comics.

 

Companies have their hooks baited. They are dangling it in front of everyone until they bite. Then they'll shift their model over.

 

DG

 

It's already happening. But I think we are going to have - for a very long time - more of a hybrid type model being the most popular. There may indeed come a day where it's all on the cloud and rented. But I think we'll see a hybrid approach be the most successful for at least another decade.

 

Microsoft Office 365 being a good example. I haven't paid much attention to the business prices, but Office 365 is a decent deal for home use and a great deal for Student/teacher. On PC's, you download it onto your hard drive, it stays automatically updated, but you are renting the program. The home program is $100 a year but it can be installed on up to 5 PC's and 5 mobile devices (tablets, phones) The student version is only $80 for four years and installs on 2 PC's and 2 mobile devices. The student and Home versions also include "office on demand" where you can stream the apps temporarily to any Windows 7 or 8 PC you might be using.

 

In short you get all the advantages of both installation onto a hard drive and a cloud based approach. Microsoft gets a rental model with a steady revenue stream.

 

I'm not normally much a fan of MS, but this was a good enough deal that both my of my kids in college are signed on.

 

As for comics, I can see a potential market for a streaming type service, where one pays a monthly fee to read their comics. It might even be several different tiers. One price to read back issues, another to read current - and a price to do both. The keys to any streaming service is price and content. Since you haven't purchased/don't own anything - when you stop paying the monthly subscription you have nothing but memories. So streaming services - to be appealing - need to be inexpensive and have significant content. Look at say Netflix as a model here.

 

DC and Marvel have large enough libraries to have their own service if they choose. The smaller publishers are going to need to band together in some way.

[rjrjr]

Don't let Marvel fool you into thinking they have to charge $4.99 for 22 pages of content and 11 pages of ads. You can subscribe to Heavy Metal and get 200 pages of content with about the same ratio of ads at about $2.50 per issue.

 

The size of the print run affects everything. New comics with all original content have fixed cost. The printer setup fees are pretty much fixed. The price of the final product depends entirely upon how many get ordered and sold. Bob Layton posted online that it costs about $20,000-$30000 to produce a regular color comic. If you printed one comic and just wanted to get your investment back, you'd have to charge at least $20,000. If you print 2, you'd have to charge at least $10,000. If you print 10,000, you have to charge $2. That's just enough to get the publisher's money back with no profit!. It also cost money to distribute the product and they aren't doing it for charity. The store has to make enough money to cover overhead and turn a profit. Based upon the low volumes the publishers are able to print, $3.99 - $4.99 is probably what it cost for everyone to survive.

 

By my estimation, about 25% of Marvel's titles are making a healthy profit. 50% are just selling enough to get by. Another 25% are losing money. If you take the comics with a healthy profit and use that money to compensate for the comics that lost money, you come out with a low to moderate profit overall.

 

When X-Men # 1 came out in 1991, I think I had determined that it cost Marvel less than 10 cents a copy to print. When you print 8 million copies, the production costs get spread out over 8 million units. Marvel could have reduced prices in the 90's, but opted not to do so. They were greedy and just pocketed the extra cash.

 

Some publishers are willing to break even on the costs to produce a comic because they expect to make money on the TPB. They don't have to pay an artist to draw the pages again. Nobody is rolling in profits with the $4.99 cover price. Partly because it runs off customers. If they sell 300,000 non-returnable copies of something... yeah.

 

DG

Then why is it that back in the 80's often times indy comics would cost less, have more pages, fewer ads, nicer paper, and a higher quality reproduction? Even today, comics with big name creators but without the big name franchises sell for the same or less than a Marvel comic, always with fewer ads. The print run would be a fraction of the Marvel comic. If a Marvel comic is losing money, why not cancel it? They keep it in print to flood the walls of the LCS and to keep Marvel Zombies from considering a DC or indy title. So you're paying for that. They don't really have to charge what they charge for a comic.

 

My memory is indy comics were more expensive than Marvel and DC comics and in some cases, quite a bit more. Which indy comics are you referring to?

 

Here are some examples using Capital, Pacific, First, and Eclipse, average indies during the 1980s:

 

May 1983

Nexus 1 $1.50

Amazing Spider-Man 240 $0.60

 

February 1982

Starslayer 1 $1.00

Amazing Spider-Man 225 $0.60

 

November 1984

Starslayer 22 $1.25

Amazing Spider-Man 258 $0.60

 

Airboy was priced at $0.50 for issue 1-8, but those issue are very, very thin. But by issue 9:

 

November 1986

Airboy 9 $1.25

Amazing Spider-Man 282 $0.75

 

November 1987

Airboy 33 $1.75

Amazing Spider-Man 294 $0.75

 

Dark Horse has some of the lower prices ($3.50 for several titles) today:

 

July 1986

Dark Horse Presents 1 $1.50

Amazing Spider-Man 278 $0.75

 

September 1987

Dark Horse Presents 10 $1.75

Amazing Spider-Man 292 $0.75

 

December 1989

Dark Horse Presents 35 $1.95

Amazing Spider-man 326 $1.00

 

I specifically remember Valiant being more expensive:

 

February 1992

X-O Manowar 1 $1.95

Amazing Spider-Man 359 $1.25

 

July 1992

X-O Manowar 6 $2.25

Amazing Spider-Man 364 $1.25

 

July 1995

X-O Manowar 44 $2.50 (Birthquake brought a price increase and IMHO was a big reason for Valiants quick decline )

Amazing Spider-Man 403 $1.50

 

 

I am just comparing some indies I know about with one of Marvel's flagship titles, Amazing Spider-Man.

 

 

[dgarthwaite-migration]

I like his prospective on the industry. If comics go digital, many aspect get simpler and cheaper. Distribution goes on line and can be done a lot cheaper. Look at the software industry. It has been a couple of years since I had a physical CD for software. Everything just gets downloaded off the net.

 

What you are saying is true. But look at the software industry. Look at the music industry. If you are thinking that simpler and cheaper will filter down to the consumer, recent events in other industries suggest that isn't going to happen.

 

Handheld devices are the tool by which everything will be stored in the cloud and rented. You won't buy Microsoft Office. You'll access a web version and rent it by the month.

You won't buy comics and download them, there will be a viewer online and the files themselves will stay on the server. You'll rent your comics.

 

Companies have their hooks baited. They are dangling it in front of everyone until they bite. Then they'll shift their model over.

 

DG

There will be another company with a program similar to Office and they won't be connected to a megacorporation. I bet they'd offer a download of their program. Hard drives are not going to go out of style. Same with comics. The big publishers may all decide to allow one digital distributor to have a monopoly, but I can already buy DRM free PDF's directly from the creator through email on certain titles. That won't go away. They aren't paying a publisher and distributor a cut, it's all going in their pocket.

 

Your options will be isolated and eliminated one by one. Google will flood you with mindless options. Operating systems will make it more difficult to choose freestanding software. They'll bundle something with the rented version and make it a better value until everyone feels like it's the only logical choice.

 

DG

[Bio-Rupp]

Will "Crowd funded" titles take the place of the independent market... eventually?

 

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/01/crowd-funded-comics-nearly-2-the-size-of-direct-market/

[rjrjr]

Will "Crowd funded" titles take the place of the independent market... eventually?

 

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/01/crowd-funded-comics-nearly-2-the-size-of-direct-market/

 

It's hard to imagine. The biggest drawback to "crowd funded" titles is when the title is never released and the people who funded it never see their money again. I think it is a neat addition to the indie market, but I don't foresee it as replacing it.