As a 33 year old, I'm still buying physical copies of vinyl and cds of my favourite bands. It will be at least 10,000 Days before Marvel and DC understand that loosing money is bad for business.
I do exactly the same, I have been looking for movies, series and comics to save them for several years, everything is disappearing, everything is being censored, rewritten and discontinued, it was recently announced that Disney will never publish certain volumes of the adventures of Scrooge MacDuck again for be offensive, in Spain several publishers have announced something similar regarding works published before the year 2000, they are unacceptable for the current public, they have even pointed out Francisco Ibañez, author of Mortadelo and Filemon, this gentleman has been drawing the adventures of his characters beginning at the time of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in which the censors reviewed everything that was published, what the Franco dictatorship did not do is being done today by the politically correct.
My shop that had sold comic books for the last 40 years literally stopped selling comic books last year. Now I have to drive over a hundred miles away to buy comics. But honestly, none of them are really good enough for me to drive that far anyway.
My LCS is surviving thanks to creating a space for gaming, like DnD, and just your standard pop culture stuff. I've noticed the shelves for manga getting more space.
Out of curiosity are the profit margins low for comic books as a retailer in comparison to the cover price your customers pay? Some of my local comic book stores will throw their unsold inventory in the $1 bin and some of these issues are new with cover price tags of $4.99. I’m guessing they are selling them at a loss but the 2 shops I go to that does this seems to be doing pretty well since it’s not the owner who operates the shop but hired staff running around the store to help customers and deal with inventory. I’m guessing they are relying on other profitable collectibles or themes that people are willing to pay for besides unsold comic books.
@@jon6309 yea they def sell at a loss, and there are always gonna be some of those at shops....but thats one of the main things that determine their success....ordering as close to humanly possible the exact amount of each issue that will sell. Many a comic shop have went out of business with over-extending themselves being the main reason.
In Japan--if you can find them--a $3.99 comic costs around $4.90 and a $4.99 comic will set you back around $6.10. Imagine paying over 60 bucks for 10 issues. It wasn't so long ago that 10 issues would cost you $30. Remember $2.99? Todd McFarlane does! Great video, mate.
You can also get on an app, pay 2.99, and get access to damn near 1000 titles same day Japanese release… The manga formula is where Marvel and DC have to go.. Not looking good for local shops unless they get their act together
@@stankmaw Yes, that app is brilliant value for money! In Japan you can only get the Japanese version. I wish I could access the English version as my reading kanji ability sucks 😅. The same goes for the DC Universe app, unfortunately it's not available yet in Japan.
@@zirconiumdiamond1416 I just checked and I'm pretty surprised it costs 980 yen per month. It says "for that price you can read every issue." That's about $7.20. Looks like the American version is much cheaper.
Personally, I've been a graphic novel guy for at least 20 years now. Seriously, I haven't bought a floppy for a loooong time. GNs are awesome 'cause they present the whole story and are usually a bit cheaper than the group of floppies that make up the story. I agree with TC. GNs are the future...☺
@@jbbrolic 100%. What sucks though is availabilitydue to low print runs, specially if you aren't american. And well, random collections doesn't help much either.
I stopped buying comics in 2009 and lost track in how much it costs in Canada nowadays. I stopped getting comics wasn't due to price, it was due to something of a different interest.
You did well brother, nothing that is published nowadays is worth it, I have read the last series of Tim Drake and now he is the masked defender of an LGBT community with his boyfriend Bernard, without a doubt a popular comic for the LGBT community, For heterosexuals it is an abomination.
I'm surprised that Disney and Warner Brothers haven't decided to stop publishing comic books because the profits are too small to bother with. They probably make a lot more in merchandising.
Sana Amanat, the publisher of Marvel Comics, has acknowledged this in public, they have decades of material in their hands, even if they stop publishing comics, the editorial fund is enough to maintain sales of merchandise, movies and television series, they can reprint for 20 or 30 years and still make money.
I grew up with comics being sold in supermarkets, drug stores, and gas stations: none were “comic shops.” Now, comics will be sold in “bookstores” that sell all sorts of merchandise, including comic books.
In Australia we pay between $8 - $15 a comic for a standard cvr. DC cost $11 a standard comic. You go into variants it goes from $15 - $100+ depending on the ratio
This new thing Marvel and DC do where they add on a backup story and bump up the price is frustrating. It’s like if McDonald’s raised the price of all their burgers 25% so they can add an orange juice to every order. We are gonna charge you more so we can give you something you don’t want.
The Marvel back up stories are god awful, they look like those snicker comic ads that Dc had running a couple of years ago? I buck extra for that garbage?!
@@cicolasnage5684 most of those backup stories are useless. It would be one thing if they charged more for competent backups but they are nothing more than tryout space for lower tier creators.
I get what doc is saying. He is more or less pointing out Manga market =/= the comic market. If the industry changes to focus on GNs then the industry has fundamentally changed into a new and different industry.
lol exactly. The comic market is just that, made of comics. If they do away with comics and go purely GNs, there is no comic market. At that point there will only be the GN market lol. Obviously there is crossover between the 2, but at the same time, there are a ton of ppl that only partake in one or the other. Obviously a non-collector that just reads would be totally fine with this, but then just as many, maybe more, that would not
If you want certain comics from my LCS it better be on your pull list because they aren't ordering extra copies. My LCS has no faith in Marvel or DC selling off the shelf, even if it's a first issue.
exactly what my LCS does, they only order extras of books they know some people that will have a change of heart will buy or are resellable on the long run.
That's because most Marvel and DC books aren't worth anyone's time or money. Comic shops are realizing this after losing so much money. My LCS has mostly back issues and other older stuff. They make good money that way. But only so much new stuff is made available unless you order it. Just not worth it to keep it in the store. Other than Spawn books which still sells like hot cakes.
I touched on this the other day, but another thing hurting sales of single issues is the number of events and tie-ins the Big Two are having now. Most people aren’t going to buy an issue if they know they’d also have to buy nine other issues from however many books just to understand what’s happening or learn what happens.
$5 comics is a hard no for me. If the market is in the death spiral of "we have to raise prices to make up for fewer sales" it's fucking done. Pull the plug. You're a comic company, not a supercar manufacturer.
The Biggest problem with Comics today is the Writing, it's Awful. $4.99 will indeed probly kill comics. LCS's need to be a mixed bag these days. Besides single issues u need toys, Pops, cards(pokemon,Magic), Graphics Novels, Manga. Etc.
there are some good writers but outside of those good ones, most shit sux. But i can think of quite a few good ones in mainstream comics alone, and no, Donny Cates isnt on that list lol
@@shawnmccann9762 yea they are good. My favorite writer is Jeff Lemire, but i also really like Chip Zdarsky and Al Ewing alot. Waid still decent, and a handful of others. Jason Aaron is decent as well.
Really been thinking about around May-June I’m going to close my pull box. I can’t find enough to enjoy, the comics I do or did are too expensive and it’s not worth the money for 10-15 minutes of entertainment.
I keep saying I'm going to stop, but just keep on adding to my pulls. I will say my DC and Indie buying is next to zero. I'm really thinking about dumping Batman & Detective soon.
@@PubeStache dude I miss seeing you on LOCG, I dropped all of DC except flash, Marvel is just moon knight. Indies are death dealer, spawn universe titles and a mini or two.
I always wanted to read comics when I was younger, but affording them was the major barrier. Affordability is worse nowadays. Quality also has dipped. Distribution is limited. Now, kids read manga and Webtoons for free on their phones and buy the manga they like the best from Target or Barnes and Noble.
If it goes to 4.99, this might be my last year reading new comics. Or at the very least, go way down to buying only 3-5 comics a month. I'd drop a lot of titles. I'm also in Canada where 4.99 USD is actually 6.49 to 6.99 CAN.
Wes was on point...... I would pass by my Local comic book shop every few months to pick up some stuff.... they went out of business... Horrible what has happened
Started with Bronze Age but stopped buying floppies 10 years ago because: 1. With many titles I wasn’t reading them only maintaining the run 2. The constant 1st issues and limited runs made it impossible to store them in any order or track what box they were in. Trying to reread a story was even worse. 3. Price and volume were too high. About 2 years ago I discovered I could go backwards not forwards in time and started collecting golden and silver age anthologies of large runs I had never read. (I still have 40 years of floppies 1970-2012 boxed to read) That’s all I do now is reread my old books or buy older book restorations.
Screw $4.99! Pre-order Calico next month. $2.99 to start a new series. Get Night Club to for the same reason. Spawn titles are still 2.99 as far as I know.
floppies are the domain of collectors who haven't accepted that they aren't going to be worth anything in the future. the floppy market is dead - the funko pop market makes more money for comic book stores.
Apart from a few select titles, I exclusively trade read now, they’re way cheaper. I got the first two volumes of Deathstroke rebirth for £10 total. That’s single two issues in 2023.
Here in the US, I have noticed that the cover price for trades are getting more expensive. It used to be around $15 for 6 issues, then it's $18 and now is $20.
I often wonder if comic shops stay afloat based more on collectibles sales than actual comics. Marvel and DC have driven readers away in droves, but there's still a solid market for figures, statues, etc.
If there was money to be made in weekly floppies, Manga publishers would be releasing their product that way. Like they did in the 80's and 90's. But they're not...
Manga publishers (in Japan) absolutely do still sell weeklies. But they're also dirt cheap disposable entertainment. But the true differentiator is that Japanese publishers try a lot of NEW stuff, and are absolutely brutal on things that don't sell. If you're not moving lots of books, then you're cut and they move on. You don't get to try writing for a long running book, you either come up with something cool that does well or you're filling in backgrounds for someone who will.
I'm sure there's a LOT of people like me who now check titles out "on the high seas" and avoid the toxic garbage before buying a comic JUST to support out comic shops. But the bar for a sale gets HIGHER. I used to buy 10 titles a week, now maybe 3. But how many will go buy a crappy floppy when you can read their lefty dross for free online
In Canada [Manitoba specifically] one comic costs $5.55-$5.70 CDN and this includes the US/CDN exchange rate and the 13% sales taxes. Multiply this one issue cost with variants and you see why my pull list is only two comics now.
This guy is so wrong. The entire music industry was changed when they stop making albums. Comic books were created in the 1920s it’s not going to be the same in the future.
On the Spotify/Singles point, I would argue today's comic books aren't the same thing as comics prior to 1995 (or so). Comics before that were "throw away" media. Designed to hit a low price point so they could be purchased by kids on a whim. And placed in every grocery, convenience, department and book store for easy access. Now they are 150% more expensive and you need to drive across town to get them. If you're lucky enough to have a comic shop at all (in the U.S. there's only a comic show in 10-12% of cities and I suspect that percentage is far lower worldwide). Sequential art will probably always exist. But the original author's point that "comics have always been around and will always be around" isn't valid. The direct market has only been around for about 35 years and it has only been the exclusive source of comics for about 25 years. That means the industry as it is today has been around about as long as dubstep. And we all know how that went...
Waiting for the saviour who gets a spinner rack full of their books at the self checkouts of Wal-Mart, Kroger, CVS... Distribution will fix sales. Sales will fix quality. Quality will fix distribution....
@@PubeStache I really believe that comics would function a lot better than magazines given a decent marketing strategy. The fact that comic shops exist is proof that there is an aftermarket that doesn't exist for zines. Just got to shock the cultural zeitgeist to get comics up to Manga levels of buzz. It has to start with distribution because there are to many areas where kids have never walked past a comic at the store and said buy me that please mom/dad.
As a collector/reader of over 50 years, i'm at my jumping off point with comics. My comic list went from 10 a month, down to 2. Now those series are finished, it's time to look at another hobby. Wokeness & SJW's fucked them up. They can all burn.
Local to me there is a few comic shops. One is a New England chain. I buy all my new issues from the chain store. why? because i get a 20% discount on all comics and accessories that includes ratio variants, bags and boards, boxes. My local store where I live has been trying to court my money and get my pull. but I had to explain to him he couldn't compete with the chain store cause of the discount. Now I do buy from my LCS and he does hand out some good deals, but I can't spend full price on something when I can get it at a way better discount. I'll buy maybe 1 or 2 new comics from my LCS and he gets my money on back issues. I was also buying from another great comic store out of Portland local to me. He's awesome as well. I was spending upwards of 500+ a month. I had to stop getting pulls from him also because he never gave me any discounts. So I had to choose and it kinda sucked cause I like to support my LCS. So to me if comics go up another dollar+ it's gonna kill small stores, they can't compete with the larger chain stores and discounts.
That's the problem I have with "support your LCS!" It's really not our responsibility. It's on Marvel and DC to make sure it's possible for them to make selling their comic books a rational business that makes sense for customer to buy comic books at at and enables them to make money selling Marvel and DC comic books.
That Tucci guy seems to be extremely likeable - he has managed to remain friends with everyone, despite being a comicsgater. On the livestream I heard, he was thinking of splitting the longer CG books into cheaper paper 20 page books, and sell via the so-called direct market.
There's no "deal" that needs to be cut: the Geppis don't care about politics, and they are there to make money. Billy would have the same "deal" everyone else does. He could get into Previews right now under the Crusade banner if he wanted to. Now, especially that some of the big companies have left them, Diamond has a much better attitude about welcoming indies into Previews, and it's fairly easy to get into their catalog compared to a few years back (our friends in "Comicsburgh" - The Edge and Beowulf - just got into Jan 2023 Previews for a March sales date). However, indie publishers all still have to deal with the problem of giving 60% of the cover price to Diamond. I would think that for many CG-ers, giving up that big of a chunk is not worth it, when up until now, they've been receiving 95% (minus the %5 that IGG takes) of their sales from crowdfunding. It'd be a much better deal (and also cancel-proof) for CG-ers to go *direct* to a handful of prominent stores across the country who are CG-sympathetic. We've done that ourselves by selling directly to over 200 stores, not using Diamond at all. CG could start its own independent distributor (which Pete from Alterna was going to do a couple years ago - he took submissions from dozens of indie publishers but never pulled the trigger), and then each store could get a big box of a variety of CG titles, which would save a lot on shipping. Imagine a CG display in your LCS - it can be done; someone would just have to organize it.
Oh, snap I am listening to the albums wrong? “I’m a dinosaur, somebody is digging my bones.” A little King Crimson for your reading and hopefully listening pleasure. The real problem is that comic shops are becoming a rare thing because of the horrid distribution, the even more horrid content and insanity of whaling for variant covers. A Shonen Jump style of black and white title shorts and then publishing the popular selling titles in color for the big five publishers. Getting standardized sizes, layouts and numbering for graphic novels/trade paperbacks are a must for the brick and mortar retailers. Remember the spinning racks at convenience stores and bodegas? “I’m a dinosaur. Somebody is digging my bones.”
Where is the expense in comic book publishing? The writers and artists aren't making tons of money. The companies know three or four months in advance how many copies they need for each comic book. The technology is well established and computers have replaced union workers at the printing companies. The comics themselves are accepted as money losers by the companies that own them. So why the hell don't comics cost $2 at the very most?
In the image documentary, it has an interview with Rob Leifield where he was absolutely crestfallen when extreme had their first issue not have 300,000 orders years into the company. If you had 300000 orders on a comic now, you are the best selling comic in the entire industry for the year. I don’t think it’s a 10th I think it’s more like a one hundredth.
The comic book industry always finds ways to shoot themselves in the foot. Moving from newstands to comic shops for increased profits cut the chance of new readers randomly picking up a comic. The price point moves it from impulse buy to making room in your budget. No more raising price by 25 or 50 cents, it's by bucks. Considering the Silver and Bronze age comics took 20 - 40 minutes to read, because of the compact storytelling, today's $4&5 dollar comics can be flipped thru in about 5 minutes, not much bang for the bux.
I had this fight with Paul Levitz via two letters when comics topped $2.99. He was defensive but reasonable then. Now it’s just insane. Never going back to Marvel and DC, and essentially done collecting.
If Marvel raises their prices to $4.99. I am going to slash my weekly saver again. I've cut my saver down to two books per week. If prices go up again, I am cutting it down to four books a month. The books are so lousy right now that I am almost down to four books a month already. This will just drive more comic book shops to close....
I remember comics back in my childhood (from DC) cost about, roughly estimated, 2.50 USD per issue. And each issue was 20 pages of stories that concluded (with a myth arc combining all issues across the plot). US Comics seem to have missed a major step forward which is keeping the things that worked and apply them to new distribution models, as well as applying new trends to their products. It already fails with what used to work, and fails with adding what people like. 🤔
The cost is a huge issue, I just got the latest volume of Jujitsu Kaisen for €6.80, newest One Piece for €8.20, I finally snagged the first 3-in-1 volume (3 volumes in one) of Rorouni Kenshin (been looking for it for over a year) for €15, and a bunch of others for under €10. They all have 200 pages, and 600 pages for the Rorouni Kenshin, manga is just much much better value for your money. And I got these from the Book Depositary with free shipping, I get all my manga from them as most stuff is discounted less than retail.
I hate the term "graphic novel" so freaking much. It's comics. It's a comic book. Whether it's a 20 page floppy or a 200 page square bound hardback, it's a goddamn comic book. I'm in the camp that that format is the future. Whether it's short attention spans who want the entire story at once, or it's people who can't or don't want to expend the mental energy try to keep up with an ongoing series. I'm one of latter. Just give me the whole thing at once, I've got other things taking up my mental energy to worry about keeping up with the next issue of TMNT: The Last Ronin coming out however many months later, or Swamp Thing: Green Hell coming out _a goddamn year_ later. I just want to read the whole thing in one go now and go about my other business.
If single issues go away. I might buy TP. I will never read digital. Im on a computer ever day i don't want to read my comics on digital platforms. Ill just go over to Manga
It's honestly not that bad going digital. I eventually bought a 10.1" Kindle tablet so I could purchase the comics straight on the device (you can't do that with a regular Android or iOS device because Amazon doesn't want to pay the 30% to Google/Apple). At that size it's almost the same size as the printed page. It still hurts double page spreads but other than that I've grown accustomed to it.
@nexus169 There are plenty of great comics and movies, just not coming from Marvel/DC and Hollywood. I am sorry both you and Doc lack the curiosity to find enjoyable things. It's just self flaggelation for no purpose, and I sincerely hope you both get over it. I pity you both, no need to shoot pitiable creatures.
@@RarebitFiends right. I just found this channel a few days ago. And I largely agree with a lot of his views. BUT I find this all funny. I love X-Men, Spider-Man, etc, but I’m not as nearly upset about not enjoying the comics because I found non DC or Marvel comics that I do enjoy. And I realize from a TH-cam point of view the negativity and ranting gets views.
@nexus169 thats the fuckin truth. Its not just comics, almost everything media and pop culture like that. How many good movies come out per year these days,....MAYBE 2?
@@RarebitFiends not everyone wants to scour the earth to find some no name shit they may or may not like. Im well aware of indie comics, indie movies, indie whatever. Most of that is garbage these days too. And as far as comic books, everyone says "indies this indies that" but im sorry, there are some good stories but they are a dime a dozen now and no way in hell indies are saving comic books or hollywood.
The transition from floppies to tpb-only ain't a direct line. Floppies make it so that a publisher doesn't have to pay creative teams for the tpb content--just the costs for printing and distribution (and a bit for editorial). Take out the floppies and they have to fold creative costs into the tpbs...plus the fact that, since the tpb has a higher price tag and production cost than a floppy, it's riskier for the publisher to produce and the shop to stock. (Pretty much everything gets a tpb nowadays because the profit margin on those is a lot higher thanks to floppies leading the way.) Take out the floppies and you fundamentally change the economics of the industry
I whole heartedly believe that trade paperbacks and deluxe editions are the future and that marvel and dc will have their monthly stuff come out virtually only. Wes is right, the way we consume content has changed forever and ever.
I’m older than you guys and I can see the changes in the future! I definitely agree about supporting comics shops but at the same time they have to adapt to the climate of change! Obviously DC&Marvel are going to do screaming and crying like a spoiled bitch! I love the characters and creators but not the antiquated business model! There are alot of potential and speaking only for myself as a customer I will always support creative people who give me a story with some imagination 💭! Hopefully the big 2 sleepyhead giants will wake up and????😎❤️⚡️🚀
The rough version, 60% of the cover price goes to the Distributor and Retailer. The other 40% goes towards making (talent, editors) and printing of the book, rent and taxes. Anything left is profit.
I tried replying to this with a link but the filter is killing it. But if you google (w/o quotes) "jim zub creator owned economics the changing market" you'll get a good breakdown. Look for the pie chart 1/3rd of the way down.
What I heard (second or third hand, several years ago, so take with a grain of salt) was that the retailer took about 50%, the distriuter (Diamond) took 20%, leaving 30% for the publisher.
DIAMOND WAS POOR ON SHIPPING AND CREDIT ON DAMAGED GOODS. IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER WHEN DEALERS WORKED WITH DISTRIBUTORS WHO GAVE US DISCOUNTS AND CREDIT FOR DAMAGE. THEY WERE FOOLED WHEN FAT PHIL LIED TO THE DEALERS ABOUT DIRECT MARKET.
I am really curious how profitable comic book shops are. I’ve recently gotten back into comic purchases. Even though I use Marvel Unlimited for digital access to read books I still buy physical ones when they are heavily discounted or are not available to read in the digital library. I always dig in the $1 bins and surprised to find a lot of their new issues that happen to be keys the clerk told me whatever inventory doesn’t sell by the time new inventory come in is thrown in their $1 bin. I rarely pay cover price and when I do it has to be a very strong reason and it’s not frequent. One of my comic book stores has boxes of comics selling 2 for a $1 so 50 cents each and looking at the cover price some are $4.99, $5.99 depending on the issue. My guess is they are selling at a loss especially since they are also bagged and this comic book store hires a lot of staff to work the shop. I’m guessing they rely on other products such as magic and other nerdy themes that are more profitable in order to sustain the business.
In my country finding a shop that sells singles is almost non-existent. You’d have to go to one of the major cities and even then it’s not a guarantee in all of them. Graphic novels are the only things I can get my hands on and that’s mostly via online retailers rather then a physical store.
Comics will be fine ... because they will be carried on by people who care. That's the big thing and a lot of outlets aren't talking about the people who care because they aren't apart of the clique so to speak. I don't see the art of comics dying anytime soon but I do see Marvel, DC, and a lot of other companies who are fumbling the ball to take a massive hit soon because THEY are the ones who DON'T care. As of right now, Marvel and DC are more 'entertainment brands' who care more about their shows and movies than the quality of their books. They are always the ones suffering the hits but people move on to indies, manga and other international comics. Those will keep comics alive and American comics will pick back only when we get people who actually like comics and know the business in charge. Until then, they can continue to be tone deaf both with business and content and customer treatment and continue to ask why forner customers are going elsewhere. They won't address the issue is the shitheads they hired until it finally reaches that point they have to.
Poor Uel. I can already picture him in my head chuckling, "Well, I'm not *that* screwed yet, you know." In Uruguay we get translated graphic novels mostly (and manga, of course), it's been eons since I've seen a floppy. GNs can cost you between 2 to 3 times its US retail price. I paid a fair bit for the Black Label edition of The New Frontier. Another reason why most people here buy manga, you can probably buy 3 to 4 volumes of a manga for the price of one GN.
Personally, I worry that in the future we will look back at transitioning from monthly comics to graphic-novels-first the same we we look back at leaving the new-stand for the direct market. It may make some sense in the short term, but in the long term we loose a lot in the process. Most notably affordability and an easy entry point for new readers. Original graphic novels are a whole lot more expensive than a collection of reprints, and I just don't see many ways for new graphic novels to achieve widespread appeal without some sort of pre-existing audience... Don't get me wrong, I like big collected editions, but I worry about that being the main focus of the industry.
Yup, plus the fact that some people will fade out of the hobby entirely if they break the habit of going to the shop every week. Floppies have way more FOMO factor
I love your videos but on this one you guys meandered a bit. Can you simply bullet point what this article states are going to the problems for retailers in 2023 in this post?
Y’all were a little too ‘debate mode’ in this video. And it gets weird when you start using The Phillipines as your proof for an industry which couldn’t care less about The Phillipines (almost all industries). Parts of this were good - but overall a bit ranty. To support comics - read comics - doesn’t have to be in-store, just gotta be paying someone occasionally to entertain you. Even watching comic-derived media or media from comic book creators is a way of supporting comic books. Looking forward to a more fact heavy video next time.
I don't understand the logic of if people buy less monthly floppies and more graphic novels, then that's no longer the comic market, but the book market. Maybe I'm missing the semantics here, but I'm sure a lot of people said the same thing about newspaper strips vs floppies. The medium is comics. Page count, hard / soft cover etc isn't relevant. I read it all under the umbrella of 'comics'. The glory days of Marvel / DC are long gone because those creators are long gone. It's the people, not the IP (or the page count or format). Cheers.
On topic of graphic novel sales and increased prices of single issues, are more people buying just the 1st issue of a series and then waiting for the trade? I certainly find myself doing this with the independent companies and starting to shift that way for “The Big 2”. Seems like you are just buying covers anyway for single issues of The Big 2? Thanks for your efforts Wes!
I think it’s absolutely a mix of both higher prices and lower reading interest I bought a lot of DC during new 52 Wonder Woman at $2.99 you could get around 5 issues with $20 I’m definitely going to buy more collected just got the George Pérez Wonder Woman Omnibus today Sales are down already and charging more isn’t going to win people over every week at my LCS since Spider-Man started not a copy was left the biggest new unsold stack today Spider-Man 20 If the quality isn’t driving people away the price eventually will I watched Drew and his brother review that new spawn book and they spoke about it being very divisive Spawn resisted arrest and cops were shooting at him and he took his mask off to show he’s black And Todd was charging $5 for garbage I’m not a big Todd fan but I think Todd is getting to comfortable to charge premium for awful storytelling there was apparently no action it was basically a $5 lecture
In Japan, you can buy manga magazines with almost 500 pages for like 250 yen which is equivalent to 2 dollars in American currency. Why are comics in America so freaking expensive for so little content?
i visited my "local" comic shop (35 miles away) today. i came out w/$200 in back issues and some figures/pop. had no inkling to look at anything post '11. ans sorry Doc, buuuuuut music IS sold by the single now.
it's ALWAYS been sold as singles. It was sold as singles on 45's back in the day. It was on cassette singles. It was CD singles. Then it was iTunes singles. It was just a question of medium but all were singles and sold as singles. And the albums were still released. On vinyl. Then 8-tracks. Then cassettes. Then cd's. Then digital.
I think there should be a a monthly pay for all comics from one company in digital and eliminate teh single issues. The app should monitoize how many readers have one series to evaluate how many books prints after. But this can only work if the app can work worldwide, the north american market will not be enough.
I'm strictly a tpb and hardcover collector now, I stopped buying single issues around 2005 mostly due to just getting tired of mediocre junk, on occasion I'll find some gems in the dollar bins.
The future is likely no major modern Marvel & DC will be just reprints thou I expect they'll streamline the size of the books to same size as Manga books and also sort out the reading order of every character and series, none of this event stuff and books that vary in sizes, which is part of the reason manga took over as it did, where to start, at volume 1, where's US comics its like you have say "Kingdom come" or "Batman Year one" or "killing the Joke", what is the starting point and yet if you look at US GN in a book store, it looks untidy with all these large slim books that vary in sizes, manga regardless of title, Demon Slayer, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Sailor Moon, they are all pretty much the same size and the cost is also better as well, so manga, wins and evenly they'll push out the former big two because they have no clue what they are doing and their cooperate owners don't care, hell their cooperate owners don't even care about the TV shows or movies they produce because they lost sight of their customers!
ts the same in gaming, but these people will never publicly admit it that changeing decades old characters & franchises and attacking their decades old steady customerbases are main reasons for the mess they are in right now. Both in Europe and the US companies really have forgotten what & how important a classic "customer/company" relation is, having this smug attitude as if the customer has to be honored to buy whatever it is they are selling. They clearly took their customers for grand and paid the price for it, although we shouldnt be surprised about it. People like this pseudo journo were the same people who salles numbers and making a profit werent important.
These companies forget that the floppy format was to promote easy access, the price allowed more customers to take a chance on a new story, when I got in the funny books back in the 90s it was 2 to 2.50 price range, paper and print job was decent quality, storytelling was appealing and you sold in the direct market, the end result you had 100,000 or more sales. Now you have Marvel and DC printing in cheap paper, cheap art and story yet charging 4 to 5 dollars, sales lower with the lack of customer consideration. Other companies and comic shops have allowed Marvel and DC to determine the price range of floppies. Go back to direct sales and keep them cheap, cause we need it that way to reach bigger consumer numbers, then you can sell the graphic novels with higher print quality and extra content. Japan sells their graphic novels here successfully cause they covered the initial cost of singles issues in cheap sales.
homie u need to get some suspenders coz u the Larry King of comic news
Boom 💥
As a 33 year old, I'm still buying physical copies of vinyl and cds of my favourite bands. It will be at least 10,000 Days before Marvel and DC understand that loosing money is bad for business.
"10,000 days in the fire is long enough, you're going home!"
Yeah, I can't get behind spending real money for a virtual thing, I need the physical copy.
I do exactly the same, I have been looking for movies, series and comics to save them for several years, everything is disappearing, everything is being censored, rewritten and discontinued, it was recently announced that Disney will never publish certain volumes of the adventures of Scrooge MacDuck again for be offensive, in Spain several publishers have announced something similar regarding works published before the year 2000, they are unacceptable for the current public, they have even pointed out Francisco Ibañez, author of Mortadelo and Filemon, this gentleman has been drawing the adventures of his characters beginning at the time of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in which the censors reviewed everything that was published, what the Franco dictatorship did not do is being done today by the politically correct.
My shop that had sold comic books for the last 40 years literally stopped selling comic books last year. Now I have to drive over a hundred miles away to buy comics. But honestly, none of them are really good enough for me to drive that far anyway.
My LCS is surviving thanks to creating a space for gaming, like DnD, and just your standard pop culture stuff. I've noticed the shelves for manga getting more space.
At that point might as well order them online instead of going to get them in person.
Out of curiosity are the profit margins low for comic books as a retailer in comparison to the cover price your customers pay? Some of my local comic book stores will throw their unsold inventory in the $1 bin and some of these issues are new with cover price tags of $4.99. I’m guessing they are selling them at a loss but the 2 shops I go to that does this seems to be doing pretty well since it’s not the owner who operates the shop but hired staff running around the store to help customers and deal with inventory. I’m guessing they are relying on other profitable collectibles or themes that people are willing to pay for besides unsold comic books.
@@jon6309 yea they def sell at a loss, and there are always gonna be some of those at shops....but thats one of the main things that determine their success....ordering as close to humanly possible the exact amount of each issue that will sell. Many a comic shop have went out of business with over-extending themselves being the main reason.
They did you a favor. None of this stuff is worth collecting anymore
In Japan--if you can find them--a $3.99 comic costs around $4.90 and a $4.99 comic will set you back around $6.10. Imagine paying over 60 bucks for 10 issues. It wasn't so long ago that 10 issues would cost you $30. Remember $2.99? Todd McFarlane does! Great video, mate.
You can also get on an app, pay 2.99, and get access to damn near 1000 titles same day Japanese release… The manga formula is where Marvel and DC have to go.. Not looking good for local shops unless they get their act together
@@stankmaw Yes, that app is brilliant value for money! In Japan you can only get the Japanese version. I wish I could access the English version as my reading kanji ability sucks 😅. The same goes for the DC Universe app, unfortunately it's not available yet in Japan.
@nexus169 I did too!
@@WakizashisTeahouseout of curiosity, what does the app cost in Japan? Do they charge about 300 yen a month? Or do they not even have a subscription?
@@zirconiumdiamond1416 I just checked and I'm pretty surprised it costs 980 yen per month. It says "for that price you can read every issue." That's about $7.20. Looks like the American version is much cheaper.
The writer is the guy from Edmonton that tried to blame CG for his store getting broken in to about 5 years ago.
Most people have a budget, price increase = another book dropped off your pull list.
Personally, I've been a graphic novel guy for at least 20 years now. Seriously, I haven't bought a floppy for a loooong time. GNs are awesome 'cause they present the whole story and are usually a bit cheaper than the group of floppies that make up the story. I agree with TC. GNs are the future...☺
They are a lot cheaper used. I get used trade paperbacks, Epic Collections, etc. The cost per issue is generally well under a dollar buying this way
@@jbbrolic 100%. What sucks though is availabilitydue to low print runs, specially if you aren't american. And well, random collections doesn't help much either.
I stopped buying comics in 2009 and lost track in how much it costs in Canada nowadays. I stopped getting comics wasn't due to price, it was due to something of a different interest.
Damn, you stopped when mainstream comics were still good lol.
You did well brother, nothing that is published nowadays is worth it, I have read the last series of Tim Drake and now he is the masked defender of an LGBT community with his boyfriend Bernard, without a doubt a popular comic for the LGBT community, For heterosexuals it is an abomination.
In my country comics died a few years ago, it's all graphic novels now, they just wait for the arc to end and publish the trade paperbacks
I'm surprised that Disney and Warner Brothers haven't decided to stop publishing comic books because the profits are too small to bother with. They probably make a lot more in merchandising.
Very true I've said that for years
It’s basically a marketing cost. That’s why they run them so cheap.
Sana Amanat, the publisher of Marvel Comics, has acknowledged this in public, they have decades of material in their hands, even if they stop publishing comics, the editorial fund is enough to maintain sales of merchandise, movies and television series, they can reprint for 20 or 30 years and still make money.
I grew up with comics being sold in supermarkets, drug stores, and gas stations: none were “comic shops.” Now, comics will be sold in “bookstores” that sell all sorts of merchandise, including comic books.
In Australia we pay between $8 - $15 a comic for a standard cvr. DC cost $11 a standard comic. You go into variants it goes from $15 - $100+ depending on the ratio
For those prices I better get to punch a kangaroo.
Austraila is in bad position of having to ship everything
If I were Australian, I wouldn’t be. I’d move to the USA 🇺🇸 or UK 🇬🇧 instead.
Kings comics last store standing in Sydney. I get it. 3 comics =$30. Imagine spending that for Tom Taylors books about ghey kids haha.
@@theragoooverlord5021 kings and the comic shop at Liverpool only ones standing
When you guys went back and forth for a few mins, it was great. I enjoy you both. Thanks for the many years of videos!
This new thing Marvel and DC do where they add on a backup story and bump up the price is frustrating. It’s like if McDonald’s raised the price of all their burgers 25% so they can add an orange juice to every order. We are gonna charge you more so we can give you something you don’t want.
The Marvel back up stories are god awful, they look like those snicker comic ads that Dc had running a couple of years ago? I buck extra for that garbage?!
@@cicolasnage5684 most of those backup stories are useless. It would be one thing if they charged more for competent backups but they are nothing more than tryout space for lower tier creators.
“…extra shingles with a shimmy and a *squeeze*…”- Bubble Bass from SpongeBob SquarePants
Reminds me of robocop except I wouldn’t buy that for a dollar.
New? You think it's new to have a back up story in a comic?
I get what doc is saying. He is more or less pointing out Manga market =/= the comic market. If the industry changes to focus on GNs then the industry has fundamentally changed into a new and different industry.
lol exactly. The comic market is just that, made of comics. If they do away with comics and go purely GNs, there is no comic market. At that point there will only be the GN market lol. Obviously there is crossover between the 2, but at the same time, there are a ton of ppl that only partake in one or the other. Obviously a non-collector that just reads would be totally fine with this, but then just as many, maybe more, that would not
That's nuts! The DC Walmart exclusives were $5 and they were giant sized with flat spines
Keep in mind those Walmart Giants had a lot of reprint material. But yeah, $4.99 for a floppy would be ridiculous.
If you want certain comics from my LCS it better be on your pull list because they aren't ordering extra copies. My LCS has no faith in Marvel or DC selling off the shelf, even if it's a first issue.
exactly what my LCS does, they only order extras of books they know some people that will have a change of heart will buy or are resellable on the long run.
That's because most Marvel and DC books aren't worth anyone's time or money. Comic shops are realizing this after losing so much money.
My LCS has mostly back issues and other older stuff. They make good money that way. But only so much new stuff is made available unless you order it. Just not worth it to keep it in the store.
Other than Spawn books which still sells like hot cakes.
I touched on this the other day, but another thing hurting sales of single issues is the number of events and tie-ins the Big Two are having now. Most people aren’t going to buy an issue if they know they’d also have to buy nine other issues from however many books just to understand what’s happening or learn what happens.
$5 comics is a hard no for me. If the market is in the death spiral of "we have to raise prices to make up for fewer sales" it's fucking done. Pull the plug. You're a comic company, not a supercar manufacturer.
I will be extremely selective if I buy anything.
The Biggest problem with Comics today is the Writing, it's Awful. $4.99 will indeed probly kill comics.
LCS's need to be a mixed bag these days. Besides single issues u need toys, Pops, cards(pokemon,Magic), Graphics Novels, Manga. Etc.
I agree. Some of the people who are considered to be the "best" writers, their material leaves me wanting - good writing.
there are some good writers but outside of those good ones, most shit sux. But i can think of quite a few good ones in mainstream comics alone, and no, Donny Cates isnt on that list lol
@@nunyabizwacks6711 I agree, Scott Snyder, James Tinion are 2 that I'll purchase anything sight unseen if either of them r the writer.
@@shawnmccann9762 yea they are good. My favorite writer is Jeff Lemire, but i also really like Chip Zdarsky and Al Ewing alot. Waid still decent, and a handful of others. Jason Aaron is decent as well.
Really been thinking about around May-June I’m going to close my pull box. I can’t find enough to enjoy, the comics I do or did are too expensive and it’s not worth the money for 10-15 minutes of entertainment.
I did that last year. I just couldn't justify paying that much for comics I no longer enjoy. I'd rather spend it on older books - or groceries.
I keep saying I'm going to stop, but just keep on adding to my pulls. I will say my DC and Indie buying is next to zero. I'm really thinking about dumping Batman & Detective soon.
@@TimGillespie-rs3fz I’m at that point now, I would rather purchase books that will hold value or that I actually enjoy.
@@PubeStache dude I miss seeing you on LOCG, I dropped all of DC except flash, Marvel is just moon knight. Indies are death dealer, spawn universe titles and a mini or two.
What's funny because I wouldn't even want to read a lot of modern comics today even if they were, *free* .
In south Africa comics cost 3 digits, idk if it's because they are super rare in the country or just because of the exchange rate
I always wanted to read comics when I was younger, but affording them was the major barrier. Affordability is worse nowadays. Quality also has dipped. Distribution is limited. Now, kids read manga and Webtoons for free on their phones and buy the manga they like the best from Target or Barnes and Noble.
I love that thumbnail. Phantastic comics is SCREWED
If it goes to 4.99, this might be my last year reading new comics. Or at the very least, go way down to buying only 3-5 comics a month. I'd drop a lot of titles. I'm also in Canada where 4.99 USD is actually 6.49 to 6.99 CAN.
Wes was on point......
I would pass by my Local comic book shop every few months to pick up some stuff.... they went out of business...
Horrible what has happened
Don't worry, every issue will be a "key" with at least one multiverse derivative knock off of another character.
Higher prices for lower quality content.
Started with Bronze Age but stopped buying floppies 10 years ago because:
1. With many titles I wasn’t reading them only maintaining the run
2. The constant 1st issues and limited runs made it impossible to store them in any order or track what box they were in. Trying to reread a story was even worse.
3. Price and volume were too high.
About 2 years ago I discovered I could go backwards not forwards in time and started collecting golden and silver age anthologies of large runs I had never read. (I still have 40 years of floppies 1970-2012 boxed to read) That’s all I do now is reread my old books or buy older book restorations.
Screw $4.99! Pre-order Calico next month. $2.99 to start a new series. Get Night Club to for the same reason. Spawn titles are still 2.99 as far as I know.
floppies are the domain of collectors who haven't accepted that they aren't going to be worth anything in the future. the floppy market is dead - the funko pop market makes more money for comic book stores.
Apart from a few select titles, I exclusively trade read now, they’re way cheaper. I got the first two volumes of Deathstroke rebirth for £10 total. That’s single two issues in 2023.
Same, I only get used or on sale trades.
@@jbbrolic
Same here like. Way better value for money haha
Here in the US, I have noticed that the cover price for trades are getting more expensive. It used to be around $15 for 6 issues, then it's $18 and now is $20.
$25 action figures you can't see and $5 comic books you can't stand... A veritable embarrassment of riches!
I often wonder if comic shops stay afloat based more on collectibles sales than actual comics. Marvel and DC have driven readers away in droves, but there's still a solid market for figures, statues, etc.
If there was money to be made in weekly floppies, Manga publishers would be releasing their product that way. Like they did in the 80's and 90's. But they're not...
Manga publishers (in Japan) absolutely do still sell weeklies. But they're also dirt cheap disposable entertainment. But the true differentiator is that Japanese publishers try a lot of NEW stuff, and are absolutely brutal on things that don't sell. If you're not moving lots of books, then you're cut and they move on. You don't get to try writing for a long running book, you either come up with something cool that does well or you're filling in backgrounds for someone who will.
@@gregsimoes8645 ok, I meant in the States. I guess I should have been more specific.
I've already started cutting back my books because they cost to much.. they go to 4.99 i don't see to many marvel or DC comics in my future...
It is just getting way too expensive to collect comics. The story and art are usually trash - I am almost out now.
Plenty of people still buy albums, vinyl and cd.
modern comics are sinking because of the big two mainly, now all the fans are just buying old back issues , well the smart ones
We're in this graphic novel shift because the big 2 spent so much time 'writing for the trades'.
Damn, I remember going with my grandfather to the comic book shop, we each got to get one comic - at like 25¢.
I'm sure there's a LOT of people like me who now check titles out "on the high seas" and avoid the toxic garbage before buying a comic JUST to support out comic shops. But the bar for a sale gets HIGHER. I used to buy 10 titles a week, now maybe 3. But how many will go buy a crappy floppy when you can read their lefty dross for free online
In Canada [Manitoba specifically] one comic costs $5.55-$5.70 CDN and this includes the US/CDN exchange rate and the 13% sales taxes. Multiply this one issue cost with variants and you see why my pull list is only two comics now.
This guy is so wrong. The entire music industry was changed when they stop making albums. Comic books were created in the 1920s it’s not going to be the same in the future.
On the Spotify/Singles point, I would argue today's comic books aren't the same thing as comics prior to 1995 (or so). Comics before that were "throw away" media. Designed to hit a low price point so they could be purchased by kids on a whim. And placed in every grocery, convenience, department and book store for easy access.
Now they are 150% more expensive and you need to drive across town to get them. If you're lucky enough to have a comic shop at all (in the U.S. there's only a comic show in 10-12% of cities and I suspect that percentage is far lower worldwide).
Sequential art will probably always exist. But the original author's point that "comics have always been around and will always be around" isn't valid. The direct market has only been around for about 35 years and it has only been the exclusive source of comics for about 25 years. That means the industry as it is today has been around about as long as dubstep. And we all know how that went...
Waiting for the saviour who gets a spinner rack full of their books at the self checkouts of Wal-Mart, Kroger, CVS... Distribution will fix sales. Sales will fix quality. Quality will fix distribution....
Where's the buyers when the magazine section keeps getting smaller and smaller?
@@PubeStache I really believe that comics would function a lot better than magazines given a decent marketing strategy. The fact that comic shops exist is proof that there is an aftermarket that doesn't exist for zines. Just got to shock the cultural zeitgeist to get comics up to Manga levels of buzz. It has to start with distribution because there are to many areas where kids have never walked past a comic at the store and said buy me that please mom/dad.
Is that 40% cut on shipping going to apply for international comic shops
The 40% cut probably only kicks in after you meet a certain order quota? There's ALWAYS a catch...
As a collector/reader of over 50 years, i'm at my jumping off point with comics. My comic list went from 10 a month, down to 2. Now those series are finished, it's time to look at another hobby. Wokeness & SJW's fucked them up. They can all burn.
Local to me there is a few comic shops. One is a New England chain. I buy all my new issues from the chain store. why? because i get a 20% discount on all comics and accessories that includes ratio variants, bags and boards, boxes. My local store where I live has been trying to court my money and get my pull. but I had to explain to him he couldn't compete with the chain store cause of the discount. Now I do buy from my LCS and he does hand out some good deals, but I can't spend full price on something when I can get it at a way better discount. I'll buy maybe 1 or 2 new comics from my LCS and he gets my money on back issues. I was also buying from another great comic store out of Portland local to me. He's awesome as well. I was spending upwards of 500+ a month. I had to stop getting pulls from him also because he never gave me any discounts. So I had to choose and it kinda sucked cause I like to support my LCS. So to me if comics go up another dollar+ it's gonna kill small stores, they can't compete with the larger chain stores and discounts.
That's the problem I have with "support your LCS!" It's really not our responsibility. It's on Marvel and DC to make sure it's possible for them to make selling their comic books a rational business that makes sense for customer to buy comic books at at and enables them to make money selling Marvel and DC comic books.
I think that Billy Tucci has been talking with Steve Geppi to cut a deal with CG to get their books into LCSs on a large scale.
That Tucci guy seems to be extremely likeable - he has managed to remain friends with everyone, despite being a comicsgater. On the livestream I heard, he was thinking of splitting the longer CG books into cheaper paper 20 page books, and sell via the so-called direct market.
@@markbertenshaw3977 yes
@@markbertenshaw3977 Billy is truly a great guy
There's no "deal" that needs to be cut: the Geppis don't care about politics, and they are there to make money. Billy would have the same "deal" everyone else does. He could get into Previews right now under the Crusade banner if he wanted to. Now, especially that some of the big companies have left them, Diamond has a much better attitude about welcoming indies into Previews, and it's fairly easy to get into their catalog compared to a few years back (our friends in "Comicsburgh" - The Edge and Beowulf - just got into Jan 2023 Previews for a March sales date). However, indie publishers all still have to deal with the problem of giving 60% of the cover price to Diamond. I would think that for many CG-ers, giving up that big of a chunk is not worth it, when up until now, they've been receiving 95% (minus the %5 that IGG takes) of their sales from crowdfunding.
It'd be a much better deal (and also cancel-proof) for CG-ers to go *direct* to a handful of prominent stores across the country who are CG-sympathetic. We've done that ourselves by selling directly to over 200 stores, not using Diamond at all. CG could start its own independent distributor (which Pete from Alterna was going to do a couple years ago - he took submissions from dozens of indie publishers but never pulled the trigger), and then each store could get a big box of a variety of CG titles, which would save a lot on shipping. Imagine a CG display in your LCS - it can be done; someone would just have to organize it.
@@heroineburgh Yeah, Diamond's cut wouldn't be particularly attractive. Going direct would be the smart move. Hopefully they do.
Oh, snap I am listening to the albums wrong? “I’m a dinosaur, somebody is digging my bones.” A little King Crimson for your reading and hopefully listening pleasure.
The real problem is that comic shops are becoming a rare thing because of the horrid distribution, the even more horrid content and insanity of whaling for variant covers. A Shonen Jump style of black and white title shorts and then publishing the popular selling titles in color for the big five publishers. Getting standardized sizes, layouts and numbering for graphic novels/trade paperbacks are a must for the brick and mortar retailers.
Remember the spinning racks at convenience stores and bodegas? “I’m a dinosaur. Somebody is digging my bones.”
Where is the expense in comic book publishing? The writers and artists aren't making tons of money. The companies know three or four months in advance how many copies they need for each comic book. The technology is well established and computers have replaced union workers at the printing companies. The comics themselves are accepted as money losers by the companies that own them. So why the hell don't comics cost $2 at the very most?
In the image documentary, it has an interview with Rob Leifield where he was absolutely crestfallen when extreme had their first issue not have 300,000 orders years into the company. If you had 300000 orders on a comic now, you are the best selling comic in the entire industry for the year. I don’t think it’s a 10th I think it’s more like a one hundredth.
The comic book industry always finds ways to shoot themselves in the foot. Moving from newstands to comic shops for increased profits cut the chance of new readers randomly picking up a comic. The price point moves it from impulse buy to making room in your budget. No more raising price by 25 or 50 cents, it's by bucks. Considering the Silver and Bronze age comics took 20 - 40 minutes to read, because of the compact storytelling, today's $4&5 dollar comics can be flipped thru in about 5 minutes, not much bang for the bux.
I had this fight with Paul Levitz via two letters when comics topped $2.99. He was defensive but reasonable then. Now it’s just insane. Never going back to Marvel and DC, and essentially done collecting.
If Marvel raises their prices to $4.99. I am going to slash my weekly saver again. I've cut my saver down to two books per week. If prices go up again, I am cutting it down to four books a month. The books are so lousy right now that I am almost down to four books a month already. This will just drive more comic book shops to close....
I remember comics back in my childhood (from DC) cost about, roughly estimated, 2.50 USD per issue. And each issue was 20 pages of stories that concluded (with a myth arc combining all issues across the plot).
US Comics seem to have missed a major step forward which is keeping the things that worked and apply them to new distribution models, as well as applying new trends to their products. It already fails with what used to work, and fails with adding what people like. 🤔
Rember WHEN COMICBOOKS. Were a CHEEP ENTERTAINMENT.????
The cost is a huge issue, I just got the latest volume of Jujitsu Kaisen for €6.80, newest One Piece for €8.20, I finally snagged the first 3-in-1 volume (3 volumes in one) of Rorouni Kenshin (been looking for it for over a year) for €15, and a bunch of others for under €10.
They all have 200 pages, and 600 pages for the Rorouni Kenshin, manga is just much much better value for your money. And I got these from the Book Depositary with free shipping, I get all my manga from them as most stuff is discounted less than retail.
Ive been reading comics since the 80s... I only buy graphic novels now. I stopped buying singles 20 years ago
I thoroughly enjoy your treatment and analysis of all of this
I stopped buying print comics I branched into comixlogy unlimited
Has anyone thought abuot going back to newsprint instead of using the 60# or 70# matte paper to save money?
Newsprint isn't as cheap as it used to be
I hate the term "graphic novel" so freaking much. It's comics. It's a comic book. Whether it's a 20 page floppy or a 200 page square bound hardback, it's a goddamn comic book.
I'm in the camp that that format is the future. Whether it's short attention spans who want the entire story at once, or it's people who can't or don't want to expend the mental energy try to keep up with an ongoing series. I'm one of latter. Just give me the whole thing at once, I've got other things taking up my mental energy to worry about keeping up with the next issue of TMNT: The Last Ronin coming out however many months later, or Swamp Thing: Green Hell coming out _a goddamn year_ later. I just want to read the whole thing in one go now and go about my other business.
If single issues go away. I might buy TP. I will never read digital. Im on a computer ever day i don't want to read my comics on digital platforms. Ill just go over to Manga
It's honestly not that bad going digital. I eventually bought a 10.1" Kindle tablet so I could purchase the comics straight on the device (you can't do that with a regular Android or iOS device because Amazon doesn't want to pay the 30% to Google/Apple). At that size it's almost the same size as the printed page. It still hurts double page spreads but other than that I've grown accustomed to it.
Doc is the sort of old man I am trying hard to never become. I hope he can find something he enjoys, because comics ain't it.
@nexus169 There are plenty of great comics and movies, just not coming from Marvel/DC and Hollywood. I am sorry both you and Doc lack the curiosity to find enjoyable things. It's just self flaggelation for no purpose, and I sincerely hope you both get over it. I pity you both, no need to shoot pitiable creatures.
@@RarebitFiends right. I just found this channel a few days ago. And I largely agree with a lot of his views. BUT I find this all funny. I love X-Men, Spider-Man, etc, but I’m not as nearly upset about not enjoying the comics because I found non DC or Marvel comics that I do enjoy. And I realize from a TH-cam point of view the negativity and ranting gets views.
@nexus169 thats the fuckin truth. Its not just comics, almost everything media and pop culture like that. How many good movies come out per year these days,....MAYBE 2?
@@RarebitFiends not everyone wants to scour the earth to find some no name shit they may or may not like. Im well aware of indie comics, indie movies, indie whatever. Most of that is garbage these days too. And as far as comic books, everyone says "indies this indies that" but im sorry, there are some good stories but they are a dime a dozen now and no way in hell indies are saving comic books or hollywood.
@@nunyabizwacks6711 lol, okay guy. 🙄
The transition from floppies to tpb-only ain't a direct line. Floppies make it so that a publisher doesn't have to pay creative teams for the tpb content--just the costs for printing and distribution (and a bit for editorial). Take out the floppies and they have to fold creative costs into the tpbs...plus the fact that, since the tpb has a higher price tag and production cost than a floppy, it's riskier for the publisher to produce and the shop to stock. (Pretty much everything gets a tpb nowadays because the profit margin on those is a lot higher thanks to floppies leading the way.) Take out the floppies and you fundamentally change the economics of the industry
Yes, I concur with this sentiment. No floppies means less TPBs. Isn't American Manga in part subsidized by sales of floppies in Japan?
I whole heartedly believe that trade paperbacks and deluxe editions are the future and that marvel and dc will have their monthly stuff come out virtually only. Wes is right, the way we consume content has changed forever and ever.
He really didn't want to admit they were comics lol
I’m older than you guys and I can see the changes in the future! I definitely agree about supporting comics shops but at the same time they have to adapt to the climate of change! Obviously DC&Marvel are going to do screaming and crying like a spoiled bitch! I love the characters and creators but not the antiquated business model! There are alot of potential and speaking only for myself as a customer I will always support creative people who give me a story with some imagination 💭! Hopefully the big 2 sleepyhead giants will wake up and????😎❤️⚡️🚀
Can someone more educated on the subject break down where the money goes for a $4.99 comic? Publisher/Distributor/Retailer..
That is something that I too would like to know
The rough version, 60% of the cover price goes to the Distributor and Retailer. The other 40% goes towards making (talent, editors) and printing of the book, rent and taxes. Anything left is profit.
@@richardhuppertz3487 cool, thanks for clearing that up for me.
I tried replying to this with a link but the filter is killing it. But if you google (w/o quotes) "jim zub creator owned economics the changing market" you'll get a good breakdown. Look for the pie chart 1/3rd of the way down.
What I heard (second or third hand, several years ago, so take with a grain of salt) was that the retailer took about 50%, the distriuter (Diamond) took 20%, leaving 30% for the publisher.
DIAMOND WAS POOR ON SHIPPING AND CREDIT ON DAMAGED GOODS. IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER WHEN DEALERS WORKED WITH DISTRIBUTORS WHO GAVE US DISCOUNTS AND CREDIT FOR DAMAGE. THEY WERE FOOLED WHEN FAT PHIL LIED TO THE DEALERS ABOUT DIRECT MARKET.
@nexus169 IT WENT REALLY BAD WHEN THEY CLOSED THE NEW YORK WAREHOUSE IN GARDEN CITY. NO CREDIT AND SLOW RESTOCKING. AND UPS AND FEDEX DAMAGE.
I am really curious how profitable comic book shops are. I’ve recently gotten back into comic purchases. Even though I use Marvel Unlimited for digital access to read books I still buy physical ones when they are heavily discounted or are not available to read in the digital library. I always dig in the $1 bins and surprised to find a lot of their new issues that happen to be keys the clerk told me whatever inventory doesn’t sell by the time new inventory come in is thrown in their $1 bin. I rarely pay cover price and when I do it has to be a very strong reason and it’s not frequent. One of my comic book stores has boxes of comics selling 2 for a $1 so 50 cents each and looking at the cover price some are $4.99, $5.99 depending on the issue. My guess is they are selling at a loss especially since they are also bagged and this comic book store hires a lot of staff to work the shop. I’m guessing they rely on other products such as magic and other nerdy themes that are more profitable in order to sustain the business.
Lunar Dist has some customer service problems. No way to talk to a rep directly is a major one.
In my country finding a shop that sells singles is almost non-existent. You’d have to go to one of the major cities and even then it’s not a guarantee in all of them.
Graphic novels are the only things I can get my hands on and that’s mostly via online retailers rather then a physical store.
Comics will be fine ... because they will be carried on by people who care. That's the big thing and a lot of outlets aren't talking about the people who care because they aren't apart of the clique so to speak.
I don't see the art of comics dying anytime soon but I do see Marvel, DC, and a lot of other companies who are fumbling the ball to take a massive hit soon because THEY are the ones who DON'T care. As of right now, Marvel and DC are more 'entertainment brands' who care more about their shows and movies than the quality of their books. They are always the ones suffering the hits but people move on to indies, manga and other international comics. Those will keep comics alive and American comics will pick back only when we get people who actually like comics and know the business in charge.
Until then, they can continue to be tone deaf both with business and content and customer treatment and continue to ask why forner customers are going elsewhere. They won't address the issue is the shitheads they hired until it finally reaches that point they have to.
Poor Uel. I can already picture him in my head chuckling, "Well, I'm not *that* screwed yet, you know." In Uruguay we get translated graphic novels mostly (and manga, of course), it's been eons since I've seen a floppy. GNs can cost you between 2 to 3 times its US retail price. I paid a fair bit for the Black Label edition of The New Frontier. Another reason why most people here buy manga, you can probably buy 3 to 4 volumes of a manga for the price of one GN.
Is there a reliable comic shop in Montevideo that carries English-language titles? It would be amazing to get our books sold in a store down there!
Personally, I worry that in the future we will look back at transitioning from monthly comics to graphic-novels-first the same we we look back at leaving the new-stand for the direct market. It may make some sense in the short term, but in the long term we loose a lot in the process. Most notably affordability and an easy entry point for new readers. Original graphic novels are a whole lot more expensive than a collection of reprints, and I just don't see many ways for new graphic novels to achieve widespread appeal without some sort of pre-existing audience...
Don't get me wrong, I like big collected editions, but I worry about that being the main focus of the industry.
Yup, plus the fact that some people will fade out of the hobby entirely if they break the habit of going to the shop every week. Floppies have way more FOMO factor
I love your videos but on this one you guys meandered a bit. Can you simply bullet point what this article states are going to the problems for retailers in 2023 in this post?
Spawn image comics are still 2.99 each. The big company should look into that price and quality.
Y’all were a little too ‘debate mode’ in this video.
And it gets weird when you start using The Phillipines as your proof for an industry which couldn’t care less about The Phillipines (almost all industries).
Parts of this were good - but overall a bit ranty.
To support comics - read comics - doesn’t have to be in-store, just gotta be paying someone occasionally to entertain you.
Even watching comic-derived media or media from comic book creators is a way of supporting comic books.
Looking forward to a more fact heavy video next time.
I don't understand the logic of if people buy less monthly floppies and more graphic novels, then that's no longer the comic market, but the book market. Maybe I'm missing the semantics here, but I'm sure a lot of people said the same thing about newspaper strips vs floppies. The medium is comics. Page count, hard / soft cover etc isn't relevant. I read it all under the umbrella of 'comics'. The glory days of Marvel / DC are long gone because those creators are long gone. It's the people, not the IP (or the page count or format). Cheers.
On topic of graphic novel sales and increased prices of single issues, are more people buying just the 1st issue of a series and then waiting for the trade? I certainly find myself doing this with the independent companies and starting to shift that way for “The Big 2”. Seems like you are just buying covers anyway for single issues of The Big 2? Thanks for your efforts Wes!
I think it’s absolutely a mix of both higher prices and lower reading interest
I bought a lot of DC during new 52 Wonder Woman at $2.99 you could get around 5 issues with $20
I’m definitely going to buy more collected just got the George Pérez Wonder Woman Omnibus today
Sales are down already and charging more isn’t going to win people over every week at my LCS since Spider-Man started not a copy was left the biggest new unsold stack today Spider-Man 20
If the quality isn’t driving people away the price eventually will I watched Drew and his brother review that new spawn book and they spoke about it being very divisive Spawn resisted arrest and cops were shooting at him and he took his mask off to show he’s black
And Todd was charging $5 for garbage I’m not a big Todd fan but I think Todd is getting to comfortable to charge premium for awful storytelling
there was apparently no action it was basically a $5 lecture
In Japan, you can buy manga magazines with almost 500 pages for like 250 yen which is equivalent to 2 dollars in American currency. Why are comics in America so freaking expensive for so little content?
So... floppies are more expensive than Drug Store/Walmart Paperbacks? So... how many whales are left?
These particular whales are definitely becoming an endangered species!
i visited my "local" comic shop (35 miles away) today. i came out w/$200 in back issues and some figures/pop. had no inkling to look at anything post '11.
ans sorry Doc, buuuuuut music IS sold by the single now.
it's ALWAYS been sold as singles. It was sold as singles on 45's back in the day. It was on cassette singles. It was CD singles. Then it was iTunes singles. It was just a question of medium but all were singles and sold as singles. And the albums were still released. On vinyl. Then 8-tracks. Then cassettes. Then cd's. Then digital.
I think there should be a a monthly pay for all comics from one company in digital and eliminate teh single issues. The app should monitoize how many readers have one series to evaluate how many books prints after. But this can only work if the app can work worldwide, the north american market will not be enough.
I'm strictly a tpb and hardcover collector now, I stopped buying single issues around 2005 mostly due to just getting tired of mediocre junk, on occasion I'll find some gems in the dollar bins.
The future is likely no major modern Marvel & DC will be just reprints thou I expect they'll streamline the size of the books to same size as Manga books and also sort out the reading order of every character and series, none of this event stuff and books that vary in sizes, which is part of the reason manga took over as it did, where to start, at volume 1, where's US comics its like you have say "Kingdom come" or "Batman Year one" or "killing the Joke", what is the starting point and yet if you look at US GN in a book store, it looks untidy with all these large slim books that vary in sizes, manga regardless of title, Demon Slayer, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Sailor Moon, they are all pretty much the same size and the cost is also better as well, so manga, wins and evenly they'll push out the former big two because they have no clue what they are doing and their cooperate owners don't care, hell their cooperate owners don't even care about the TV shows or movies they produce because they lost sight of their customers!
Prices are the only thing going up. Sales way down. Paper quality down. Creator talent way down. Character interest down.
I’m thinking about the digital services for Marvel and DC if they do this
ts the same in gaming, but these people will never publicly admit it that changeing decades old characters & franchises and attacking their decades old steady customerbases are main reasons for the mess they are in right now. Both in Europe and the US companies really have forgotten what & how important a classic "customer/company" relation is, having this smug attitude as if the customer has to be honored to buy whatever it is they are selling. They clearly took their customers for grand and paid the price for it, although we shouldnt be surprised about it. People like this pseudo journo were the same people who salles numbers and making a profit werent important.
These companies forget that the floppy format was to promote easy access, the price allowed more customers to take a chance on a new story, when I got in the funny books back in the 90s it was 2 to 2.50 price range, paper and print job was decent quality, storytelling was appealing and you sold in the direct market, the end result you had 100,000 or more sales. Now you have Marvel and DC printing in cheap paper, cheap art and story yet charging 4 to 5 dollars, sales lower with the lack of customer consideration. Other companies and comic shops have allowed Marvel and DC to determine the price range of floppies. Go back to direct sales and keep them cheap, cause we need it that way to reach bigger consumer numbers, then you can sell the graphic novels with higher print quality and extra content.
Japan sells their graphic novels here successfully cause they covered the initial cost of singles issues in cheap sales.
I buy albums. What else am I going to listen in the car?
I hope that prices don’t rise up. I want them to go down significantly
Sucks, I recently started getting single issues but I guess I’m just gonna have to wait for the trades again.
Did you order any comeback t shirts from diamond Wes? 😂
Keep the truth going
Good video