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Step 1) Modernize distribution so that data flows bottom up across the vertical from store to publisher and back to store
Step 2) Publishers realize that their audience is now the readers, not the stores, which means reworking their advertising/marketing
Step 3) Actually use the data from step 1 to help with step 2
Step 4) Profit

From the data I see Loot Create (all the geek boxes) provide no long term lift, there’s a next issue crash. The digital redemptions from the boxes I’m told is worse.

Walmart is horrible, best the industry stay away. They leave nothing but damage in everything they touch.

Reboots have become the crack cocaine of the comic book industry. When you have to relaunch your entire line every few years, something is wrong. Namely, the people in charge don’t know what they’re doing.

A. Make comics affordable. Go old school and do cheaper print runs on cheaper stock. Drop the price to 3 bucks or less.
B. Sell through Walmart and other mass market retailers. Sell them anywhere a retailer wants to put them on display.
C. Stop it with the endless variant covers. It does nothing to grow your market beyond the die hard fans.
D. Wipe the collectible mind set from your brain-this is for everyone: the artists, the writers, the publishers and the retailers. That is THEE WORST freaking thing to infect the entire industry.
E. Stop trying to impress the other publishers and start publishing stories that people want to read.
F. Remember how old you were when you started reading comics and publish more stories for the next gen readers.

The podcast appears to be an hour and a half long. Any chance we could read the highlights somewhere?

That is what treadmills are for. Get fit with podcasts!

If you’re going to talk about the current comics market, I think you might want to actually talk to someone who currently sells comics in some capacity instead of making wild speculative guesses about what the individual businesses’ model and reasoning and viability might possibly be?

You guys got it maybe 25% right, but the other three quarters was really kind of massively misinformed in so so so many ways about how the math works for who and how and when :(

From the little I know, you have it entirely wrong about Bergen St.’s profitability and motivation, in an entirely insulting way.

-B

“how do you get people to buy #4?”

Have #1-3 be transcendent wonderful of-the-moment comics.

But, really, for non-name non-exciting product the game is actually to get to the third TP collection (5-800 pages of material) — once you hit 6 inches of spine-out rack space then, maybe, you get enough shelf presence to move work to the next level.

-B

It’s rare to have a transcendent #1-3… but it happens more often than a #4 increase in sales, I’m sure you’ll agree. Which is why the question needs asking, I think.

As for the other stuff… yeah, you’re probably right. But it’s a casual conversation, not an essay. I thought we (or I) embraced it for the rant it was. I’m not looking to be dispositive. You should have stuck your fingers in your ears like I said! For what it’s worth: I owned a store for a long time–and throughtout and for almost 10 years after I left, it was very successful. One of Diamond’s Top 100 accounts by dollars. And that was all comics, as we were direct with most card, games, T-shirts, and statue companies. In the 10 years I’ve worked in publishing, I’m sure a lot has changed. But it doesn’t LOOK like a lot has changed. That being said: I know as much as anyone that you can’t get a real picture from the outside looking in. So YMMV.

There is always always always always always a drop in consumer sales in a series from #1 to #whatever — whether that is comical books or Netflix views — so for a comics series to GROW in sales with issue #4, the *only* way that can happen is that the first three issues were *under*-ordered. Which is exactly why it happens in the rare occasions that it does.

-B

We all know #1 will sell the most copies. But what about when a major publisher forwards a creator an chart that says a 69-74% drop by #4 is considered normal–the “standard” in standard attrition… with more drops each following number? I think there’s a whole lot of room to improve between the impossible 101% and the accepted-as-normal 26%.

You can blame the content–but I think that’s likely unfair in a world where comics content is ubiquitous and in-demand across all media.

And while a significant minority, it is not a rare thing that books–especially early numbers–are under ordered:

1) Anecdotally, I’ve seen many books where #2 and/or #3 are cut too much. Reorders go quick and then those numbers are gone. Not just from Diamond, but off the shelf. And I think a lot of retailers are hesitant to up #4’s significantly above their total sales on #3–that’s a tough mentality to crack because they don’t know if the customers who lost out on #3 will instead opt to wait-for-the-trade.

1a) If Saga-like comics get their numbers bumped at 6, 11, 16, 21 (ie: singles after a trade)–that’s evidence singles were under ordered.

2) With all due respect to all retailers, I think it’s safe to say that some retailers cut orders on #2-4 more based on habit that close scrutiney of actual sales.

3) I’ve done it. I’ve hand-fed multiple, major stores sold out issues from my personal stock. Telling them I’ll take them back if unsold. When I did that with 1s, 2s, & 3s, orders for 4s, 5s, 6s increased. And it’s continued growth as I restock #4s, 5s &c when Diamond is out of those. I see the inititial orders, I see FOC, and I get the calls for restock. It’s hundreds of copies per issue–a little more than 5% of total Rocket Girl sales are by me, after Diamond sells out.

4) #1’s sell the most… with 100% of the marketing budget. It makes sense, but maybe a small but significant part of that is self-fulfilling-prophecy. When did anyone ever push a #4? And you don’t even have to make #4 a discrete marketing project–how about pushing “the series” three months after a launch–never happens, not even if the book is “transcendent.”

Now, maybe paragraphs 1-4 above don’t add up to a revolution. But maybe they do make a favorable dent of a few points in that “standard attrition” (which a cynic would say is code for “not my fault”) of the 75% drop some say you shouldn’t try to stop by #5. I call bullshit and we can do better. And, again, those are just small ideas that came to my head in an unscripted, unplanned podcast chat. Where’s our #4 Manhattan Project (the thinktank, not the Image book)?

Check this article about Netflix: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/09/24/netflix_knows_what_episodes_of_our_favorite_tv_shows_got_us_hooked.html

“Netflix analyzed data for 25 shows, and found the episode within each series after which 70 percent of people continued watching for the rest of its first season.”

So a 1/3 *OR GREATER* drop is *absolutely normal* in serialized fiction in general

If you read that article, ARROW’s transitional episode came at #8, so, at best, .7 of .7 of .7 of .7 of .7 of .7 of .7, which, if I did the math right (I Might not have done so!!!) says that like only 6% of the audience for episode #1 made it to #8?

People like to sample a whole lot of stuff, but those who FOLLOW it, is a substantially lower number. Trying to deny that is, basically, nuts, and I suspect that, overall, comics keep a higher percentage, over all, at #4 of a serialization from another media because we have an actual culture around buying comics on a particular day!

[My personal rule of thumb in ordering is 80% of #1 for #2, and 80% of that for #3, for whatever that is worth — 10, 8, 6 — but here’s the FUNDAMENTAL place that your 10-years-out-of-date ordering experience lets you down — WE HAVE FOC TODAY, and we can make radical changes in orders 3 weeks out from publication]

Now, is it true that some retailers miss maximizing sales on some titles because of the non-returnable nature of comics, and the conserrvatism that engenders?? Oh yes, of course — but I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of full-service retailers are looking to maximize the number of copies they sell of every comic that they carry. Why? Because if they don’t do so THEY GO OUT OF BUSINESS.

The actual math of the DM says that if you don’t order mostly right, most of the time, you go out of business.

The market isn’t supposed to look like you or I or a neutral third party might *want* it to be — it’s supposed to look like it *is*, and the cold fact is that the overwhelming majority of titles are bought at the “right” level, in that there are still plenty of copies on the market to purchase, and that demand for later issues isn’t scaling up for the market as a whole — for every anecdote you can show about providing 5% in restock, I suspect I can find you five stores that have 20% leftover in overstock.

But if you truly and sincerely believe that #2 and #3 are *Systematically* under-ordered, then the solution seems simple (short term) — double or triple ship those #2s and #3s, believing that the market will correct orders at #4 and #5.

In fact, maximizing early orders seems to be the trick to get the market to perform better than its native conservatism would seem to suggest, but when you see a recurring pattern over and over and over again, perhaps, just maybe, orders reflect a pattern that reflects our ordering experience? We DO lost half the audience between #1 and #2…. except when we don’t. But if I had to place a bet on any random title, I’d absolutely place it as a big loss between issues because that’s how most books are for most issues.

There are, OF COURSE, exceptions to that pattern, but they’re generally fairly rare because inefficient markets almost always collapse, and the DM is so very far from collapse at the moment…..

-B

I don’t want to take the bait about having not worked in retail for 10 years and turn this into a quarrel, but: I’ve scriutinized exact Initial vs FOC numbers for every store in the world on a significant number of books over the years from Image, DC, Vertigo; here and there with Marvel books; pay attention when these subjects come up with publishers; and have had scores of conversations with retailers on FOC day about FOC.

And we’re not even saying very different things. What I’m saying is that there is value in addressing your specific above concessions with publisher tools: publicity, information, returnability, other incentive/sales support, etc (and it doesn’t even have to be limited to publisher interaction). I think addressing ‘standard attrition’ post-#1 is something that makes a difference. I’ve still never said it’s going to raise number 4 above #1–but I think there is room for improvement.

And some specific responses: I think, unfortunately, the human component of 10-8-6 (I stress: only for some retailers) sometimes supersedes FOC analysis based actual sales. I think conservatism that hurts the busiess can be ameliorated by the tools in the previous paragraph. I recognize (and this was the point most discussed in the podcast) that OVERordering is probably a contributing factor for most stores that go out-of-business. But that doesn’t mean UNDERordering isn’t also an issue that effects the chain of creator-publisher-distributor-retailer-fan. And for the record: despite the podcast’s provocative title (which I didn’t choose!) the audio goes at great length to say the DM is not only viable, but recognized by publishers as the supreme channel.

The Netflix stuff is very interesting… but still very far from the DM. The huge difference being everything being on-demand at once. There are people today sampling the first episode of Walking Dead or Breaking Bad today because their friends have been talking about it for years. And it’s free (assuming you have the service anyway). So of course the drop off should be higher with free, home-delivered video-on-demand than you find in an informed hobby audience that is investing money-per-book.

In the DM, if you’ve heard good things about a book (and I’m again talking core customers–not civilians) and all there is is #4 on the shelf–there’s very rarely going to be a sampling. At that point, we’re in wait-for-the-trade mode–which does have con’s as well as the pro’s.

And regarding the common wisdom of maximizing a #1 launch, because the higher you start, the longer you can shed readers until you have to cancel (and relaunch)… I think it’s both very true and very dangerous. You can’t deny it, but to live by it without expanding your worldview… it’s the death of 1000 cuts. Forget #1s and #4s… when you have the .1 to 1 to 2 to 3% standard attrition on books that have been around for years, you have a fundemental business problem. That’s how you go from 108,000 copies of 2005 non-#1 Green Lantern to 42,000 copies of 2015 non-#1 Green Lantern. At the end of the day: I’m saying there’s an opportunity in those 64,000 lost copies–but some publishers and retailers instead throw their hands up and say “That’s Life!” I don’t know if I have any of the answers–but I’m not so cynical to believe it’s not worth talking about.

Regarding the Rocket Girl anecdote for #2 & #3. I can be conservative and say I put 500 copies of each into a handful stores (this is AFTER overprints sold out from Diamond). I don’t think the math of your counterargument holds up, because it’s +5% of the entire DM–not +5% of those individula stores. I’d have to dig up the numbers, but stores (and to be fair, it was only is stores were RG sales were already strong) where I supplied extras had increases of ~50-300% over orders shipped + reorders. The restocked copies were not dumped all at once, but over multiple shipments as needed.

And I don’t think you will find a lot of stores with extra copies because RG 2 & 3 were returnable–and returns were so close to zero I don’t even remember them. (And if any retailer has extra 2s & 3s–I need them!). But overships and returnability are only part of the equation–so much more could be done.

Now, does my biased POV on Rocket Girl dispositively evidence a systemic problem? Of course not. But, again, I do think we as a business are missing opportunities to better sustain ongoing series sales (while undervaluing the importance of sustaining ongoing series).

Nobody understands better than me that a market is what it is. But we’re all actors! It is what we’ve made it. The market doesn’t exist outside of us!? We don’t respond to a market… we create it. We’re the manufacturers and distributors and consumers. Our actions have consequences that define the market.

“Think a store can still be successful if a customer visits? Consider this scenario, one which happened daily when I worked at the Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center. (This store had five storeys; expert staff selling books, DVDs, and CDs; a packed cafe; and author events which attracted national press.) A customer comes in with a vague request. (“I saw it on a table a few weeks ago… It had a blue cover, and was about vampires.”) An employee accesses databases and product knowledge, and after five minutes of exhaustive searching, successfully finds the book for the customer! The customer is happy, but finds the book too expensive. “Thanks. I’ll get it online.” The bookseller offers to order the book from the company’s website, charging the online price, even waving the shipping. It just takes a few minutes at a nearby computer. Again, the customer declines, leaving the store without purchasing anything. (If you don’t think that would affect a store located in a high-tourist high-income neighborhood, owned by a big corporation, read this.)”

Or what’s happening in lots of bookstores, they browse, they see a book they like, they scan the barcode with their phone, it searches for the cheapest edition, it’s ordered before they’ve left the store.

Good analysis, Torsten. I like the thought process you’ve got going there.

The possibility of outselling physical media does the opposite, making digital comics the new newsstand in the metaphor, as stated by most of the folks working on digital options for comics distribution.

I think you’re getting hung up on the fact that yeah, this is bad for shops. But it is a return to the ubiquity and availability of comics, which is what we had under the newsstand system that lured most of us into the funnybook business. Anyone with an internet connection and a color screen on whatever device should be able to buy any comic they want, digitally.

Digital is cheaper than printed comics and offers us REAL sales figures, without the 3 month delay of the old newsstand system, the loss of numbers from illegal digital sales from folks who’d pay 99 cents an issue, or the middleman funnel of comics retailers being the only actual purchasers of comics. Personally, I can’t wait to see what the real sales numbers of comics look like. One day soon, I hope.

I love physical comics and I love (good) local shops, but digital is the future of everything, even comics, and we’re already late to the game. Printed collections will be around for quite a while, but the monthly comic is as anachronistic as television commercials, since nearly all comics stories are written with the trade (or hardcover) in mind rather than the single issue they first appear in. (Even DC’s brave roll-back of their prices to a more inviting $2.99 doesn’t change that fact, and since most of the savings seem to have been cut not from printing pages, but from paying creators to generate original pages, as every DC issue out this month has the same filler promo material in the back, the victory of “holding the line” feels a bit hollow to this DC fan.)

Anyway, I sometimes worry about the future of comic shops, but not about the future of comics. It’s the best medium for storytelling and happens to be the birthplace of the best heroes mankind has dreamed up.

My metaphor is, what the Direct Market did to newsstand distribution (which in the 70s and 80s was already starting to atrophy), digital comics will do to the Direct Market (which in the Millennium is already starting to wither).

I look forward to more comics readers. I’m a Seducer of the Innocent. I’m just an interior decorator, pointing out the elephant (stores lack e-commerce websites, and thus face competition from a store six states away which does have an online store) and the rotting giant squid (digital comics sales will quicken the demise of print comics dominance).

>> newsstand distribution (which in the 70s and 80s was already starting to atrophy) >>

Starting?

Newsstand distribution started to atrophy in the late 1940s. By the 1970s, it was so atrophied that people were talking about it being more profitable to turn the DC offices into a parking lot.

I don’t think the DM killed the newsstand. For one thing, the newsstand was dying before the DM and continued dying once the DM existed. It’s also been dying for magazines that don’t have a DM, so the existence of the DM doesn’t seem to be necessary to the process.

Online shopping’s rise, for American consumers, doesn’t seem to be that direct a parallel to the DM. The DM seems to have been built on the idea of giving dedicated hobbyists efficiency at the cost of ubiquity (you may have to go to a destination store for your comics, but you’ll get everything you’re looking for) while online shopping, like catalog shopping before it, is about ubiquity and casual convenience (don’t have time to spend shopping for clothes? Do it all without leaving your house). You don’t have to be a dedicated shopper to buy from Coldwater Creek or L.L. Bean or Amazon; they’re not selling “we have what you already want,” but rather “we’ll come to you; look at our selection.”

Or so it seems to me.

Every comics person who I’ve talked to who’s been in the business since the 70s or so echoes Mr. Busiek above. Comics didn’t jump from the newsstand to the DM: they were pushed.

And I only wish that I could drive to a comic store that would give me everything I was looking for without having to drive 100 miles. If I wanted to pre-order and know what I wanted to read or what looked good in three months (or more, realistically) I suppose my local store could be as good as anything in San Francisco, only that’s not exactly true, even if I spent all the time and fuss on pre-ordering that I just don’t have the energy/desire to do.

The real challenge of digital comics is to get people who aren’t reading comics normally to take a look and find something they want to read. Which has been the challenge all along.

It’s funny–I sort of feel like the prevailing attitude about this is to bemoan the loss of the comic shop. And I really like my comic shop and am good friends with the guys who work there.

I’ve gone shopping virtually every Wednesday for the past 13 years or so, and that’s after a break, before which I went for 13 years or so. So it’s a big ritual with me.

But this is an opportunity, a good thing for everyone in the comics business. Dean’s really on to something here–that we’re replacing the impulse buy market wherein you could go get a candy bar and also pick up a comic book at the gas station.

Our first issue of STUMPTOWN came out a little over a year ago. It sold out very quickly, like in a week. Great! Except a lot of stores didn’t even order it, and the ones that wanted to reorder it couldn’t–we didn’t reprint the first issue right away.

I met a LOT of people at conventions and other places who’d say “I want to read your book”, and my answer essentially was “you can’t”. Digital solves THAT problem.

Also–let’s say a 42-year old housewife hears there’s a great new comic about something she’s interested in–let’s say it’s about vampires or cancer or the 60s or whatever. But she doesn’t go to comic stores, she doesn’t even know where one is, and that’s if she happens to live in a city where one could find one.

Digital solves THAT problem, too.

This is an extremely positive situation. The glass is half-full.

One difference between the newsstand-to-direct market comparison and what you’re describing is that the two were selling the exact same products, at least in the beginning. Thor #300 was regarded by all buyers as the same regardless of whether it had the Curtis Circulation seal on it — even by the collectors, who cared most.

The digital delivery of a comic book is the same product in some ways; some would argue, in the only ways that matter. But a lot of other people would disagree, seeing a digitally delivered file as a service — but inherently not the same product, interchangeable in desirability.

Which group is right is an idle question, I believe — customers will demand the format they prefer, and as long as they’re willing to pay, publishers will seek to find some way to serve them. The only relevant question to me, then, is whether the combination of revenue streams from print (now, 99% of industry revenue) and digital (the rest, but growing) will be enough for publishers to keep producing for both sets of consumers. This period is about figuring out that math.

I’m reluctant to play the dueling analogies game — it’s all we seem to do sometimes. But my instinct has continued to be that digital is another iteration of the trade paperback. The TPB delivery system is preferred by many of our customers, and brought in many new ones — but it is not preferred by all the existing customers, some percentage of whom would continue to buy individual issues even if the collected editions were instantly available. (And not a trivial number, either — take a look at many of the comics movie adaptations, which were released as periodicals and trades simultaneously; the numbers show a decent split, with some people likely buying both versions.)

It’s all about having enough people — people with dollars to spend — left to make a market for a format. Since the print periodical people are currently laying down close to half the money spent in the business, I’m hopeful we’re working from a large enough base to still make that market. For all those years trade paperbacks were expanding in sales, after all, comic book sales were hanging in there — and going up, in some years.

The crucial idea here, and it’s gradually becoming more significant, is that of value.

That’s why the price increases currently stop working on a lot of periodical comic books: Simply put, they’re not valuable enough to merit a $ 3.99 price tag. They’re hard to store, even if the quality of the content is there. Do we want to pay four bucks for a flimsy book that, even in a BEST-case scenario, offers 15 minutes of grand entertainment? Increasingly, no we don’t.

Then you’ve got the collections. People can put those on their Ikea shelves easy enough, and they’re meatier reads, so that’s two things in their favor, explaining their rise to prominence in the last 10 years or so. But even here, we’ve hit a point where there’s just too much damn product. Look at what registers on those Bookscan charts. Not a lot of the endless monthly-grind type of books — just Moore, Millar, Kirkman, Morrison, etc. Stand-out titles, almost exclusively. So are collections the future for comics that lose their value to the reader once they know “what happens next”? Probably not. That’s a few tons of paper that people can increasingly live without, no matter what format it’s in.

Which brings us to digital. It’s the perfect format for the kind of serial, disposable thrills that make up 90% of the direct market. Let’s be honest: A lot of the comics we like to read, we probably only read once. So why not read them digitally, click to the next page, and save us the hassle. The stuff that’s going to be collected, going forward, is going to be the books that we recognize VALUE in — the ones that we want to save and put on our shelves because we want to read them AGAIN and we think their value justifies a solid, physical format.

So where I see things heading, in the long term, is digital comics — slowly but steadily — replacing the expensive, unwieldy periodical print comics. Print comics, in turn, will be increasingly synonymous with thicker paperback and hardcover books, and — not least because production and distribution costs continue to increase — those will increasingly be reserved to the material that people consciously decide is valuable enough for them to not just consume digitally, but go through the expenses and the hassle of having a physical copy of on the shelf for posterity.

Before announcing the demise of the direct market, you may want to read some of the reports that will come out of the ComicsPRO meeting this week. Turns out it was the largest gathering of DM retailers, publishers, distributors and other vendors to date. Incredibly productive and successful.

Digital is not replacing print comics because the existing customer base has not embraced it the way music consumers embraced the convenience of MP3s.

Currently, digital comics are a small part of the market. At the ComicsPRO meeting, Jim Lee held up a sheet of paper and a string of dental floss: the paper represented the print market, the floss digital.

I want digital comics to succeed. I want Amazing Spider-Man to have as many readers on digital as in print. But the only way that is a success is if digital comics generate new readers. Simply shifting print customers to digital will result in less business for everyone.

We were very excited to get an ipad to read comics and very pissed when we learned that no, we couldn’t read the weekly stack on them, only a few titles here and there.

Digital comics will succeed when we see time and date releases. It seems silly to say “well it’s only this small of a percentage of sales so digital isn’t all that viable” when the numbers are being skewed by publishers throttling availability.

There are 4 things that supporters of digital comics tend to forget.

1. Not everyone owns or even want to own an Ipad,cell phone,or a computer.

2. Not everyone wants to read a comic on their cell phone,Ipad,or computer.

3. Piracy. Despite all music being available digitally, there are lots of people who pirate and/or download music illegally. Why pay for a comic that you can’t physically own when you can get the same comic online for free.

4. Digital comics have no after market value. People can’t sell a digit comic that they brought a few years ago to someone else for a hire price since those comics are all available online either for sell or for free.

There are 4 things that supporters of digital comics tend to forget.

1. Not everyone owns or even want to own an Ipad,cell phone,or a computer.

2. Not everyone wants to read a comic on their cell phone,Ipad,or computer.

3. Piracy. Despite all music being available digitally, there are lots of people who pirate and/or download music illegally. Why pay for a comic that you can’t physically own when you can get the same comic online for free.

4. Digital comics have no after market value. People can’t sell a digit comic that they brought a few years ago to someone else for a hire price since those comics are all available online either for sell or for free.

1. Yet even more people don’t want to go hunt down a comic shop so they can have a box full of rotting paper taking up space for the next couple of decades.

2. Yet even more people do. If you’re a smart business owner, you go where the readers are. They’re the ones with the money.

Mind you… They’re also the ones less likely to fall for the current bullshit that passes as marketing in comics. The real threat to the current way of things is that everyone from artists to management will have to learn how to make comics for people who aren’t superhero fanboys.

I’m doubtful most can transition.

3. Piracy is only a threat to companies that have made “Selling them shit that they don’t know about until we have their money” their business plan. This is why Hollywood focuses on the opening weekend so much. Otherwise it’s little more than a convenient scapegoat for their failure.

4. The speculators market is, and always has been, a scam designed to suck money out of idiots. This is not a concern with digital, and thus a vast improvement.

“Consider this scenario, one which happened daily when I worked at the Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center.”

Torsten, you wrote this in the past tense… ?

One of the things that’s sometimes missed is that there’s a large portion of the comics buying audience for which storage is not a hassle at all — but part of the fun of being into comics. They don’t have collections, but libraries — which they care for, literally and figuratively. They’re caring for emotional investments, not financial ones: they’ve read everything they own and want to make sure they can keep reading. For many, a physical book also connects them to where and who they were when they first read the story. A large part of memory is tactile.

The discussions of e-books and their effect on prose are even more heated, but I haven’t really seen disdain cast toward the true bibliophiles. I think it may come from the understanding that books — and book-lovers — will always be with us, even if all the presses stop running tomorrow.

I calculate there are between 30-40 billion comic books still in existence — and while some people have replaced their copies with trades and others will do so with digital versions, there will continue to be households where printed periodical comics have a home for a very long time. Since we know there are provably people who will pay for physical copies — again, half our current market — we probably ought to figure them somewhere into this future of ours, whatever it looks like.

“However, with graphic novel collections, online warehouse retailers, and digital copies available on the Internet, the back-issue market is not as successful as it once was.”

Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the case. These days, everyone uses “internet” as the generic reason/excuse for everything.

I think the back issue market has faltered because not many people are interested in back issues. When Spider-Man’s origin has been retold 1,000 times … when magazines like ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN are designed to nullify the continuity in the original series, by reshaping it … when readers have become accustomed to the “decompressed storytelling”, as opposed to the “done-in-one” storytelling of the sixties and seventies … When there are more wordless pages and panels today, making the books “cinematic,” as opposed to the more heavily written comics of the 60s and 70s …

Why would people introduced to comics in the past decade relate to the classic material? It’s the same reason that many people claim they “can’t” watch a black & white movie … different storytelling conventions in different eras result in different audiences.

For decades, we had a fan-base that was interested in the classic material … and that has gradually eroded. Comics have indeed become mainstream.

Pia:

“Digital comics will succeed when we see time and date releases.”

So, by “succeed”, do you mean “will convert print readers to digital”? Given the differences in PROFIT MARGINS between digital and print (hint: print is more per-unit profitible), that would be “failure” to publishers and most talent, as I see it.

I mean majority of the American public that doesn’t read comics (99.99% of them!) couldn’t care less about D&D, because they couldn’t care less about comics in the first place. They wouldn’t know the difference between a Batman comic from last Wednesday, and last year. Why would they? They’ve never ever ever read a Batman comic in their life!

(Substitute “Batman” for whatever you like — the point isn’t the property, it’s the process)

To me this is like saying “Oh, we’d solve the housing and mortgage crisis if only more consumers had access to more bathroom remodeling services!”

-B

Dave, I moved to a position at the B&N home office in 2008. That store closed January 2 of this year.

Rich, when I managed the GN section at that store, I found that the Showcase and Essential volumes sold steadily. B&N also worked with Marvel and printed paperback copies of the Marvel Masterworks volumes, which also did well. (Marvel has since started a TP MMW line for everyone.)

I will browse back issue bins for tha random WHAT THE?! experience. Otherwise, I search online for out-of-print titles, both in comics and graphic novels.

You give some interesting reasons worth further study.