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By popular demand, a thread about the economics of the comic book market:
Prior to the 1980s, comic books were primarily sold in drug stores and grocery stores. During this period, titles from Marvel and DC regularly sold about 100,000 copies each
Following a market downturn in the 80s, there was a shift away from drug stores and grocery stores towards "the direct market", which means selling comic books primarily to dedicated comic book stores
This had the desired effect of stabilizing the market short term. Long term, however, it set the stage for a decline in sales even worse than the initial decline that caused the switch to the direct market
Today, maybe Batman and one other title each month will sell 100,000 copies. 60 or 70k, which would have gotten a title cancelled in the 70s, is considered strong sales. Many titles published by Marvel and DC sell only 20k or less each month
Publishers have compensated for the decline is sales by raising the prices of their books by more than the rate of inflation. In 2010, DC comics were 2.99 an issue and Marvel comics were 3.99. Now comics are regularly 4.99 and 5.99. 2.99 price point is gone
What makes this even more ridiculous is a change in comic book story telling, commonly called "decompression". Basically, stores that would have been told in 1 issue in the 70s are now spread out over 4-10 issues. This is done by having the dialogue more spread out
Artistically, this works to make the comics feel more "mature" since there aren't as many massive unnaturalistic plot dumps anymore. A side effect however is that the consumer is now paying $5 to buy a book that takes less than 10 minutes to read
In my view, the comics industry is very much in the same spot now that the music industry was in in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s before and during the rise of iTunes
If you lived through that era, I'm sure you remember that if you liked a song, you couldn't just listen to it on Spotify or YouTube. You had to go to a Sam Goody or FYE music store and buy a $20 album to get the 3 minute song you liked. That's basically what comic book stores are
Just like with the music industry, the obvious solution for the comic book industry is to go digital. Comic book stores have obviously lobbied against this transition though, pressuring publishers not to sell digital comics for less than physical comics
The publishers largely comply with these demands because of the close, almost personal relationships they have with the stores due to the direct market system. They see it as their moral and social obligation to keep these impractical businesses afloat
On some level, this is admirable. Such paternalistic dynamics don't exist in many other industries. The reason they don't exist though is probably because they're stupid. Also, comic book shops continue to go out of business anyway, so all they are doing is prolonging death
What I would do if I was in charge would be to start selling digital issues of all titles for .99 cents each. This would be slashing the price by 80% but the idea would be to sell 1,000,000 .99 cent comics rather than 50,000 $5 ones
As I alluded to in an earlier thread, AT&T is currently restructuring DC Comics. So far they haven't done anything with digital. There new strategy focuses on reintroducing comics into Walmart, which will probably help a good deal but is still going to be hampered by high price
