DC dumping Diamond12084
 Ima gonna steal this and look for some occasion to use it!
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IronMan private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by EbaySeller Interesting observation about discretionary items and inflation. Stuff to chew on. I can think of a number of discretionary items that have come down in price relative to inflation - most electronics for instance. But still worth thinking about. But as far as income of comic creators go. Knowing one such personally, I'm pretty sure that the great majority of creators just make a living. Some barely, some fairly and some comfortably. It is a relatively small number that have joined the ranks of the wealthy from creating comic books. A lot of the "making a living" crowd are having a bit of a hard time currently. Because appearances at comic book shows where they sell sketches and their books and such is a large part of their income. Besides rates of inflation, other things point to the possibility of substantially lower prices. Free Comic Book Day books cost retailers around 35 cents I believe. The idea behind FCBD is everyone in the pipeline is working at cost (except the LCS that has to buy the book) So if the actual physical cost of a comic book printed as inexpensively as possible is 30-35 cents - at 4x the price the comic book could be $1.25-$1.50. At 6x the price you could still sneak in under $2. It looks like comic book Publishers would prefer to sell to a collector audience at $4 each. They are not much interested in competing for entertainment focused readers. At least not with monthlies. The publishers probably have good reasons. Trying to sell at 1/2 the current price in what would now be a new distribution channel and take returns probably sounds pretty daunting. A good way to go broke. So I don't have the answers - but the problems seem obvious. For comic books to break back out to previous sales numbers, they have to compete as an entertainment medium. Movies and the big streaming services offer a LOT of bang for the buck when it comes to entertainment value. Comic books aren't offering much bang for the buck as far as entertainment value goes. Don't get me wrong, many titles are entertaining. For 10-15 minutes. What comics offert is the possibility of being collectible. Worth more than you paid. That "deal" seems to be appealing to a slowly shrinking audience. |
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| Post 76 • IP flag post | ||
 Masculinity takes a holiday.
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EbayMafia private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by IronMan Reminds me of a discussion I had once. A friend got quotes for some cement work. The low bid was $4,000 and the high bid for the same job was $14,000. As we talked we realized that the high bidder might not be as insane as we first thought. Assuming the cost of fulfilling the job was $3,000, the lower bidder had to obtain and successfully fulfill 11 jobs in order to make the same profit that the high bidder would make on 1 job. For the low bidder to make a living things have to go well for him every day, for the high bidder to make a living things have to go his way just once or twice a month, lol. |
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| Post 77 • IP flag post | ||
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Masculinity takes a holiday.
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EbayMafia private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by CatCovers @CatCovers For growing company's it's probably better to use "percentage of profit" for comparison purposes. As in what percentage of profit goes to senior management and what percentage goes to entry level employees, and how does that change over time. As a corporation grows they will have a larger and larger pool of entry-level employees, but they will still have only 1 CEO. If we can show that a growing percentage of profits is going to senior executive compensation, which I believe is the case, then its a solid and honest argument. If we just use straight dollar amounts, the other side could easily counter with this also true but misleading statement: "In 1963 the taxes a fortune 500 company paid was equal to XXX times the mail room assistants salary. Today those corporations may pay taxes equal to 2000 times the mail guy's salary in a couple of days." |
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| Post 78 • IP flag post | ||
 Collector*
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Towmater private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by dpiercy So, she has the same back story that the joker had from 1940 until 1951? |
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| Post 79 • IP flag post | ||
 Collector
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dpiercy private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Towmater Lol. I think the character has promise now after reading the origin. They made here a college student is my only reservation. | ||
| Post 80 • IP flag post | ||
 It was a one trick pony show but always hilarious.
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GAC private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I think the comics industry can be compared to the music industry. The superheroes are the bands....Superman Batman and Wonder Woman are Elvis, The Beatles and Rolling Stones....I love the idea of holding a physical copy...an album back in the day...even a CD 15 years ago or so. No more physical copy but we're still listening to that music. Albums and CDs were for the most part bought in specialty stores (record stores) with some exceptions like department stores. Now, they're virtually all gone but the music is still being heard...and bought (through iTunes, Spotify, etc..). People still collect physical music like albums...people will still collect physical comics (probably through a similar channel like how albums are being bought today). Maybe if you want a physical comic book you have to subscribe directly with the publisher. Comics will endure because the characters are so strong..and loved. It's just a question of how it will look like. | ||
| Post 81 • IP flag post | ||
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Ima gonna steal this and look for some occasion to use it!
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IronMan private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by Jesse_O A $200 phone is an inexpensive phone, bordering on a cheap phone. And the phone is used everyday. Maybe every hour 12 hours a day. And you can download (free) games to play on the phone. Heck you can read comic books online with the phone. So IDK. I do the math and a $200 phone is a much better deal than 50 new comic books. |
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| Post 82 • IP flag post | ||
 PEDIGREED... Again!
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martymann private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Who distributes the regular magazines to Super Markets, Drug Stores, Barnes & Nobel and other locations...years ago I believe COMICS were distributed by the same people that delivered these magazines...could they not handle the placement of COMICS? Marty |
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| Post 83 • IP flag post | ||
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Ima gonna steal this and look for some occasion to use it!
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IronMan private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by martymann Periodicals are distributed to Drug Stores, Super Markets and other retail type stores via regional distributors. These Regional distributors in the past supplied comic books to these retail locations as well. This is commonly referred to as "Newsstand" distribution. It was not the regional distributors that wanted to quit supplying comic books to these general retail locations. Rather it was comic book publishers - Marvel and DC primarily - that found it more profitable to sell comic books directly to comic book stores. This "direct to comic book stores" sales model also allowed a lot smaller publishers to enter the market. The reason for this shift is returning unsold product for credit. General retailers (drug stores, supermarkets, etc) only make about 20% on the sale of a magazine or comic book. But they also only pay for sold copies. Unsold copies are returned. Comic books sold to comic book stores through Diamond (Direct Distribution) are nearly always non-returnable. The comic book orders the comic books they want from Diamond at 40-50% discount from cover price (plus shipping) But everything they order they keep. Few titles or books can be returned for credit. So yes. The regional periodical distribution companies COULD handle getting comic books on retailer shelves. The comic book publishers don't want to sell that way anymore. They did in the past. Circulation figures varied, but most of the time publishers were paying to print 50 to 100% more copies than they sold. To put numbers to it, back in the 1970's Marvel might pay to print 400,000 copies of Amazing Spider-Man but only sell 270,000 copies. The Direct to comic book stores allows publishers to print very close to the exact number of copies paid for. Amazing Spider-Man 39 (Feb 2020) sold about 60,000 copies. And Marvel didn't print much more than that. The entire print run being sold on a non returnable basis, combined with higher cover prices has allowed publishers to make a profit even though sales are much lower than 40 years ago. Every month Diamond distributes hundreds of titles that sell 10,000 copies or less. These hundreds of titles would simply be impossible from a financial standpoint to publish if distributed the via a newsstand, returnable basis. |
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| Post 84 • IP flag post | ||
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Collector*
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Towmater private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Elvis’s music is declining in popularity. A snap YouGov poll of 2,034 British adults, a hefty 29% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had never listened to an Elvis song, with none of this age group listening to him daily and only 8% listening monthly. Asked what they thought of other veteran stars, about twice as many said they liked the Beatles (23%) and David Bowie (25%) “a lot” compared with the King (12%). The youth don’t care about him. He gets about 1/2 as many listens as Bowie on Spotify. | ||
| Post 85 • IP flag post | ||
 Collector
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lawguy1977 private msg quote post Address this user | |
@Towmater Elvis sucks. Sorry, couldn't resist.  Joking aside, all I can say is that the first Tim Burton Batman movie is why I've collected Batman comics since 1989 (I was 12 at the time). My 3 year old loves reading books and he knows Batman, Spider-Man, and plenty of the other superheroes. He likes them and I'm hoping he'll enjoy comic books like I have as he gets older. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll only want to read them digitally. I can't say. I personally hate digital but I didn't grow up with an iPad or cellphone. I'll be bummed if printed comics stops at some point, but I think the medium of visual stories will continue. It's just a qusetion of how, and this has been a topic of discussion for brick and mortar stores (and publishers) for years. I hope the owners are smart enough to figure it out and continue to survive and, hopefully, thrive. It would be nice to see the publishers, distributors and store owners do it all together, but it's pretty rare that's the case, especially in this day and age when it seems that the bigger a business gets, the more it becomes shareholder driven and less connected to (or concerned about) individual small businesses. |
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| Post 86 • IP flag post | ||
 If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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xkonk private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Dunno. Everyone said that Kindle would kill print books (and Amazon would kill bookstores) but they're hanging in fairly well as far as I can tell. | ||
| Post 87 • IP flag post | ||
 Beaten by boat oars
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Studley_Dudley private msg quote post Address this user | |
| It's interesting to note that while Elvis may be declining in popularity, John Wayne has endured as evidenced by his top 10 rankings in most popular actor polls. | ||
| Post 88 • IP flag post | ||
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Masculinity takes a holiday.
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EbayMafia private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by IronMan @IronMan That info aligns with the seemingly unsolvable pricing issue I was referring to in an earlier post. A drug store could sell a comic for $2 and buy it from the distributor for $1.60, making 20%. A specialty shop would need to sell that same book for about $3.25. Not because they are greedy, but because they need the profit from the comic book to cover a whole different level of fixed cost overhead than what the drugstore needs from it. The cover price of a comic book seems to have more to do with what the Specialty Retailer needs to make from it than what the Publisher or distributor need. So I don't really know how we get back to a reasonably priced new comic book without cutting out the specialty retailer and all the overhead that they need to cover. Hard to say what the future of new comic books should be, given this pricing predicament. |
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| Post 89 • IP flag post | ||
 Suck it up, buttercup!!
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KatKomics private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by EbaySeller not sure... but given enough time a few things could happen. Specialty stores die...either publishers move back to printing XXX and getting returned books (and still get to have a profit, just smaller) or the publishers also stop publishing, at least physical copies. If the publishers can create content that gets consumed digitally and have no retail presence then the comic "book" will be dead. Specialty stores hang on...we get status quo...reduced printings with increasing prices until that becomes unreasonable (too few customers or prices too high - maybe a feedback loop as prices get too high then fewer customers etc.etc.) all while the publishers try to move to digital income streams, which brings us back to stores dead, comic "books" dead but digital content available Maybe you get trades with collected digital stories for first time in print once in a while or direct order mail order special editions....long term..if they can make digital work then print will die as we know it. As long as there is content though I think the collector market will stay...someone will read those digital stories and may once in a while want a hard copy of classic stories...much like used record stores (those big black vinyl things that music comes on!!) |
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| Post 90 • IP flag post | ||
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Ima gonna steal this and look for some occasion to use it!
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IronMan private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by EbaySeller I don't believe the take on specialty shops (Local comic stores) needing a higher cover price is accurate. I believe LCS would do fine with new comics at a 20% margin on a $2 new comic IF they could return unsold copies for credit. I believe LCS would do fine with $2 new comics at 40-50% margin if they have to keep everything they order. The reason I believe this is because THEY WERE MUCH BETTER OFF back when comics were $1.75 - $1.99 cover price. There were more comic shops and circulation numbers were higher. Another important piece of the puzzle is the existence of a healthy back issue marker for recently published books. Direct distribution started in the mid 70's I believe and around 1980 really started taking a decent percentage of overall sales, hitting 50/50 in 1985/86. Then really took over the next couple of years. All during this time - and into the mid 1990's - there existed a pretty healthy back issue market for books published the last several years. Back when comics were cheap (like .40 cents to a couple of bucks) and the recent back issue market healthy, Local comic book stores didn't worry much about unsold issues. Many a comic store - probably most - intentionally ordered more copies than they thought they would sell. At least of first issues and popular titles. Unsold copies went into back issue stock, to be sold at higher than cover price to new collectors that wanted the issues. This was back in the day when nearly all collectors were just as interested in having the entire run of Star Wars or Defenders or Spectacular Spider-Man as they were the key issues. That recently published back issue market has nearly disappeared. $4 cover price books cost your local comic shop $2.00 - $2.40. Anything not sold the first couple of weeks they are stuck with for years. Or they have to put in the $1.00 boxes, selling at less than 1/2 they paid. Collectors now - overall - more focused on keys. And the publishers aren't helping because every few years (or less) they reboot their lines, leaving even less interest by collectors in filling a run. Who cares about the series from 2010? That was two reboots ago. So....IMHO comic book stores would find it near heaven to have new comic books at $1.99 cover price, sold on a returnable basis. They make 40 cents on each copy sold and can return unsold copies. A real profit with little risk. The problem is that what is Heaven for LCS is probably Hell for publishers. |
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| Post 91 • IP flag post | ||
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Masculinity takes a holiday.
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EbayMafia private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by IronMan I think a lot collectors from my 80's generation shared my experience of becoming disillusioned with new comics for much this reason. We bought and preserved them with a certain level of value expectations and eventually found we had thousands of bagged and boarded comics worth less than 25 cents. The publishers would just reboot or print new #1's for us to buy. It wasn't just the cost of the books, it was the physical logistics of keeping thousands of books in hopes that 3 or 4 might prove to be the next Hulk 181 or Daredevil 168. It started to seem a bit overwhelming eventually. If a story was particularly worthy it would get reprinted in TPB anyway, so might as well wait for that than fill our homes with a bunch of new books. |
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| Post 92 • IP flag post | ||
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Ima gonna steal this and look for some occasion to use it!
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IronMan private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by Studley_Dudley @Towmater I was gonna stay out of the Elvis discussion...but...  While the polls may well be correct - at least for the country they were done in. Who understands what the brits like anyway? Cheeky Blighters.... I suggest running that poll in Las Vegas and comparing the results. There is an Elvis Festival every year in Vegas. There are a large number of Elvis Conventions in the USA and World Wide. Elvis Impersonators (or Performing Tribute Artists) are an industry with at least hundreds of impersonators making a living doing so. The number of John Wayne impersonator artists appears to be far, far smaller. Me personally? I'll watch old John Wayne movies AND listen to old Elvis Music. Cause I'm old. Old stuff is good stuff. |
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| Post 93 • IP flag post | ||
 He sounds like a vegan who wants real mayonnaise to be vegan friendly.
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Instant_Subtitles private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I personally will not be surprised if AT&T made this decision for DC. Because there have been talks that they wanted to make changes when it came to DC, and not just the movie end of the deal. Lets be frank here. If DC had issues with Diamond before the buy-out they would have done this sooner. But no matter what the issue was, be something they had or were told about, they stuck with Diamond like a couple in a broken marriage. Sure they say they are happy, but it was more for the kids (i.e. comics) than the lies they convince themselves are the truth. And then came AT&T. Since the time they owned DC we have seen a lot of changes being made. Vertigo was eliminated, with those titles being reshuffled into numerous brands. Talks of DC being shrunk down in major conventions have been brought up. Among other things that equate to DC seeing budgetary changes because their primary owner is no longer a major league studio. But rather a company that talks big, makes money off their big talk, but in reality are run by those who put making profits before offering services that justify their costs. The best example I can say is that when I had AT&T they offered a free wi-fi detection app when travelling abroad. Their app would rarely work with results being that you had to use paid data if you did not rent a wi-fi device. My next-to-last international experience with AT&T resulted in me finding that their app would shut itself off without any notice. With me piling on extra money just to get more data. The following year I rented a place that offered a portable wi-fi device. And that year gave me the kind of results T-Mobile offered prior to me switching back to AT&T. So for me this sounds more like AT&T is trying to make DC becme profitable. And even if the comic company did not want to, they have no say. But I might be wrong. So either way I have not purchased a new comic in years. And the one I am trying to complete debuted in 2010. Which has me cap this off by hoping this works out for DC in the end, and those who still collect their stuff do not get screwed. |
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| Post 94 • IP flag post | ||
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Masculinity takes a holiday.
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EbayMafia private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by IronMan You can try this decent John Wayne impression in the privacy of your own home: Point your toes slightly inward for a pigeon-toed walk and then let your upper body fall forward as you walk. I've heard that the reason for John Wayne's distinctive walk was that his feet were far to small for his massive body. Quote: Originally Posted by Instant_Subtitles Just a theory but I'm thinking maybe the new owners of DC want to grow distribution in mass-market channels that Diamond might not be inclined to pursue...like Walmart? |
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| Post 95 • IP flag post | ||
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He sounds like a vegan who wants real mayonnaise to be vegan friendly.
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Instant_Subtitles private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @EbaySeller That might be one case since they often use Sam's Club as a means to gain Directv users. | ||
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