shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 7, 2014 18:57:44 GMT -5
Newsprint is no longer a cheaper option. 1) It requires offset printing which a lot of print shops are no longer set up for in the digital age with new digital printing methods, so the few who do it charge more for that type of printing than regular digital printing now, and newsprint costs more than regular white paper now. We're doing a coloring book for the Studio featuring some of our characters to have something to sell to parents/kids at cons in addition to our comics/prints. I wanted to do it old school on newsprint. The one print shop who said they could accommodate us would have done so by subcontracting the job out to a another print shop who still had an offset printer set up and the newsprint itself would have cost us twice as much per page as regular white (non-glossy) paper, so it was cost prohibitive to even do a newsprint book at all for us. -M For a one time publication, I concur. As a long term investment for a large publishing company, after financially incentivizing the publisher to obtain off-set printers, the production cost would theoretically be cheaper in the long term because of the lower quality paper and ink. Theoretically. |
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Post by Randle-El on Sept 8, 2014 0:56:56 GMT -5
The simple math is that as sales decline cover prices will rise. It's what happens in niche hobbies because of the economics of scale. The next price point after $3.99 will not be $4.25 it will be $4.99. Just as a bit of a reference-for our studio-everytime we increase our print run by 50 or so copies, our price per copy drops anywhere from 10-20 cents, so in reverse every time we lower our print run it goes up 10 to 20 cents per copy-now our print runs are MUCH smaller than the big 2 and even most indy books Diamond deals with, so the price fluctuations are much larger for us, but there is significant increases in production costs the smaller the print runs go, and most publishers print to pre-orders based on Diamond orders, so prices will continue to rise the more sales drop on the floppies. Also expect trade prices to go up the less floppies sell, as floppy sales subsidize trade production costs and if they do not sell enough, the trades will go up to cover those additional costs. If you want to see what will happen to prices look at the war gaming market-up through the 80s war game sold in significant numbers and prices on theme were comparable to other hobby games. With the advent of computer games and other hobby games such as CCGs, the war game market shrunk and prices rose sharply. Now, a non-kickstarted war game will run you 5-6X the cost of another comparable size/production value hobby game simply because so few copies are made increasing the per unit production cost. It's the niche effect, which is the bottom end of that economy of scale. War games became so expensive and so few copies were being produced, they pretty much became direct order only and hobby/game stories stopped carrying them. The advent of crowd-funding changed the paradigm a bit, but not the fact that it's nearly impossible to find war games on the shelves of a game store or that those few that do hit the shelves are insanely expensive for what you get. It's a catch 22, the more expensive your cover price gets, the more sales drop, the more they drop, the higher prices go because production costs spiral up higher than the inflation rate everyone likes to point to when producing on a smaller scale. Inflation rate does impact cost on something like comics, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to increases in production costs on unit costs when scaling downwards in scale. -M PS look at it this way-there is usually a set cost to run a printing press, plus a price per copy. So if that set cost is x, and doesn't change if you print 1 copy or a thousand, the more you print the more you defray that cost. The longer a press runs, the less each copy costs, but X won't change no matter how long it runs. So if x =$5K, and price per copy is 20 cents at 100,000 copies but 30 cents at 50,000 copies, not only do you have to cover the extra 10 cents per copy if you only print 50K, you have to cover more of the $5k with each copy because the price per copy on that has doubled. Plus the cost per copy on creator salaries, delivery costs, etc. have doubled as well. If it dropped to 25K units produced, those costs have quadrupled compared to 100K, etc. etc. I think what you say is true, but I don't think it's so simple to attribute increased cover prices due to dwindling circulations. Marvel and DC are not, strictly speaking, publishers any more. They are IP licensing/merchendising/filmmaking houses that have a publishing division to act as an IP incubator. So Marvel and DC publishing are financially propped up by their own licensing. Even if the publishing side of each company wasn't making a lot of money, it's too valuable as a generator of IP for them to let atrophy. It would take a lot for them to be drastically affected by lower sales on their comic lines -- especially within the kinds of price increases we've seen from them in the window of time that those price increases have been instituted. I've been reading a lot about how the Direct Market is healthier than it's ever been in the last few years. This is also during the same period when Marvel and DC have been raking in the cash with their movies and licensing. I'm fairly confident that neither company is so strapped for cash to the point that raising the prices on their book by a dollar is going to be what saves them. Here's what I do think is at work. Consider this: 1) New 52 Superman was $2.99 for it's entire run, and struggled for most of it due to a rotating cast of creators. Then they announce Geoff Johns and John Romita Jr, two creators with major star power, are taking over the book. They make a huge marketing push. The book increases to $3.99 on the very issue that the new creative team takes over. 2) New 52 Batman started out $2.99. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have a monster hit with the Court of Owls storyline. Not even before the arc is finished, DC increases the price to $3.99. They assuage us by saying that back-up material will be included, but that goes away after a while when they realize people aren't leaving the book in droves. 3) Mark Waid relaunches Daredevil with a $2.99 price tag. The book is a critical darling, winning numerous awards, and sells well for them (though not on the level of a Batman). When the book relaunches again, with a new #1, Marvel increases the price to $3.99. I think the publishers will take every opportunity they can to increase the prices a bit more, starting with books that are proven hits, because they know those book will sell no matter what. Riskier or lower-tier character will still sell for less. But once they think people are used to paying $3.99 for book, it won't be long before those lower-tier titles will be increased too. Ms. Marvel seems to be a big hit for Marvel right now. I would not at all be surprised if they increased the book to $3.99 when the next relaunch happens. My own personal theory is that this is part of a larger phenomenon I see in America of people willing to shell out greater and greater percentages of their income for what amounts to "luxury". I remember when cable TV used to be a luxury. Now everybody has cable. It wasn't so long ago that smartphones were considered luxuries. Now kids have smartphones. And so it goes on... |
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Post by Randle-El on Sept 10, 2014 23:37:27 GMT -5
Quick update with my LCS: I stopped by today to pick up my weekly haul, and I mentioned to the main guy that works there that I've been a bit frustrated with the pull service. He explained that he had a teenager that's been working there helping him with the pulls, and that he's not the most detail-oriented employee. He said that another employee who used to work for him before was coming back to help out, and that he's much better, so I should see an improvement in the pull service.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and stick with them for now and see how things go. In spite of sounding like I'm anti-LCS at times, I really do want to support them and have them succeed, but they just need to give me good reasons for doing so.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2014 1:44:46 GMT -5
I don't see how Marvel comics selling 30k copies, the work being studio mill work for hire pay-per-page, and being stuffed full of ads means the price has to go from sixty five cents in 1986 to five dollars in 2014 when Usagi Yojimbo cost two bucks in 1986 and costs four bucks today.
Marvel comics have gone up eight hundred percent, indies have gone up one hundred percent. Those indies will lack any paid advertisements and have a fraction of the print run.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2014 2:55:12 GMT -5
I don't see how Marvel comics selling 30k copies, the work being studio mill work for hire pay-per-page, and being stuffed full of ads means the price has to go from sixty five cents in 1986 to five dollars in 2014 when Usagi Yojimbo cost two bucks in 1986 and costs four bucks today. Marvel comics have gone up eight hundred percent, indies have gone up one hundred percent. Those indies will lack any paid advertisements and have a fraction of the print run. And color pages will cost you anywhere from 4 to 8 times what black and white pages will cost you to print now in some cases. When I was editing yearbooks when I taught, the 16 page color section for the seniors cost as much to print as the other 144 black and white pages. In '86 Indies cost as much as they did because of the economy of scale. Self publishers and small press had to make more on each issue to cover printing costs. Print runs (not copies sold but print runs) for mainstream books were in the hundreds of thousands due to the returnability factor of the newsstands, reducing costs. Since 1986 we've had the advent of trades, which changes the economics of comics substantially. Usagi Yojimbo is essentially an evergreen trade source, the costs of creating Usagi Vol. 1 were long paid for and sales of Usagi Vol. 1 more than offset the cost of printing and distribution, so salaries pad to the creator paid decades ago are still providing return on investment, and work being created now in floppy format will continue to generate sales long into the future for books like Usagi. Marvel trades and new52 trades will have a much shorter shelf life, evergreen mainstream volumes are rare, so they don't extend the revenue life of the created work and spread out the costs over a longer timespan the way a volume of Usagi does. You keep comparing things economically within the comics industry as if it is a monolithic entity. It's not apples to apples,it's apples and oranges. Operating costs are vastly different for corporate entities like Marvel and DC and the model and market they operate in than publishers like Dark Horse doing creator owned work where creators take money on the back end over a long period of time rather than salary up front, where the viable sales window for one product is 3 months plus a slightly longer window for trades and the other is still selling product regularly from nearly three decades ago. There is tons of data and circumstances you are ignoring or discounting because they don't fit your view of how things should be, but they still affect the economics of publishing comic books. Printing costs have outstripped inflation, especially paper costs. Color printing has gotten more expensive in relation to black and white printing over the years, not less, and trade paperbacks, reprint fees, and other factors affect the margins of floppies themselves. Corporate entities have to answer to shareholders. They have to maintain a certain level of profitability, so prices will reflect their need to do so based on costs. Since costs have increased at a greater rate than inflation, prices have as well. It';s vicious circle/catch 22 situation as they are pricing themselves out of customers, but they need the prices to be there to keep their doors open in the corporate scheme of things. Smaller publishers (without shareholders) have more flexibility to play with margins and profit levels to keep publishing stuff, but even they have limits. Let's look at it this way...If a writer is getting a page rate of $100 (which Jason Aaron mentioned in his column as a standard for established but not superstar writers at Marvel about 2-3 years ago in his column on writing at CBR)-and the issue is 20 pages long that's $2000 per issue to pay just the writer. A $4 cover price nets Marvel one whole dollar (they sell to Diamond for a dollar, Diamond sells to your retailer for $2, who sells it to you for $4). That means they have to sell 2000 copies @ $4 cover price just to pay the writer (not the penciller, inker, letterer, colorist, editor, assistant editor, production crew, janitors, electric bill, phone bill,insurance, etc. etc. that the revenue from the issue has to cover and that isn't even covering what it costs to print and transport the issues). The artists are going to get a higher page rate-it takes longer to produce art than write a script so they generally make more). Those costs are set no matter what the print run or sales of the issue are. Maybe you can trim page rates some by hiring new or b/c-list talent, but that will likely trim sales too, so it's a gamble. Now if you can sell 10oK copies, you might get away with lowering cover price, but not likely. If you are selling 30K no way can you on those books. Retailers will only order enough to sell for 3-6 months most likely (though some order to sell out in the first week and never reorder) which means you have a very narrow window to make money on those expenditures. You can sell it again as a trade, but trade sales for mainstream comics are anemic, maybe you get an extra 4-6K copies sold via Diamond, more through Amazon and the book trade, but as a whole you will not sell as many copies of the trade as you did the individual issue. Digital sales will help sweeten that, but they are still a drop in the bucket. So with all that in mind, how do you go to your shareholders and say, well we could have made you more money but we decided to lose money by lowering the cover price to make customers happy. We didn't sell enough extra copies by doing so to make it a profitable venture, but complaint son the internet are down 14% about our pricing structure so that's a win, right? Creator owned comics are a different animal. 1) they don't have to answer to shareholders. 2) they don't exist in a corporate umbrella with all the benefits and drawbacks that come with that. 3) Creators can choose to take less per issue to get the book out there and hope it scores a bigger payday by getting optioned by some other media company for movie/television/video game what have you. Those rights are already tied up in corporate land. 4) Creator owners take on more of the load for production and promotion for their books or work deals with smaller publishers to handle it. 5) Creators take money out of the back end, so if there is no profit, they don't get paid but the publisher rarely loses money on the deal, the risk is on the creator-owner, as is the reward if it pays off. The creator-owner is not paying for things like janitorial etc. and the publisher is not paying salary up front, reducing the costs and risks for both parties. So to say they're both funny books they should be priced the same and the economics are the same for them is disingenuous and unrealistic. -M |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 11, 2014 3:26:36 GMT -5
Why exactly have printing costs gone up? That's the nebulous area that I've never seen anyone explain in detail. Is it the simple fact that colored inks continue to increase in price? Is it more expensive to log lumber, trickling down to increase the cost of paper for printers? This is strange to me given that our technology continues to get better, which usually leads to a reduction in overhead (as more automation is employed), which in theory should get passed on to the consumer. I don't know anything about the source causes of the rising costs of printing, so I'm honestly curious.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,867
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Post by shaxper on Sept 11, 2014 4:52:49 GMT -5
Quick update with my LCS: I stopped by today to pick up my weekly haul, and I mentioned to the main guy that works there that I've been a bit frustrated with the pull service. He explained that he had a teenager that's been working there helping him with the pulls, and that he's not the most detail-oriented employee. He said that another employee who used to work for him before was coming back to help out, and that he's much better, so I should see an improvement in the pull service. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and stick with them for now and see how things go. In spite of sounding like I'm anti-LCS at times, I really do want to support them and have them succeed, but they just need to give me good reasons for doing so. Let's hope you see a difference! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2014 11:42:03 GMT -5
Why exactly have printing costs gone up? That's the nebulous area that I've never seen anyone explain in detail. Is it the simple fact that colored inks continue to increase in price? Is it more expensive to log lumber, trickling down to increase the cost of paper for printers? This is strange to me given that our technology continues to get better, which usually leads to a reduction in overhead (as more automation is employed), which in theory should get passed on to the consumer. I don't know anything about the source causes of the rising costs of printing, so I'm honestly curious. Environmental laws regulating the lumber industry have been instrumental is stopping a lot of abusive practices, but the offshoot is that it has caused logging to become less profitable, leading to logging companies charging more for the material-thus the source material used in making paper has increased, so paper mills pay more for the trees, thus the cost of making paper has gone up and the mills pass the increase in costs along, thus the cost of paper has gone up, not due to inflation or at the rate of inflation, but to cover all the additional costs of environmental regulation. That is only one factor, but it is a major one. A lot of paper is made from recycled materials. It may be less expensive, but still costs more than paper used to because it has to cover recycling costs as well as the paper production costs. Ink prices have also increased at a rate higher than inflation-but I think this has more to do with the increase in demand (how many more people have home printers using up ink supplies now than in 1994? Than 1984? Than 1974?) while supply (of the natural resources used in ink production) has not necessarily increased at the same scale, leading to prices rising higher than the rate of inflation. Then there is the increase in gas prices and energy costs needed to transport products all along the chain and to power the mills, tools, etc. which have risen at a rate higher than inflation, particularly since 2001... If every phase and aspect of the industry has seen price increases it begins to add up, and is reflected in the price of the product that industry produces, almost in a snowball effect fashion. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2014 14:40:37 GMT -5
I don't see how Marvel comics selling 30k copies, the work being studio mill work for hire pay-per-page, and being stuffed full of ads means the price has to go from sixty five cents in 1986 to five dollars in 2014 when Usagi Yojimbo cost two bucks in 1986 and costs four bucks today. Marvel comics have gone up eight hundred percent, indies have gone up one hundred percent. Those indies will lack any paid advertisements and have a fraction of the print run. You keep comparing things economically within the comics industry as if it is a monolithic entity. It's not apples to apples,it's apples and oranges. Operating costs are vastly different for corporate entities like Marvel and DC and the model and market they operate in than publishers like Dark Horse doing creator owned work where creators take money on the back end over a long period of time rather than salary up front, where the viable sales window for one product is 3 months plus a slightly longer window for trades and the other is still selling product regularly from nearly three decades ago. There is tons of data and circumstances you are ignoring or discounting because they don't fit your view of how things should be, but they still affect the economics of publishing comic books. I'm not ignoring them. I should have went ahead and said Marvel has better deals in printing and distribution and all those things are far cheaper for them than they ever will be for Dark Horse or any third publisher. The real reason Marvel comics cost so much is because they have to pay all those investors and shareholders and executives. How many shareholders and executives do you think Dark Horse has? Now how many do you think Marvel/Disney have? It's like those companies that cry that they can't pay their workers 25 cents over minimum wage and yet they have shareholders and executives bringing home half a billion dollars a year. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 11, 2014 15:27:21 GMT -5
[/quote]The real reason Marvel comics cost so much is because they have to pay all those investors and shareholders and executives.
How many shareholders and executives do you think Dark Horse has? Now how many do you think Marvel/Disney have?
[/quote]
The money Marvel comics generates is like a grain of sand on the beach compared to the entire Disney Corporation. Marvel comics costs what it does because thats what people are willing to pay. I'm sure they've done their homework to know that charging $1 less would not substancially increase profit. If it could, then they'd do it. Businessmen are not idiots, even if you disagree with their policies
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Post by Randle-El on Sept 11, 2014 15:52:51 GMT -5
The problem I have is that once I got into digital comics, it completely changed my mindset as a reader. Actually, it started with the rise of the modern collected editions market; I simply lost interest in individual issues and maintaining storage boxes around 2000. Back when comics were 75 cents it was easy for me to justify taking a chance on something that could easily turn out to be mediocre, but now I just want the "good stuff" on my shelf: Kirby, Fantagraphic's collections, Marvel Masterworks, etc. I'm currently having this dilemma with the new Valiant titles. I was initially pulling all of them each month when they came out, but the $3.99 cover price, combined with the slow crawl of modern comic book decompression, pretty much made me give up on each after the first story arc. If they weren't going to floor me, they weren't worth the money. I noticed only recently that newer titles drop to about half price on mycomicshop.com after a year, so I started picking up the Valiant titles again in this way...and some of them are truly amazing. I can rationalize paying $2 an issue for them. BUT, if I buy the titles in this manner, I'm not supporting the publisher, and the publisher is a third party contender that absolutely needs the sales. So the books aren't worth it to me at $4 a pop, but I'm not actually supporting the publisher, nor my LCS, nor voting with my dollar, if I buy them at $2 a pop. The problem isn't the books -- it's the modern comic book price point. Anyway, I think I've taken us way off topic here. Shax, it's interesting that you raised this scenario. As much as I would agree with you that supporting a good LCS is the preferred way to get comics, this particular set of circumstances would seem to indicate that using a service like DCBS is not a bad option. As I see it, buying the Valiant titles from a place like DCBS would give you deep discounts over and above what any LCS could provide, while still enabling you to purchase the books as they come out. At the same time, since DCBS is presumably a Diamond-serviced account (and thus for all intents and purposes, equivalent to an LCS as far as sales data and flow of $$$ is concerned), it would still enable you to support the publisher. Which raises another interesting point -- some of these online pull services are run by LCSs, albeit perhaps LCSs that are not local to the customer. I think a lot of us can agree that it's important to support quality comic shops since they are a dying breed and provide a vital component of the comics ecosystem. So it's one thing to buy our books from an Amazon or other big-box equivalent vs. our local store. But aside from the geographic factor, is there any real difference between getting my pull list from my LCS vs. a Midtown Comics (or a Westfield, or a Mile High), which is basically an LCS (albeit a very large and successful one)? Or for that matter, is there any difference*** between buying locally vs. using another small LCS that is willing to offer me a deeper discount (enough to offset shipping) that's located remotely? ***By this I mean does it make any difference as far as staying true to the ethos of supporting a small business. Obviously it makes a difference in terms of user experience. |
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Post by hondobrode on Sept 11, 2014 16:32:37 GMT -5
I think a good part of the increase in pricing has to do with the talent, and paying them. Not to say others weren't talented; far from it. They just weren't compensated as well.
Yes DCBS is a Diamond account. One of the top ones in fact, so you are still supporting Valiant.
If anyone buys through Comixology, as I do, you are also supporting Valiant, or whomever.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2014 17:31:19 GMT -5
Marvel comics costs what it does because thats what people are willing to pay. That's what I believe as well, as opposed to Marvel Comics cost what it does because that's what they need to charge to stay afloat. They're milking it for all they can. |
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shaxper
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Posts: 22,867
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Post by shaxper on Sept 11, 2014 19:00:37 GMT -5
Shax, it's interesting that you raised this scenario. As much as I would agree with you that supporting a good LCS is the preferred way to get comics, this particular set of circumstances would seem to indicate that using a service like DCBS is not a bad option. As I see it, buying the Valiant titles from a place like DCBS would give you deep discounts over and above what any LCS could provide, while still enabling you to purchase the books as they come out. At the same time, since DCBS is presumably a Diamond-serviced account (and thus for all intents and purposes, equivalent to an LCS as far as sales data and flow of $$$ is concerned), it would still enable you to support the publisher. True, but I would also like to support my LCS, and the manager does one heck of a job making shopping there a pleasant experience. I consider myself very fortunate in this respect. What I ended up doing was buying all the Valiant back issues at the discounted price via mycomicshop, reading them all, and then making a more informed decision about which ones to start pulling via my LCS. Support the shopping experience that you want to have available to you down the road. If going to a physical place, where you can browse impulse items and be recognized by name by the person behind the counter doesn't matter to you, then go with whatever option gets you a good price and convenience. But if having the "Cheers" experience matters to you, that LCS where everyone knows your name, is always glad you came, and where you truly look forward to hanging out, then you have to support that experience at all costs because it's a business model that is seriously endangered. What's happening in comics is no different than the dilemma we face in all aspects of retail consumerism these days. You can have the better shopping experience, the higher quality item, and/or the more ethically responsible product or you can save money and experience more convenience. Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and DCBS are all different aspects of the same business model. If that's what you want, it's your right to go that route and get your needs met less expensively and more efficiently But by buying into it, you're helping to ensure that the other option won't be around anymore in another decade. So it's a choice everyone must make for his/her self. Personally, I view comics as a luxury, not a basic need, and thus I want a luxury experience when I purchase them. Being blessed with a fantastic LCS, I'm quite happy to pay more for a heightened experience. However, the higher price tag does make me significantly limit the amount of new books I purchase. |
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Post by Jasoomian on Sept 12, 2014 1:23:42 GMT -5
Midtown Comics (or a Westfield, or a Mile High), which is basically an LCS
How many homes do you own? Surely not all of those businesses are local to you. |
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