Things are going to change. If AT&T is smart they will focus on the fast growing Scholastic marketplace so they can get some of that sweet, sweet Dav Pilkey and Riana Telgemeier money.
“[L]iterally every book she’s done that is in-print is a top-of-the-charts best-seller, which is wildly unprecedented in our dataset,” Hibbs wrote. “Altogether, Raina’s eight books sell a staggering 1.3 million copies for $14.4 million dollars in sales. To put that in context, that means that nearly 5% of all dollars generated by all graphic novels listed (all 21k of them!) are coming from the pen of one woman."
That was in 2016. In 2019 Scholastic has a 40% market share compared to DC (8%) and Marvel (6%). AT&T wants to be in that 40% space not the 8% space. The direct market may go away, but comics (graphic storytelling) will continue.
Guys, I totally understand the panic. No one likes big changes like this. But I genuinely don’t think that all of your favorite characters are going anywhere. The comic industry is changing because it needs to. While the MCU has helped revitalize some love for the medium, comic book stores have not been selling as much as they used to. This could be for a variety of reasons, but a big contributor is probably the rise of graphic novels and digital comics selling more than single issues. (Here’s some graphics from Comichron and ICv2 to show this.)
While you personally might like single print issues, this is just not the format that most people want. Digital comics and graphic novels have big positives that single issues can’t compete with. This means that the comic industry needs to change up their mode of delivery/format because the old model just doesn’t work like it used to. If single issues don’t sell like they used to, then you try and make the most out of them that you can. You put your big names out there that you know will sell (The Justice League Crew) because it’s not as huge of a risk. Producing and distributing comics costs a LOT of money, so you want to make sure it’s well spent. Hence, why they’re going to be changing their focuses. But does it mean the end of all of our other favorite characters? No. I HIGHLY doubt it.
Clearly DC is pushing their online digital services (I mean we’re literally on one right now lol). They’re putting more focus there because it’s an up-and-coming market that is taking up more interest as the years go on. It also costs a lot less to produce and distribute these digital comics, which is a GREAT thing for all of your favorite small-time characters. It means they’re willing to give them more of a chance because it’s not as big of a risk. This is something we’ve seen with streaming services for film and television, where shows that probably would have NEVER been produced on cable are given more of a chance.
“All right, yeah Omni, that’s all well and good. But I like my physical prints still, I don’t want my favorite characters to be locked behind a screen!!!” (That’s what I imagine you are all thinking lol.) Duly noted. But once again, I don’t think they will be. Look at those graphs I shared once more, what is the single best selling format? Graphic novels. This is going to be the future of prints for comics I think. They sell well for pretty much every demographic of comic reader because everyone loves having the complete story there in their hands. So, DC will probably use digital platforms to test new characters and series and the most successful ones will then start having their runs physically produces in trades. It just makes so much more from a business standpoint.
So just to reiterate and summarize real quick, yes change is scary. The comic industry is reshaping before us and single issues (and comic shops with them) are being phased out. This is sad. No doubt. I feel terrible for every worker that will lose out from this change. But it has to be done for the sake of the medium overall. Comics need to change their format for the sake of fitting with the demands of consumers so that they can continue on. Your favorite characters are not going away, they’re just going somewhere else.
Full Disclosure: This is all just my opinion. I am not an insider and I could definitely be missing out on some important data that shows I’m wrong. I’m just a dude studying marketing who loves comics. I’ll edit this post accordingly should it be pointed out that what I’m saying here is not accurate.
I’m hardly denying that, but I will certainly miss popping by my LCS on Wednesdays (or Tuesdays I guess) to get the latest issues, not to mention flipping through long boxes for five or ten minutes to find that one issue I’m missing of whatever arc I’m reading.
Mine is half an hour away. I don’t count it as local after living 9 blocks away from one of the largest shops in Wisconsin for several years. I agree with you. I went all trade ages ago.
Yeah, I’m kind of in the same place. Where I used to live, I had a couple of options that were pretty good within about…a thirty minute drive, give or take? Now there’s just one with a hour drive that was…okay, I guess? Like, I was only able to go to one FCBD event there so I could never get a good handle on it. And with COVID times, it’s hard to want to go anywhere like that, especially since where I live the concept of “social distancing” is lost on a lot of people.
The thing with LCS’s is that the good ones have been already adapting to this for a while now, diversifying what they sell and making themselves more general geek stores with comics in there than just a comic shop. Hell, there’s one three-ish hours away in St Louis that is also a coffee and snack shop.
That’s pretty smart. There is one not terribly far away that is also a geek shop. They sell clothes, board and video games, vinyl records, and collectibles. I figure they’re okay. Unfortunately a large part of the business model is still built on monthly and back issues, so they’re gonna lose some money.
The tough thing for a LCS owner is to manage the change while maintaining their current business model. See Blockbuster, who could have offered DVDs by mail and streaming, but couldn’t see the world changing. It’s hard for a LCS owner to get outside of their comfort zone and offer a wider array of products. That’s why their are so few really good comic shops that are welcoming to new potential customers.
I think this is an unfair assessment of most comic shops. The idea that they’re unwilling to diversify is ignoring the reality that these comic shops are extremely niche with very targeted audiences. They simply don’t have the capital to invest in new inventory, or worse, food-based inventory (which needs to be thrown out every evening).
Personally, I think opening a comic shop had always been a very risky venture. The fact that print media is dying out is unfortunate, but there’s really nothing that can be done.
Local record shops are also rare and fraught with failure. Cassettes and CD are almost non existant formats. Betamax, VHS, and DVDHD aren’t even made anymore. Same with floppy disks. DAT tapes are hard to find.
The digital revolution, as much as I loathe it, is impossible to deny.
I agree with you. I didn’t mean they are unwilling to change, rather it is very difficult to change. There are many business cases where it is tough to see the change coming and act on it. Another example: Blackberry which was so focused on their hardware they didn’t realize that secure messaging and easy enterprise IT management was their true value add. Imagine if they came up with an application for iOS and Android that helped large companies manage their secure messaging rather than focusing on hardware that had a physical keyboard. It’s tough to abandon your current business when the new business isn’t fully developed.
I’ll raise a glass to the comic shops since I’m old enough to remember DC and Marvel abandoning convenience stores and grocery stores for the greener grass of the comic shops, leaving me with no local places to buy comics for several years.
I highly doubt DC will ever abandon comic stores, but they absolutely must think beyond them, especially when it comes to digital.
They have a potential audience of billions with digital (and if not that, then it’s still hundreds of millions at minimum). They need to push it to a global audience while still making sensible business decisions for the direct market.
I get tired of hearing this. It’s simply not true. Xkcd has been digital since day one. It’s black and white, so it’s perfect for reproduction. It’s art is incredibly simplistic, so it’s easy to translate across cultures. It doesn’t have continuity, so new reader adoption isn’t a problem.
And yet, its audience isn’t in the billions.
“Potential” is a misleading word. It’s not false, but it’s not an indication of truth
DC needs solid storytelling. Fun comics with compelling characters. Harry Potter didn’t suddenly become huge because of the fame of the author. And there wasn’t a huge marketing campaign on a new author’s first novel. And the story wasn’t gritty and adult-oriented. And the concept of an orphaned child growing up with an evil step-parent who is concealing the child’s world-shaking destiny isn’t a new story.
But the story was fun. The characters were fun. The mystery was fun. And novel by novel, a continuity was created that the readers enjoyed. Even now when a new spinoff is introduced, there’s no concern about, “you mean, I have the read all these other novels first?!” Quite the opposite, the publisher would LOVE for new readers to buy and read every novel. The implied “barrier” for new readers is one of the best assets of the franchise! (And this is an opinion shared by the publishers and the fans.)
As far as comic stores, I don’t think AT&T will “abandon” them. But if the profit margins are too small, they won’t put forth much effort to keep them alive.
However, if the stories are in demand; if the continuity makes fans want to collect the back issues, there will be a steady demand. Personally, I don’t think AT&T understands this.
As a kid, I wasn’t collecting comics for their future value. I was collecting because the stories were fun. I also collected Tolkien books and Pink Floyd records. It never occurred to me whether or not I could complete my collection. I just enjoyed the stories, the epics, the music.
I like your thinking @harley.333. I read digital and only buy hardcovers here & there of stuff I would like to have a physical copy of. Collecting single issues is highly impractical for me (space limitations). If publishers focus on the entertainment aspect vs the collectibility aspect, they are likely to reach a wider audience, in my opinion.
Regarding your Harry Potter example though, I agree and disagree. Of course it was a fun entertaining story, and that’s why it succeeded, but it was self contained in 7 books (I think, or was it 6?). That’s not that much of a hurdle to climb, if you happen to be into the material. Heck you can walk into any Costco and pick up a box set of the entire thing. I feel that 80 years of single issue comics, with crossovers, crises, reboots and reading orders really is overwhelming for the casual fan that is on the fence about digging in. Just as an example, the other day I was asked if Superman had a “definitive” comic origin story… my answer was “yeah, several”. The person I was talking to didn’t care for the long form answer… “Ok, ok. Which one should I read?”. I recommended Birthright based on my knowledge of the individual’s taste. Hopefully I set them on a journey of enjoying comics for a long time to come, hopefully.
Subscription services like this one, with ready to read storylines is definitely a huge step in making things more accessible to newer readers. It just needs to be marketed to a wider audience than… well… the kind folks talking about it on these forums . You’re definitely right though, attracting readers is one thing. Getting them to stay, however, requires the experience to be rewarding, which will always hinge on the writing and art.
As far as AT&T goes, I feel like it’s too soon for me personally to make a judgment about their handling of DC Comics. I’m still buying and enjoying usual stuff today that I was last year and the year before that, so no complaints on my end as a consumer. When/if these big changes come, I’ll reevaluate my habits accordingly.
Theoretically speaking, it is true. The number of people who have access to digital content via phones, computers and/or tablets the world over vastly outnumbers the people who have readily available access to a comic shop.
DC knows this, but still caves to comic stores when they should be pushing a delivery method that will give them, again in theory, a massive audience.
I don’t think the brands and characters of Xkcd is very comparable to that of DC Comics. Superman and Batman are literally two of the most iconic characters/brands across the world (literally up there with Mickey Mouse). DC’s brand could CERTAINLY carry it to hundreds of millions of new comic readers across the world because of this, mixed with the fact that they haven’t really marketed to overseas markets for their comics that much this far (due to many constraining factors of manufacturing and distributing comics in these places). Digital comics help break this wall because all that’s necessary now for anyone to access them is a device with wifi capabilities/access. DC would just need to develop more of a translation team.
It’s probably worth pointing out (especially for younger readers) that every industry has been struggling with this tension for at least a decade. Fewer people go out shopping, anymore, but since all sales have been driven by and relied on local shops for over a century and still does, to a lesser extent, there’s a desire to be loyal to companies that have built their businesses around your business.
Something a former employer tried–it was a different product with a different sales structure, but still might be a useful data point–was creating a sort of invisible referral program, where each customer had a distributor associated with them, and they were supposed to get a small cut of any purchase through our app. Customers could pick a distributor or we’d just pick the nearest location to their credit card’s ZIP Code. Unfortunately, the distributors found it too much overhead to sign up and put in a process to receive and account for that referral fee, so we ended up killing the referral approach.
That’s all to say that this is hard to figure out. To my knowledge, comics publishers are the only vendors who have struggled to pretend that the economy hasn’t changed since the 1970s, whereas just about everybody else has gone primarily online and left retailers (and the supply chain behind them) to fend for themselves.
. You’re definitely right though, attracting readers is one thing. Getting them to stay, however, requires the experience to be rewarding, which will always hinge on the writing and art.