PeterDavid.net

Remember folks....its a hobby to us but a business to DC...they gotta do what they gotta do to make money.

Ed

The small comic shop I go to in town has recently changed owners. The old owner had a system worked out with a bigger retailer - where he got all his books from them, so as to get the books without Diamond. I looked at some of the dispute over DC's terms of sale - and even though the Legal Terms run circles around my head - it does allow fellow stores to trade or sell small quatities for the purpose of not running out of stock. For my store's case - what a big retailer might order for one title is equivlent to what my local store gets of all the titles each week.

Now with Bulldog's case - I think he's doing the same thing, but at a much larger scale. Thus he is violating the terms of sale.

Yet really, from what I read on Newsarama, it seems all DC really wants is to know more facts about each sale. Since Bulldog was redistriputing it, DC has no knowlede of sales info.

But apparently Bulldog only accounts for 1% of DC's sales. So what key info are they really missing here?

I don't really side one way or the other. It probably only jumped on Bulldogs becuase not just DC, but Diamond it's self knew about it, and even refered retailers for back issues.

For some it might be a win, win situation, others it might suck. But heated debate over the pros and cons seem natural, since missing books are the basic life-blood of some stores.

My new shop's owner waited last week for his first UPS delivery. (He was switching to Diamond) and all of Wednesday nothing even came. There alone was a whole day's lost sales. They finally came on Thursday - but the majority of Marvel's titles didn't arrive!

More lost sales. Without the fallback of the bigger store's surplus - he might not have been able to get back those sales at all.

Some smaller stores just can't survive those huge restrictions. It might mean bigger sales in the short term, but a loss of readership can be perniment and lasting. Make it difficult for retailers; makes it difficult to fans. How many lost customers will be lost down that road?

I feel very uncomfrtable about facotrs that distort supply and demand. The retail comics biz seems run on such a razor thin margin that I don't think it's healthy to have concentration of power that blurs what the consumer buying buying behavior is.

That's a provisional position, of course, but it's a rule of thumb that I don;t like things that jimmy around with supply and demand...

I just finished reading a book called "Epilepsy" I found in the local library. It's a trade paperback, all the work by this one guy in France who wrote and illistrated his own work. It's one of the best books I've ever read.

The point is that it was published by a company with maybe three people on their masthead (and one housecat) and is avaliable worldwide on Amazon.com. Maybe Marvel and DC should consider letting up on the amount of control they excercise over not just shipping and publishing, but even format and number of issues per year. Let the writers play around a little, and work more like a clearinghouse network than a corporation.

Comic books aren't widgets!

if DC wants to increase the number of issues it sells, there's a much better way of doing it than strong armning sellers.

STOP PUTTING OUT TRADE PAPERBACKS OF EVERY SERIES SO QUICKLY!

yeah, yeah, i hear arguements all the time about how trades make them extra money, blah blah. but what they really are doing is stealing from Peter (the future) to pay Paul (the present). if they would only put out trades of good runs of books, instead of everything under the sun, they might see their margin go up.

tho i having bought comics for more thatn 20 years now, i can't believe they haven't done this long before now. nice guys finish last...trust me, i know.

oops, left out somethiing. the point about Peter and Paul was this - i know a lot of people who don't buy certain comics or mini-series, etc, because they know DC will eventually release it in TPB. i know i've done it, tho not that often.

Well, as a retailer, I've kinda come to terms with Marvel's policies. The only time they irk me is when Diamond shorts us on Marvel titles, and that's not neccessarily Marvel's fault.

While, as a fan, I absolutely loathe the DCU, as a retailer, I'm glad DC is finally stepping up and kicking ass. I am, for one, guilty of the whole "We can always reorder it" habit. While I don't like them personally, I can't wait for DC to enjoy the same success Marvel has enjoyed the last few years.

I'm a drunken prom date for Marvel, but the guys who signed Warren Ellis have my respect.

--UJ

As a former retailer it's easy to explain why Bulldog was violating DC's Terms Of Sale. Bulldog was selling large quantity of DC to other Diamond retail accounts, something that is directly against the TOS.

I know that it seems rather penny-ante to be pulling someones account on this, since DC is able to report the initial sales of the book on their reports, but in some ways it skews DC's (and some of Diamond's) reports. They aren't able to show the "real" numbers of comic shops ordering a product. Companies that are part of conglomerates like to be able to show how they're doing to big brother, and keep their paychecks.

Yet, the TOS does state that retailers can make some account to account sales, Bulldog was/is very large scale on these sales. To me, it comes down to Diamond, and probably to a lesser extent DC, don't want any sub-distributors out there. Even though the sub-distributors used to be the norm and there used to be many more comic shops in the nation. When I started work at the comic shop I was at, we were sub-distributed from Houston, then we had to move to main Capital, then eventually had to move to Diamond (and really poor discount structure and second-class citizen status there) when they bought Cap. Since Diamond became the "only" distributor, there has been a sharp decrease in the number of shops, and more complaints from shops for poor service. Granted, Diamond is/has been trying to improve over the last couple of years, but that only really occured when they noticed that they're customer base was shrinking rapidly.

The comic market has had some good news over the past couple of years, but it's not a healthy industry when you have only one worldwide distributor of product. Especially with that company being in Maryland and able to use some of the strange laws that they have on the books there.

jeff

STOP PUTTING OUT TRADE PAPERBACKS OF EVERY SERIES SO QUICKLY!

I disagree. In fact, there are a number of series that I am still waiting for DC to put out the trades. Yes, I have started to shift some of my buying to TPB. I don't see anything wrong with that.

As for Bulldog vs. DC, I'm not overly concerned. I think PAD is right, DC has been too nice while Marvel has played hardball. DC should enforce it's TOS. At least, unlike Marvel, they didn't have to be sued in order to get themselves to abide by it and Paul Levitz isn't going all over the internet telling retailers to shut up.

Now, if you want to know why the comics industry is in decline (if I may drift a litte off-topic), go to http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6051 and read the responses to the article on Ron Marz returning to GL. It is because of angry, insane trolls like these that the "Comic Shop Guy" stereotype sticks in so many people's minds.

Ed said it right: Remember folks....its a hobby to us but a business to DC...they gotta do what they gotta do to make money.

Loathesome thought it is for some people to accept this, DC (as well as every other comic book company) aren't in it to make comics, they're in it to make money.

And before everyone gets teed off at the, shock, horror, gasp idea that a company is in business to make money... why the hell shouldn't they?

Can someone explain to me why I no longer see comic books at grocery stores, convenience stores, etc? I do see them in some bookstores - some Books-A-Millons, but not B&N. I've got a small town, with only one comic shop. Do we seriously expect new readers to the field when so many of the sources have dried up?

BT: "Can someone explain to me why I no longer see comic books at grocery stores, convenience stores, etc? "

Because the last decade or so has seen a ruthless optimization of newsstand distribution for magazines and books, along with a dramatically increased excpectation on the retailers' part for return on square foot of display. A comic rack brings in less money than a video game or sunglasses display, and a single comic brings in less than a single issue of most magazines.

I think that we're skirting the main reason that Marvel's sales have gone up...they're finally putting out books that excite the readers. The reason that Quesada's the EIC over there is from his tenure on the original Marvel Knights line. That gave him the chops to go after people like Morrison, Ennis, Bendis, Straczynski etc.

Once a company has something that the customers genuinely want to see, they can dictate their terms to the marketplace. Face it...if Tom DeFalco was still doing his version of Spider-Man, I don't think there would be people coming in from outside the hobby to start buying the title (no offense meant to Mr. DeFalco...although his Spidey wasn't my cuppa, I'm talking name recognition here, not talent).

I run a shop in central Vermont, and have done so for twenty years. I've noticed readers beginning to figure out that Marvel is cutting down the lead time to collecting their story arcs into trade paperbacks. These readers have opted not to pick up new series, and in some cases dropped ongoing titles because they know that they'll be collected in short order (I usually have a two-word retort to those people..."Atlantis Chronicles").

Here's a question that I haven't heard/read anywhere else: taking the current trend to its logical conclusion, if sales on the pamphlets continue to drop, there will come a point where it will no longer pay the companies to put out comic books at all, switching over completely to original-material trade paperbacks. If this happens, won't the price of the trades take a sudden huge increase?

The material in the current collections have already been paid for by the companies when they came out as comics. Setting aside the question of royalties for the moment, when the trades aren't subsidised by the comics any longer, the trade paperbacks will have to cost the publishers more, and that cost will have to be passed on to the consumer.

At what point will trade paperback comics price themselves out of existence?

If the pamphlets vanish, how will artists and writers support themselves month-to-month until the hardcover or softcover of their work is published I'd imagine some sort of advance will have to be established (or the creators may go the Howard Cruise/Stuck Rubber Baby route and sell the original pages in advance for food money now).

Thoughts?

If the pamphlets vanish, how will artists and writers support themselves month-to-month until the hardcover or softcover of their work is published I'd imagine some sort of advance will have to be established

Y'mean....like how they do it in the book industry now?

If the pamphlets vanish, how will artists and writers support themselves month-to-month until the hardcover or softcover of their work is published I'd imagine some sort of advance will have to be established

I imagine more and more comics will start going straight to trade paperback form and skip the monthly pamphlet format.

Comics really just don't have the value they used to hold for me. I can pay $6 bucks for a paperback book which can take me from 2 to 8 hours to read - let's average it at 6 hours --- that's a buck per hour of enjoyment. The average comic takes me 15 minutes to read and costs $3 --- a quarter of the time for 3 times the cost?!?!? --- uh huh... no. I dropped 99% of the comics I used to get. The only comics I get now are Liberty Meadows and the Simpsons & Futurama books. Sigh :^( I fear comics may be going the way of the dinosaur....

Emotional arguments aside, I think this isn't directly D.C.'s fault. My guess is that they signed an exclusive retail distribution contract with Diamond in order to get both large lot discounts and free distribution reports, and part if it requires that D.C. stop any out-of-channel distribution systems.

For a company like D.C., the lowered distribution costs from such a contract might save them more money than Bulldog's sales can make them.

So shutting down Bulldog isn't personal, it's all business.

if they would only put out trades of good runs of books

But what defines the "good runs?" Tastes are so subjective. "New Warriors" issues 1-50 are some of my favorite comics ever, but there's only one NW trade. I was probably the only person on the face of the earth that liked the "Bishop" series they tried three or four years ago. And, let's not forget "Supergirl." Brilliant stuff, but only two trades to bookend about 80 issues.

Not to nit, or anything, it's just that these things are *so* subjective.

I'm lazy, not desperate for attention. Sorry for not closing the bold tag...

Why not, as we wait for trades to come out, go to the Japanese Manga model, and have larger anthology-style magazines. Granted, it screws the collector market, and things like this have been tried and failed before (the Raijin manga line is going under soon). Let's say we have a "Spider-Man Megazine" with room for say, two 22-page stories and a couple of smaller backups, all by different creative teams. Then, the major stories can be collected in pretty TPBs, perhaps with bonus, DVD-esque info.

It's a risky idea, and even I, if I had the capital, would be hesitant to front it, but I think everyone is in agreement that something needs to be done.

Thacher-

Don't think that the industry is not thinking in that direction. The question would be could they make that sort of a structure cost effective. Shojin Jump aside.

Kathleen

One problem that has been pointed out about converting monthlies into anthologies is the potential loss of advertising revenue; if you convert four Superman titles into Superman Jump, you're quartering your ad exposure. This isn't an insurmountable problem, but it's the sort of issue fans often don't think of.

The other problem that comes to mind: Would fans be willing to sacrifice quality for this sort of product? Weekly manga are extremely cheap because they're not designed as a permanent product; the paper quality is a few notches below the paper phone books are printed on. The idea is that you'll toss them and buy the collections. They're also mostly black & white (or black and whatever color the paper for that section is). (The US version of Shonen Jump only has a few color pages each month.) The color pages aren't usually reprinted in color in the collections either.

Would it be profitable to publish an anthology of this type while maintaining quality and keeping price down? The only experiment in this area I can think of is Crossgen's Edge and Forge anthologies, and you'll notice they aren't printing those any more. (Which is a shame; they were a great way of sampling titles I wouldn't have bought otherwise.)

I had the thought of the anthology magazine a while back and thought up the following:

Shonen Jump Monthly. This is an American version of the manga magazine that sells consistently better in Japan than the top ten American comics all put together.

Something for everyone in here. I simply do not understand why the American comic book industry is still sucking hind teat to the manga market.

Imagine a weekly DC Universe magazine. The big ole DC ‘bullet’ in the corner and the rotation of stories working it’s way through the DC lineup. It's monthly average is around 33 regular monthly titles. There are 5 weeks in this month where books will be released. Each issue of Shonen Jump is at least 256 pages long. Going with that as the maximum length for our DC Universe mag, that gives us a total of 1280 pages available or 38 pages per comic put out in the month by DC!

Now here’s the thing. Normal DC books are 22 to 24 pages long nowadays. So if we go with an average of 22 pages per book, that means we only need 726 pages for the work that would normally get done for DC anyways. That leaves 554 pages for advertisements. That’s 43% advertisements. They can’t pass that up!

I can hear you now…a magazine that big would cost…like…$15US. Well here’s the beauty of my plan. Our DC Universe book would be black and white, just like Shonen Jump and on the same paper stock that Shonen Jump uses which is nicer than newsprint but nowhere near as fancy as the paper used in modern comics. This would keep the price low at around the $4.95 to $5.95 range.

I can hear you again…but…but…but…I want my color comics! Patience young grasshopper! Here’s where the ingenious part of the plan comes in. I have no hate of the professional comics colorist. I wish no harm on them. But…the Japanese distribution system makes more sense for our modern economy. Only spend the money for color on those books that are popular enough to warrant it. Like all the Batman and Superman series. What format would these take? Why…the collected trade paperback forms they have now of course.

Just imagine…Week 1: Action Comics, Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, JLA, Hawkman, Harley Quinn, and Azrael: Agent of the Bat. Week 2: Batman, Adventures of Superman, The Flash, Birds of Prey, Justice League Adventures, and The Power Company. Week 3: Superman: The Man of Steel, Batman: Gotham Knights, Aquaman, The Legion, Robin, Young Justice, Doom Patrol. Week 4: Batman: Gotham Adventures, Superman, Green Lantern, Catwoman, JSA, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. And Week 5: The Titans, Nightwing, Batgirl, Supergirl, Gotham Central, and The Spectre.

Oh how sweet it could be…

I simply do not understand why the American comic book industry is still sucking hind teat to the manga market.**

Because too many American comic "fans" have their head up their asses to acceot ANYTHING that falls outside of some narrowly defined areas that they decide makes up comics.

Just listen to a lot of "fans" bitch about crappy manga art and think that manga and American comics are inherently different (Uh, hello? Who do you think are buying the books in AMERICAN stores? Little green men from Mars?)

Wow...so sorry about the bolding. Hopefully, this will fix things.

Never let it be said I don't know how to make an impression. I guess this is what I get for being all show-offy with my HTML...

In re: Comments about the DC Jump ideas and such (a nice way to put it by the way). It would take a major shift in industry thinking. Less ad revnue, definitely a big problem. Loss in quality? Well, we'd have to see how it would go. Perhaps some of your basic things could go anthology (Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, X-Men) but others would stay the same, or at a Prestige format. I think people would react poorly to a change in paper quality and if it went to black and white. Sadly, for the American super-hero market, I don't think fans can be weaned off of that.

I don't think it's just the fans. There's a reason why "four-color" is used as a descriptor for a particular type of superhero comic; classic superhero costumes are designed in bold, flashy colors, and they just don't work the same way in black & white. (There are a few exceptions; Batman has been proven to work in B&W, and it wouldn't affect the Punisher to speak of; but think of the effect on Superman, say.) Even "Nobles Causes" doesn't look quite right in B&W.

I would like to see anthologies of some form take off in the US; I just don't have the magic key that would make it work right now. (Although if DC is successful with their digest-for-kids reprint format, that may be a first step.)

Bold off?

There's a reason why "four-color" is used as a descriptor for a particular type of superhero comic

Actually that refers to the Four Color printing process. Two-color printing is strictly black and white (cheap newsletters use it), Gradient or Greyscale printing is what non-color newspapers use (allows them to add b/w photos).

Four Color printing is made up of CYMK colors - Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black. If you look at some publications or even commercial product boxes you'll see 4 color spots hidden somewhere out of the normal print area used to test the purity of each color.

Six Color printing is used mostly in high-gloss magazines and is a fairly expensive process. It has better photo resolution than Four Color printing, so it's ideal for publications that carry lots of large, full-color photos.

Thanks, Alan M.

Never let it be said I don't know how to make an impression... ;)

Yeah, I know why it's called "four-color." The point is that superhero comics began under that printing process, and so the term has come to apply to a particular style of superhero comic. In the same way that "pulp" has become descriptive of more than just a type of cheap paper.

I've gotten e-mails on it, and someone asked about it on this blog in a manner not only off-topic, but out of the clear blue.

Yeah, that was me who asked that question... in an off-topic manner-- out of the clear blue-- on a previous entry.

But I certainly wasn't attempting to "drag" you into anything, Peter.

I don't know why anybody else asked you about DC’s Bulldog decision Peter-- but I asked you because I knew you had long time experience with comic distribution and wanted to read your views on the subject...

... And since you have views on many subjects-- why is this one more or less valid to ask you about?

(And if you have a feature on this blog that allows me to ask a question somewhere else-- without risking it being "off topic"-- by all means, please let me know. I'm new to this blog thing. Bear with me.)

Yeah, that was me who asked that question... in an off-topic manner-- out of the clear blue-- on a previous entry. But I certainly wasn't attempting to "drag" you into anything, Peter.

Don't worry about it. It's just that I read the posting right after I'd gotten e-mails on it and I was wondering, "What the heck?" Particularly since the sentiment of the e-mails seemed to be expecting me to do something about it. You know, ride to the rescue of beleagured Bulldog against the oppressive DC, and I'm going, "But...if they were knowingly violating trade terms, isn't that kinda that?"

Maybe it's time to launch another "Ask Any Questions You Want" thread.

PAD

Well, I think it's interesting and informative to ask industry insiders on this. I think the ensuing discussion has been informative. Not that it's your duty to do this, but an informed fandom is a lot better than an ignorant fandom that pops its cork off at all the wrong things....