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Post by Action Ace on Sept 16, 2016 16:23:31 GMT -5
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Post by Action Ace on Sept 16, 2016 16:27:53 GMT -5
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 16, 2016 16:57:08 GMT -5
A bit misleading since this year it's a 5 week month vs last year's 4 so you automatically get a 25% increase if all other things are equal. But what I focused on is the Year-To-Date dollar number vs LY which is the only thing that really counts.
It says the direct market is up 2.7% That is fine by itself but hardly spectacular. And it was driven by DC once again trashing it's entire universe in order to put out a slew of number 1s. So what is it going to do as an encore since this surge must diminish going forward.
How about next year issuing bagged comics with body parts of Dan Didio as a bonus
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Post by thwhtguardian on Sept 16, 2016 20:13:11 GMT -5
A bit misleading since this year it's a 5 week month vs last year's 4 so you automatically get a 25% increase if all other things are equal. But what I focused on is the Year-To-Date dollar number vs LY which is the only thing that really counts. It says the direct market is up 2.7% That is fine by itself but hardly spectacular. And it was driven by DC once again trashing it's entire universe in order to put out a slew of number 1s. So what is it going to do as an encore since this surge must diminish going forward. How about next year issuing bagged comics with body parts of Dan Didio as a bonus That's a bagged book I'd buy. |
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Post by Action Ace on Sept 16, 2016 23:46:58 GMT -5
A bit misleading since this year it's a 5 week month vs last year's 4 so you automatically get a 25% increase if all other things are equal. But what I focused on is the Year-To-Date dollar number vs LY which is the only thing that really counts. It says the direct market is up 2.7% That is fine by itself but hardly spectacular. And it was driven by DC once again trashing it's entire universe in order to put out a slew of number 1s. So what is it going to do as an encore since this surge must diminish going forward. How about next year issuing bagged comics with body parts of Dan Didio as a bonus The year in dollars has gone from double digit % down to 2.7% up in three months. And this is with DC charging only $2.99 for most of its titles in that span. The unit record is even more impressive when you consider Marvel didn't even ship its most popular title, Civil War II, in August. In other good news, this probably means Dan Didio will still be employed by DC Entertainment in January 2017. That will mark his fifteenth anniversary with the company.  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2016 0:04:42 GMT -5
And once all those issues DC made returnable are returned by retailers and the dollars sold for them are taken off the books, and that subtraction factored into those numbers (which they aren't now) what will those numbers look like?
-M
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Post by Action Ace on Sept 17, 2016 0:23:29 GMT -5
And once all those issues DC made returnable are returned by retailers and the dollars sold for them are taken off the books, and that subtraction factored into those numbers (which they aren't now) what will those numbers look like? -M As you said in the returns thread...we'll see. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 17, 2016 4:46:37 GMT -5
And once all those issues DC made returnable are returned by retailers and the dollars sold for them are taken off the books, and that subtraction factored into those numbers (which they aren't now) what will those numbers look like? -M I think making stuff returnable is brilliant. As someone who purchases books to sell for a living, I can tell you a rarely buy stuff that is non returnable, and when I have to I do so at far lower quanities. If Brian Hibbs is correct that a successful store has to sell through 80% of what it orders (which makes sense to me), why not offer returns all the time? Or at least regularly for hyped titles? It seems a win win... the publishers have an easier time getting the stuff they want to promote out there and stores are more likely to be accomodating. I could see how the smaller publishers would have to be very selective in doing so, but there's no reason for Marvel and DC not to do it. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2016 10:31:23 GMT -5
And once all those issues DC made returnable are returned by retailers and the dollars sold for them are taken off the books, and that subtraction factored into those numbers (which they aren't now) what will those numbers look like? -M I think making stuff returnable is brilliant. As someone who purchases books to sell for a living, I can tell you a rarely buy stuff that is non returnable, and when I have to I do so at far lower quanities. If Brian Hibbs is correct that a successful store has to sell through 80% of what it orders (which makes sense to me), why not offer returns all the time? Or at least regularly for hyped titles? It seems a win win... the publishers have an easier time getting the stuff they want to promote out there and stores are more likely to be accomodating. I could see how the smaller publishers would have to be very selective in doing so, but there's no reason for Marvel and DC not to do it. Because printing books they can't sell eats into their razor thin margins while adding staff to handle returns adds costs to their bottom line. With non-returnable books you limit your risks and place it on the reseller (i.e. the retailer).Publishers left the newsstands because returns ate into any profits they were making form selling the books and you had to print nearly double what you were selling to supply orders the ended up coming back. Diamond is also not going to cut into their margins by adding more returns to process and more cists associated with it. They are a monopoly, they don't need win/win scenarios, they just do what's good for them in the short term. Yes it shackles growth because there is no room for sales to go up if stores only order what they know they can sell, but it nixes potential losses for them and that is more important than growth to them, which is why they went to the nonreturnable model to begin with. It's not like a comic shop has an option to buy product on a returnable basis elsewhere (except for trades from certain booksellers, but if I recall, those sellers offered much less of initial discount to retailers on the products, so it cost the retailers more to bring in the books form those vendors and tied up more of their capital if it didn't sell quickly and they had to return it-Diamond offered somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% off trades on average-depending on your volume-but returnable book sellers only offered about 25% unless you were buying in bulk like chain/box sores do to supply entire markets not 1 store). Non-returnable sales are the bird in hand for publishers, you don't give that up for 2 in the air (which is the "potential" growth promised by returnable sales. -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 17, 2016 10:49:27 GMT -5
The standard discount in the books industry for retailers is 40% for returnable books... the big guys (Random House/ Harper Collins, etc) give more like 46-50%.. sometimes more for best sellers. Smaller publishers sometimes have gimmicks like higher discount for more quantity/non-returnable (Which is what allows Amazon to beat prices for so many books.. among other things). No one has a standard policy of things being non-returnable.. some won't ever give you money back (you'll only get credit), and some offer a higher discount (say, 50% non-returnable if it's 40% returnable) if you agree to non-returnable ahead of time, but that's the exception rather than the rule. They do often have minimum purchases, but they're not that large (usually either $250ish retail or a total # of items around 15-25). Then there's distributors like Ingram and Baker and Taylor who'se 'Standard' discount is 40 and 43%, respectively, and have most mass market type stuff available for that. (Ingram definitely has all the Marvel, DC and Image trades for that... IDW is usually 35%). And this is for the specialty book store I run that averages 40-50K sales a month.. not a juggernaut by any stretch. We've gone 2-3 years without ordering from smaller publishers and still gotten the same treatment. The comic industry is so much smaller I'd think it'd be even easier. From a comic book stand point, I know all DC and Marvel stuff are distributed by big pubishing houses (DC by Random House/Penguin... Marvel by Hachette, which used to be Time-Warner).... Image I think does it's own, but they stick to the same rates. Dark Horse and now IDW(which did used to have it's own rate: 35%) we talked about in that other thread. Not sure about Boom! and Dynamite (Dynamite actually lists Diamond as their distributor, Boom doesn't list anyone) but the titles a just looked up are all the standard rate on Ingram. Sure, if you're taking small indy stuff you might pay a little more, but between all that and all the Manga that's most of the trades a store is going to sell. My point is if they're only getting 25% returnable they're doing it wrong  |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 17, 2016 11:04:29 GMT -5
As far as returns go, I assume they'd do stripped cover returns, not the whole books..but maybe not if each issue is so expensive to print. I try hard to return as little as possible at the book store... I'll sell stuff at cost and make a happy customer first if I can.
Of course, when we have author events that fizzle, that's when returns are really helpful.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2016 14:19:01 GMT -5
Image is through Diamond just to add to your list. The article on IDW basically said Image was the biggest account Diamond had for the book market.
-M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 17, 2016 16:45:57 GMT -5
That makes sense, I suspect Walking Dead probably sells more than every other graphic novel combined in book stores. (Well, maybe not if you could Manga... but still)
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