Th biggest advantage with the direct market is that the books are not returnable. They sell the entire print run to the direct market and do not have to take back unsold copies. In the newsstand, books were returnable and often 40-60% of the print run was returned unsold, so it was expenditure without revenue, cutting into the profit margins of the comic companies. In the short term it was more profitable because it maximized revenue and minimized production costs, and pretty much all business models focus on the short term rather than the long term, because if the short term doesn't produce the desired results in that arena, the employees/executives making the short and long term decisions will not be there for the long term success to matter to them.

There needs to be a balance between short and long term thinking, but the pendulum now will always sway to the short term because the instant gratification zeitgeist currently gripping our culture applies to stockholders and top level executives as much as the young consumers. 

Changing the distribution model requires short term loss and long term investment to build a different infrastructure. Comics don't matter enough to Disney or Warner Brothers for that to happen. The IP does, the comics themselves don't. Comics now serve as R&D for the company, and as long as the R&D department turns a profit however small, rather than costing the company, they are not going to abandon the status quo. Most R&D is a loss for the company written off out of profits gained. The fact comic publishing generates any revenue as a R&D arm of the corporation is pure bonus to them. Marvel and DC are not in the business of publishing anymore. They are small publishing wings in larger corporate entities. The publishing doesn't matter much to them at all. They will not be the ones to change the distribution model. It works fine for their needs currently. If anyone is going to build a different distribution model it will have to be the independents, whose primary business is still publishing. But the focus of their expansion into other markets thus far has not been individual issues but trade paperbacks. Publishers like First Second don't even worry about floppies or the direct market (though they are buries deep in the previews catalog), they produce OGN and sell directly to the book trade, Amazon, libraries etc. Image has placed copies of Walking Dead trades in stores like Meijers and Wal-Mart and done quite well. 

It's not just a matter of "if you build it they will come" to get back on newsstands. The floppy in that market may be dead and beyond resurrection. New markets and new product models are needed if you are going to revive comics beyond the direct market, and that is not something Marvel or DC (or more appropriately, the corporate masters of Marvel & DC) are going to finance or invest in. 

And people may not go to a candy shop to get Skittles, but they still got to butcher's shop to get better cuts of meat and to farm stands to get fresh vegetables, and to battery stores to get specialized batteries, and shoe stores to get shoes even though all those things are available at box stores like Wal-Mart etc. more conveniently. And some will go to candy shops to get better more niche candies that are not available in a mass produced artificially flavored packages. 

-M

I'd like to see comics distributed elsewhere as well, but we're unlikely to see anyplace represent the kind of variety comic shops do, and I say that as someone who is of the opinion that comic shops don't have nearly the variety they should. I think an alternative distribution system could work for different types of retail outlets carrying a small selection of titles. Plenty of comics would be right at home at the record store, at Hot Topic, at Spencers. At the musical instrument store, at the tattoo parlor, at the bike shop, at the sporting goods store, I can see a few titles working here and there different places. I like that idea that kid had a while back for a comic book vending machine. He filled his with floppies, but I think it would work better with trades, graphic novels, mangas, and digests. But I could see that thing in airports and malls and maybe in a grocery store where they stuff the soda, toy, candy, and snack vending machines. Some stores have a huge area dedicated to vending machines.

A cell phone is that thing kids read comics on

I don't think they have to be returnable. That's just if you want to sell them where they used to be sold, and that's only if you're selling a product that loses all it's market appeal every thirty days. Floppies. When issue 236 comes out, issue 235 has to go.

I'm talking an entirely new format. And I'm talking places that already buy non returnable product, places that buy nothing but non returnable product. Why would they expect their graphic novels to be any different? The current comic market needs a major overhaul if it wants to experience growth. I think we can all agree the market is going to shrink somewhat rapidly, as all print demand does. For such a niche market already I don't think they can ignore this for much longer. They'll have to rethink the four dollar monthly that they triple ship anyway. Look at which areas of the industry are experiencing growth and shift in that direction. The base market of fanboys, the monopoly distributor of floppies, and the direct market retail outlet be damned. They can no longer afford to bend over backwards to keep Diamond, the LCS, and the guy that's gonna buy Spiderman anyway happy. They need to attract new readers. They need to attract more females, more young people, more minorities, more of every demographic they are lacking. That includes lower income people as well. Instead of relying on collectors buying multiple copies of variant covers every once in a while to artificially boost sales temporarily. I believe it's going to take a lot more than another girl on the Avengers and another black guy in the X-Men to do it too. I think they need to look into new formats that allow wider distribution outside the direct market, new price points, ways of reducing costs other than cutting back on number of pages.

It has been tried. The newsstand wasn't selling Zap Comix back in the day. Head shops did.
If you were a goth store like Hot Topic and already selling tee shirts with Vertigo's Death on them, and your distributor all the sudden had a death graphic novel available with a 50% retail mark up, what more would you need to see? What enticed them to order the tee shirts and posters and lunch pails with Johnny The Homicidal Maniac on them? I don't think a retailer outside the direct market selling graphic novels would be worried about when the next one came out, or if there even is a next one. When a bookstore orders an autobiography they don't ask the author when the next one is. When a movie theater decides to screen Lincoln they aren't worried about the eventual sequel. I just don't think it's a great stretch of logic that a store that sells Superman tee shirts might be convinced to sell Superman graphic novels.

The advantage to the term is a huge retail markup on a product aimed at the same demographic as every other product in your store. If a store sells Superman tee shirts, coffee cups, shoes, posters, and figures, safe bet the people buying that might check out the graphic novel too. Or what is the huge advantageous deal on the posters? Are they returnable?