Really? There are still plenty of old fashioned paper and ink comics on newagents shelves in the UK (where, incidentally, we had a thriving comics industry long before the 1930s that MRP mentioned; I have British comics in my collection from before the first world war, and they'd been around for decades even by then). Admittedly, there are nowhere near as many as there were thirty years ago, but the weekly or monthly publication (I refuse to use the term "floppies") is still standard. When the long running war title Commando began offering a digital version, subscriptions to the print version went up by about two thirds.

What has become tiresome for the monthly comic book is that in most cases they are not monthly and or complete. Artists are now allowed to create on their schedule not a publishing schedule. Stories are now written with the idea that a single issue doesn't need to provide a complete story within the context of that monthly: ie: where every issue could be enjoyed upon it's own merits as part of a larger story line has disappeared. Many times growing up i would miss out on an issue or several issues yet never did i feel like i was cheated in losing the ending. That one single issue of a 3 issue story MADE ME WANT to keep looking and searching for the missing issues. Now for the most part i could care less if i am missing an issue when sometimes that missing issue either is filler to meet the TPB 4-6 issue collected market or the writer fails to pace out the issues properly to keep EVERY ISSUE entertaining and desirable for purchase.

The other part is anymore the monthly comic doesn't have to be an ongoing. The draw in the good old days of yore: was that i had 26 issues of a 120 issue continuing/ongoing connected series of a character(s) that i adored and wanted to find those issues i did not have. Today: most series can't last a year before getting cancelled or relaunched or rebooted. Many times there is no consistency to character with each relaunch other than the name or look and even that changes radically anymore. One launch is Steve Rogers Captain America then the next Bucky Barnes Super Cyborg America and the next is Sam Wilson Falcon America and the next who know's what? 

Why is there any reason to follow the monthly when the TPB is out within a month or two of each story written for trade conclusion? Why continue following a monthly that comes out every 3-4 months or as the artist finishes? Why not wait until the collected trade? Why publish the monthly when you know the artist won't have it done, would it be a loss in revenue to wait until it is finished and in the can before soliciting for sales? Why bother with buying a monthly that you know is going to be cancelled anyways when you know it will be collected in trade? 

The new DC comics publishing every 2 weeks is a trend to follow for monthly comics.  One or two writers, using multiple artists and your story is wrapped up in 3-6 issues while the other artist is working on the next story. This allows for a smooth readily available continuous publication for sale and should you not like the current story you can skip it until the writer/artist you enjoy comes back for the next story. 

I like my monthly fix of comic reading but there really isn't much that i find the need to HAVE to get each month. My comic shop[ asks me every time i come in why i don't have a subscription box: answer is quite simply that i have life beyond comic books to pay for. There is no need or craving i want to feed on each week or each month anymore. Not when i can wait for TPB's or can order from Amazon or on the internet. My comic book purchases are based now upon life: are the bills paid? Is the car/home/self in need of repairs? The comic book buying itch is always in me but i only scratch when i can afford.

WAHOOO 1,000th post.
Agree totally. Publishers are so set in the weekly revenue/sales and coming up with gimmicks to try and increase sales that they have totally lost sight of the how and why there were better/stronger/more sales in the past. I can't speak to the dollars and sense of it all but the diminishing sales and returns in any other types of publishing has forced changes with the times. Paperback books have different sizes and costs all based on the selling ability of the author's. Magazines have changed sizes and print styles and paper styles and many have gone out of business. Newspapers have shrunk in size becoming smaller and with less pages and many have gone out of business or combined. Comic book companies stopped being for children a looong time ago and should address the modern and current venues for comic books if they wish to continue making money (or shudder: try to increase sales?) or watch the continued decline for monthly sales every year. 

Floppies are not meant to be profitable for American publishers in contemporary times. They are meant to pay for the creative production costs of the content. The long term profit is in other formats, collected trades and digital where the percentage of the purchase price given to the creators is much less than on the floppies themselves. If and when American publishers can find a way to make skipping the floppy stage cost effective in terms of paying for the production of content, they will disappear. New readers, what of them they are, are being gained through trades and digital, not floppies, but those two formats are still not enough to pay for page rates and other creative production costs and still be profitable. However, without revenue from collected editions and digital, floppies themselves are not profitable for publishers.

The major American publishers who have entered the graphic novel market (Scholastic, First Second, and others of the surviving Big Seven, etc. and who are thriving, pay creators on a different economic model, that of the traditional book market where creators get advances and deals for a certain number of books and paid royalties, not page rates. From what I understand, this is also how most European publishers who produce the albums such as the Asterix volumes also operate.

As the monthly market continues to shrink, Marvel and DC (or more appropriately Disney and Warner) will have to look at alternate economic models for their publishing. The floppy only works on the current model the big 2 use, and barely at that. It's not just the floppy format that is a relic of the early-mid 20th century (or as Slam put it, a dinosaur) it is the economic model employed by the big 2 America publishers.

Many who work on creator-owned projects are realizing the real money to be made is on the back end from extended shelf life and sales of collected volumes, not on the monthly and have begun to alter the economic model they work on. Ed Brubaker got a 5 series deal with Image which has produced Fatale, Velvet, The Fade Out and Kill or Be Killed so far. He is not getting a page rate from Image, but is being paid according tot he terms of that deal for that book as are the artists ad other creatives involved. He is making more money on those project than he did when writing 3-4 monthly books for Marvel and DC, and again he is using the floppy to format the production of the book, but profiting form the collected editions and long term sales of the books.

The 21st century economy doesn't work the same way the economy did in the early-mid-20th century, especially in publishing of any sort, and the 21st century consumer has different preferences and buying habits. Markets evolve and products have to evolve with it or become untenable. The fact that floppies' print runs are determined by pre-orders means there is zero room for growth in that format. And pre-orders are not the same as end customer sales which typically are less than 80% of the number printed in most cases. In a world with several billion potential customers, the best selling books have end customer sales of less than 100K. How in any way is that considered a relevant format or a thriving model of content delivery?

-M

Hey tingram, I'd love to know how much money goes into the talent and how much goes into the printing aspect of a comic book. It seems to me that a digital comic should be cheaper because it doesn't use ink ,paper , staples etc.

For a $3.99 comic book distributed through Diamond, the publisher gets $1. They sell to Diamond for $1 who sells to retailers for roughly $2 (discounts vary by size of account, bigger stores may get it for less, smaller stores pay more based on volume of entire order, so DCBS pays less for their copies than the ma and pop lcs in your neighborhood) who sell at msrp (i.e. cover price) or at a discount at their discretion.

Digital prices for comics are set not based on production costs or contracts with the distributor, but to keep print prices competitive for same day release as print so as not to undercut brick and mortar retailers selling selling printed copies.

Essentially on print for floppies, the publisher gets 25% of the msrp. For trades and collectibles, the discount structure is different.

However, the publisher get money for every copy produced, as does Diamond because they print to pre-orders, retailers only get money for copies that end up in the hands of an end customer who buys the book. They take all the risk on non-returnable books,

It was different with newsstand distribution with returnable product, as then publishers shouldered the risk but got a slightly bigger piece of the cover price because of it.

The book market ill also work a little differently as it is not done on a non-returnable basis.

Each tier of distribution takes its cut and middle men like Diamond raise end prices and get the bulk of the revenue with the least risk most of the time.

Not sure how it works with distributors outside of Diamond, but that is Diamond's pricing structure and since 99% of print copies of American floppies sold go through Diamond, it is the most relevant.

But for $3.99 books it makes the math easy to figure what a publisher makes, $1 per copy sold, so a book that sells 20K on the Diamond list made the publisher $20K which has to pay for the creative, editorial, printing, and ancillary costs of production on that particular issue.

Oh and those freebies that stores give away on FCBD and other promotions, they are paying anywhere from 10 cents to 50 cents a copy plus shipping to Diamond for those books on the hope the marketing will result in better sales through the year. Again, Diamond getting the revenue, the retailer shouldering the cost and risks.

-M

Which is part of why i never even started trying to find back issues of Spidey. i started off the spinner racks with the tail end of the Gil Kane into Ross Andru doing the art duties and even then the Romita and Ditko issues were out of my price range. My Spidey collection was built upon reprints in Amazing Tales so i could build it up. Batman and Superman were never a consideration for the very same reason. Bless the reprint because those were how i learned of Steve Ditko, Wayne Boring, Bill Finger, Al Plastino, George Papp, Sheldon Moldoff, Dick Sprang.