The problem I have is that once I got into digital comics, it completely changed my mindset as a reader. Actually, it started with the rise of the modern collected editions market; I simply lost interest in individual issues and maintaining storage boxes around 2000. Back when comics were 75 cents it was easy for me to justify taking a chance on something that could easily turn out to be mediocre, but now I just want the "good stuff" on my shelf: Kirby, Fantagraphic's collections, Marvel Masterworks, etc.

It is a source of great annoyance that so many writers are writing like this as I'm being told that my trade-writing is killing the industry. The publishers give us this format, writers write with said format in mind and then the consumers get blamed for choosing this format.

I've come to accept the end of my comic collecting days when the floppy format disappears.

It's the waiting that irritates me.

I'm about ready to ditch floppies altogether. The frequency with which cheap omnibus editions and affordably priced hardcover sets come out make it hard to justify collecting floppies. And I'm trying to come around to digital, I'll embrace it eventually.

$2.50 was my limit on floppies. When they went to $2.99, I dropped almost my entire massive pull-list. Then, when the Nu-52 happened, it made it even easier to just dump DC entirely (I was already done with Marvel), and just handpick a few worthwhile independent titles to follow.

The simple math is that as sales decline cover prices will rise. It's what happens in niche hobbies because of the economics of scale. The next price point after $3.99 will not be $4.25 it will be $4.99.

Just as a bit of a reference-for our studio-everytime we increase our print run by 50 or so copies, our price per copy drops anywhere from 10-20 cents, so in reverse every time we lower our print run it goes up 10 to 20 cents per copy-now our print runs are MUCH smaller than the big 2 and even most indy books Diamond deals with, so the price fluctuations are much larger for us, but there is significant increases in production costs the smaller the print runs go, and most publishers print to pre-orders based on Diamond orders, so prices will continue to rise the more sales drop on the floppies. Also expect trade prices to go up the less floppies sell, as floppy sales subsidize trade production costs and if they do not sell enough, the trades will go up to cover those additional costs. If you want to see what will happen to prices look at the war gaming market-up through the 80s war game sold in significant numbers and prices on theme were comparable to other hobby games. With the advent of computer games and other hobby games such as CCGs, the war game market shrunk and prices rose sharply. Now, a non-kickstarted war game will run you 5-6X the cost of another comparable size/production value hobby game simply because so few copies are made increasing the per unit production cost. It's the niche effect, which is the bottom end of that economy of scale. War games became so expensive and so few copies were being produced, they pretty much became direct order only and hobby/game stories stopped carrying them. The advent of crowd-funding changed the paradigm a bit, but not the fact that it's nearly impossible to find war games on the shelves of a game store or that those few that do hit the shelves are insanely expensive for what you get.

It's a catch 22, the more expensive your cover price gets, the more sales drop, the more they drop, the higher prices go because production costs spiral up higher than the inflation rate everyone likes to point to when producing on a smaller scale. Inflation rate does impact cost on something like comics, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to increases in production costs on unit costs when scaling downwards in scale.

-M

PS look at it this way-there is usually a set cost to run a printing press, plus a price per copy. So if that set cost is x, and doesn't change if you print 1 copy or a thousand, the more you print the more you defray that cost. The longer a press runs, the less each copy costs, but X won't change no matter how long it runs. So if x =$5K, and price per copy is 20 cents at 100,000 copies but 30 cents at 50,000 copies, not only do you have to cover the extra 10 cents per copy if you only print 50K, you have to cover more of the $5k with each copy because the price per copy on that has doubled. Plus the cost per copy on creator salaries, delivery costs, etc. have doubled as well. If it dropped to 25K units produced, those costs have quadrupled compared to 100K, etc. etc.