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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 19, 2014 22:01:34 GMT -5
The other thing to consider... if everything is always available, what's a bookstore to stock? The current stuff? X-Men? Avengers? Whatever movie is out next. Say Marvel has 3 shelves of the TPB section, how's the average B & N Manager going to decide what to stock?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 19, 2014 22:19:15 GMT -5
I'm really pretty perplexed by this conversation. Stuff goes out of print all the time. Particularly genre stuff. At any given time there is a ton of classic SF that is out of print. Right now a huge amount of Robert Zelazny's work is out of print. Most of Cliff Simak's. I could go on.
In publishing, items that stay constantly in print are the exception not the rule.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2014 23:13:39 GMT -5
As far as IP not trasnlating to success, I disagree. Licensed comics are more often than not the best selling comics at independent publishers, some would say if it weren't for licenses, some of those publishers wouldn't even exist. So we get Usagi Yojimbo and The Goon because of Conan. That is of course unless one of the creator owned series gets a hit TV show or movie. So why does a Walking Dead show translate to comics sales but not an Avengers movie? In my opinion, it's because Marvel is not catering to a casual comics reader who just wants to pick up a trade and start at the beginning and read to the end. Their spider web plots, their purposefully changing formats to get those completionist dollars, that comes at an expense, the expense being those million people who watched the Avengers movie will absolutely not be interested in the comic, while Walking Dead trades are perpetually top sellers thanks to TV show fans picking them up out of interest generated by the show. How many people would buy the Peanuts collection if every other volume was a different size, a different format, easier or harder to find, a staggeringly different price point, maybe one with the Sundays in black and white, so on? Significantly less, that's my guess.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2014 23:14:11 GMT -5
The other thing to consider... if everything is always available, what's a bookstore to stock? The current stuff? X-Men? Avengers? Whatever movie is out next. Say Marvel has 3 shelves of the TPB section, how's the average B & N Manager going to decide what to stock? What's the best selling stuff on B&N.com? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2014 23:17:53 GMT -5
Particularly genre stuff. For a publisher that publishes a wide range of stuff, sure. Random House publishes pretty much every genre you can imagine. Marvel publishes super heroes. They have maybe twenty teams/characters with a significant following. That's a small pile of things to keep in print. If you're interested in The COmplete Crumb, you're in luck. Every volume is in print. If you like Peanuts, good for you, every last volume is available for cover price. If you like Creepy and Eerie, great. Buy it on Amazon. Love And Rockets? Bone? Usagi Yojimbo? You got it. Batman Chronicles? Maybe, better get it while it's in print. Batman is not "genre" for DC Comics. He's the Ronald McDonald of DC Comics. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2014 0:01:25 GMT -5
As far as IP not trasnlating to success, I disagree. Licensed comics are more often than not the best selling comics at independent publishers, some would say if it weren't for licenses, some of those publishers wouldn't even exist. So we get Usagi Yojimbo and The Goon because of Conan. That is of course unless one of the creator owned series gets a hit TV show or movie. So why does a Walking Dead show translate to comics sales but not an Avengers movie? In my opinion, it's because Marvel is not catering to a casual comics reader who just wants to pick up a trade and start at the beginning and read to the end. Their spider web plots, their purposefully changing formats to get those completionist dollars, that comes at an expense, the expense being those million people who watched the Avengers movie will absolutely not be interested in the comic, while Walking Dead trades are perpetually top sellers thanks to TV show fans picking them up out of interest generated by the show. How many people would buy the Peanuts collection if every other volume was a different size, a different format, easier or harder to find, a staggeringly different price point, maybe one with the Sundays in black and white, so on? Significantly less, that's my guess. Well there is no beginning or end to the Avengers, if you start with Avengers #1 there's back story in other titles, and when doe sit end? It's totally different than Walking Dead in that aspect. And Conan, moving somewhere around 15K units for Dark Horse, so not a major success on any terms. If you had said Star Wars, I might have given you a little credence, but now DH has lost that license. And it all depends on how you measure success. A movie making millions barely sells ten thousand copies of a comic is not translating its success to other medium, even if that book is the best seller for that publisher. The best of a group of bad sellers is not a success story. And then there is the Walking Dead. It is one show-of literally hundreds of other comic based shows that have been on the air over the years-how many resulted in spikes of comic sales? Not many. I didn't see legions flocking to get Human Target books when it was on the air for 3 seasons. Sable's one season? Nope. Painkiller Jane? Nope. Didn't see copies of Road to Perdition, Sin City, or 300 flying off the shelves despite the success of those films either and they all had simple volumes or series a casual reader could get and read from beginning to end. Tintin volumes didn't suddenly surge in the U.S. with the movie. Green Hornet comics don't fly off the shelves for Dynamite...and on and on and on. Walking Dead is the exception, not the norm and not what should set your expectations. It is a pop culture phenomenon-i.e. an unusual occurrence. It is lightning in a bottle and will not be replicated. It is not a case of if you print it and keep it in print people will flock to it like manna from heaven. And Peanuts collections of various sizes and shapes and prices have been perennial sellers for years, from paperback novel sized collections to oversized coffee table books, to the Fantagrpahics volumes, hardcovers, softcovers, color Sundays, black and white dailies, complete strips in order, thematic retrospectives, random samples of strips form different eras, etc. etc. The size, format and price points over the years hasn't affected demand for Peanuts one iota; it's sold in all formats, so it might have something to do with the material inside and not the packaging. -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 20, 2014 9:41:15 GMT -5
As far as IP not trasnlating to success, I disagree. Licensed comics are more often than not the best selling comics at independent publishers, some would say if it weren't for licenses, some of those publishers wouldn't even exist. So we get Usagi Yojimbo and The Goon because of Conan. That is of course unless one of the creator owned series gets a hit TV show or movie. So why does a Walking Dead show translate to comics sales but not an Avengers movie? In my opinion, it's because Marvel is not catering to a casual comics reader who just wants to pick up a trade and start at the beginning and read to the end. Their spider web plots, their purposefully changing formats to get those completionist dollars, that comes at an expense, the expense being those million people who watched the Avengers movie will absolutely not be interested in the comic, while Walking Dead trades are perpetually top sellers thanks to TV show fans picking them up out of interest generated by the show. How many people would buy the Peanuts collection if every other volume was a different size, a different format, easier or harder to find, a staggeringly different price point, maybe one with the Sundays in black and white, so on? Significantly less, that's my guess. And Peanuts collections of various sizes and shapes and prices have been perennial sellers for years, from paperback novel sized collections to oversized coffee table books, to the Fantagrpahics volumes, hardcovers, softcovers, color Sundays, black and white dailies, complete strips in order, thematic retrospectives, random samples of strips form different eras, etc. etc. The size, format and price points over the years hasn't affected demand for Peanuts one iota; it's sold in all formats, so it might have something to do with the material inside and not the packaging. -M Peanuts is also the exception to the rule as far as comic strips go. Because it's the 900-pound gorilla. Other strips go in and out of print. Terry & the Pirates, Lil Abner, Krazy Kat...some of the acknowledged best strips ever come into print and then go out again. And when they go out of print those OOP editions get really expensive until they come back into print again. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 21, 2014 10:50:01 GMT -5
I"m becoming a big fan of Titan Books. Their collection of the Flash Gordon strips is gorgeous, I loved the start of their Burne Hogarth Tarzan reprints, and I will very likely get their collected Mandrake the magician when it comes out.
Oh, and of course there's that brilliant collection of Jack Katz's The First Kingdom, even if book 4 is marred by too many typos.
Classic stories like these deserve the hardcover collection treatment, and Titan is doing a bang-up job about it! (For decent prices, too).
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 21, 2014 10:55:29 GMT -5
It really is a Golden Age for strip collections. IDW, Titan Books, Fantagraphics, all are putting out a ton of great stuff. If anything there may be too much coming out. It's really impossible to keep up.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 21, 2014 11:56:39 GMT -5
If anything there may be too much coming out. It's really impossible to keep up. I agree; it's the first time in my life I have an actual backlog of comics-related stuff to read. (I might have delayed reading a book for a few weeks before, but never because there wasn't time for it). First world problems! Yay! |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2014 13:04:28 GMT -5
And Peanuts collections of various sizes and shapes and prices have been perennial sellers for years, from paperback novel sized collections to oversized coffee table books, to the Fantagrpahics volumes, hardcovers, softcovers, color Sundays, black and white dailies, complete strips in order, thematic retrospectives, random samples of strips form different eras, etc. etc. The size, format and price points over the years hasn't affected demand for Peanuts one iota; it's sold in all formats, so it might have something to do with the material inside and not the packaging. -M Peanuts is also the exception to the rule as far as comic strips go. Because it's the 900-pound gorilla. Other strips go in and out of print. Terry & the Pirates, Lil Abner, Krazy Kat...some of the acknowledged best strips ever come into print and then go out again. And when they go out of print those OOP editions get really expensive until they come back into print again. I like to think of things like Superman and Batman to be the 900lb Gorilla as well. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2014 13:05:45 GMT -5
It really is a Golden Age for strip collections. IDW, Titan Books, Fantagraphics, all are putting out a ton of great stuff. If anything there may be too much coming out. It's really impossible to keep up. Yeah, Fantagraphics alone will consume the majority of my comics spending for the foreseeable future. I'll probably buy nothing but Fantagraphics books this Black Friday, which is when most of my comic shopping is done. The Mickey Mouse collections, Duck collections, and EC collections just about cover it for me. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 21, 2014 13:36:51 GMT -5
Peanuts is also the exception to the rule as far as comic strips go. Because it's the 900-pound gorilla. Other strips go in and out of print. Terry & the Pirates, Lil Abner, Krazy Kat...some of the acknowledged best strips ever come into print and then go out again. And when they go out of print those OOP editions get really expensive until they come back into print again. I like to think of things like Superman and Batman to be the 900lb Gorilla as well. There really is a difference though. Peanuts will be complete in 25 volumes. And while they've remained in print thus far, there's no guarantee they'll remain in print. To do Superman or Batman you'd be looking at 100s of volumes. Batman Chronicles up to volume 11 had only made it to early 1944. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 21, 2014 20:47:04 GMT -5
I'm not saying every volume should exist instantly, but once they've released volume one, I just assume keeping it in print wouldn't be all that difficult if the company were actually interested in expanding beyond the direct market, which in my opinion they are sabotaging their own efforts at, probably so they can point at their lack of success and say "See? It doesn't work!" When it actually would work if they put as much effort into it as they do variant covers for their floppies.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 21, 2014 22:43:40 GMT -5
I'm not saying every volume should exist instantly, but once they've released volume one, I just assume keeping it in print wouldn't be all that difficult if the company were actually interested in expanding beyond the direct market, which in my opinion they are sabotaging their own efforts at, probably so they can point at their lack of success and say "See? It doesn't work!" When it actually would work if they put as much effort into it as they do variant covers for their floppies. I don't agree. Because after the print run sells they have to go back to print. And while you're assuming there's a continuous market it's simply an assumption. I suspect you're wrong. Most of the Golden Age stories have limited appeal beyond hardcore fans. Frankly a lot of that stuff gets really "samey" after a while. Volume 1 might generate enough interest to keep in print. Volume 10...isn't going too. |
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