DC Comics leaving Diamond Distribitors

[ToyTalk]

Curious how much that is today?… when I was actively buying/reading in the late 80's through the 90's I was paying $2 – $5 retail on most weekly/monthly stuff. What do they sell for now?, what is the retailer's margin?

Last track I had, depending on volume ordered from Diamond, the profit margin on comics was roughly 20-30% for the retail shops. The high-volume discount from Diamond got you the books at 50% off cover. That is only if you could sell the title through before it went to back issues. Once in back issues it sat forever and ended up costing you inventory cost at the end of each year; yes LCS's have to pay yearly sales inventory tax on back issues. When you calculate the median profit including titles that do not sell through, labor and distribution cost... comics are a losing endeavor. LCS's use comics to pull long-time collectors into the stores in hopes they will order or purchase a more profitable item like statues, actions figures and/or games (preferably cards). At least that used to be the formula. Currently, graphic novels, toys and games are what pull the customers in and comics are little more than shop-eye-candy. The price of the comics are so high that even long-time collectors have cut way back and or stopped collecting altogether.

[ODBJBG]

It's DC... This will ultimately result in them shooting themselves in the foot.

As for the whole, "nobody buys comics" argument, that may be true to a point, but the reality is TPBs sell very well. The industry has gotten too gimmicky in the past few decades with tons of covers, chase covers, etc that many readers have no desire to spend $4-$5 on a single issue, when they can get the TPB for $20. Can't say I blame them.

Diamond is hardly perfect, but DC is notorious for tripping over themselves, I wouldn't be shocked if they end up on the wrong side of this and sales crash even more. Prepare for NuNuNU52 when they come crawling back to Diamond.

[thunderbolt]

It's DC... This will ultimately result in them shooting themselves in the foot.

As for the whole, "nobody buys comics" argument, that may be true to a point, but the reality is TPBs sell very well. The industry has gotten too gimmicky in the past few decades with tons of covers, chase covers, etc that many readers have no desire to spend $4-$5 on a single issue, when they can get the TPB for $20. Can't say I blame them.

Diamond is hardly perfect, but DC is notorious for tripping over themselves, I wouldn't be shocked if they end up on the wrong side of this and sales crash even more. Prepare for NuNuNU52 when they come crawling back to Diamond.

So why not go straight to trades and junk the overpriced floppies? The ad revenue has to be down with the lower sales so it can't be that.

[MRP]

So why not go straight to trades and junk the overpriced floppies? The ad revenue has to be down with the lower sales so it can't be that.

As I mentioned in another post-the floppy sales may be low but they are enough to pay for the creative costs of the books i.e. paying creators and editors who work on the books plus more, leaving the trade revenue to be mostly profit. Sales trades are good, but not good enough to cover creative costs and still be profitable enough on their own.

-M

[thunderbolt]

As I mentioned in another post-the floppy sales may be low but they are enough to pay for the creative costs of the books i.e. paying creators and editors who work on the books plus more, leaving the trade revenue to be mostly profit. Sales trades are good, but not good enough to cover creative costs and still be profitable enough on their own.

-M

Seems like first run graphic novels would do just as well and get into the retail book market. I personally can't justify paying 4-5 bucks for what 18 pages of content. The industry really screwed themselves over when they abandoned retail for direct sales. Sure it was great at first but why limit the market?

[MRP]

Seems like first run graphic novels would do just as well and get into the retail book market. I personally can't justify paying 4-5 bucks for what 18 pages of content. The industry really screwed themselves over when they abandoned retail for direct sales. Sure it was great at first but why limit the market?

You might think, and I had hopes for it, but very few of the OGN initiatives from Marvel and DC over the last decade have lasted more than a handful of releases because they just didn't sell, and many of them wound up at Ollie's being clearanced out because they didn't even sell through their initial print runs. A $20 hardcover comic has more price resistance in the market than a $4 pamphlet with 20 pages of new content.

And they didn't abandon retail for the direct market. Newsstands and other vendors didn't want to carry comics because they were too cheap, too labor intensive and didn't pay for the space they took up. Major chains like 7-11 stopped carry comics long before newsstand comics went away and the direct market became the primary distribution system, and more and more newsstand style vendors followed suit, leaving the industry with mostly just the direct market as a path to market. Lots of vendors never even put the comics out, leaving them bundled up until they could return them for credit with their other unsold periodicals. Newsstands gave up comics before comics gave up on the newsstands. The direct market was their last recourse because no one wanted to carry the low cover-price comics. And when you factor in the overprint they had to do to cover returns on the books, what little they were selling on the meager newsstands that were left was losing them money. However, once comics left the mass market, they became niche hobby products and eventually their pricing scheme reflected that, and since a niche hobby product is much more expensive than the same or similar product produced and sold on the mass market because of economy of scale, the pricing structure of comics rose faster than many readers were willing to bear.

And since much of what remains of the customer base for comics desires them because of their nature as collectibles, they will not follow them and continue to purchase them in non-collectible formats (trades, OGN, digital etc.) so any change over of format has to account for a significant loss of the existing customer base and has to find a way to attract enough new customers to it to make the new format viable.

-M