Why are comic books so niche?

I get the impression that there's a fairly wide, diverse market of mature readers willing to read comics, but they generally seem to plump for the trade editions. However, the monthly issues (the ones that eventually get bound into the trade editions) seem to attract a far nichier market of readers. If my impressions are right, then even though comics have a large potential audience of catholic tastes (trade readers), it's a considerably fringier and less mature subgroup (monthly readers) that almost exclusively gets to dictate the content and style of titles.

Yeah, speaking for myself, I only ever read and buy trades.

A lot of the writers would agree that the big events tend to inhibit what they're able to do. It's hard to plan out a cohesive storyline for your own title when you have to interrupt things to accommodate a crossover. Thing is, though, while everyone complains about them, the numbers show that people keep buying them.

Regarding pricing, it's a bit of chicken-or-the-egg issue. Not many people read comics, in part because they cost so much. However, because not many people read comics, the publishers have to increase their prices to make up for lost sales. If more people read comics, the publishers would have larger profit margins, which would give them more leeway to lower prices in an attempt to outsell their competitors.

Couldn't they find other ways to keep costs down?

What's the cost it takes to print comics with that fancy shiny paper they use anymore compared to more standard-style paper?

people would complain about low-quality paper if they changed it.

Even if it allowed them to shave a dollar or two off the cost of each issue?

well, i guess you could have a trial run or something?

i mean that IS the way most manga works; they're serialized in magazines with pretty cheap paper and then the tankobon volumes are printed on much better quality stock.

How about printing two editions of each issue? A large run on lower-quality to be distributed to newsagents for everyone to buy, and a smaller one on super-high-quality glossy paper distributed to comic shops for devoted fans and collectors. That way normal people get their cheaper comics and collectors still get to buy the fancy ones.

I'm not sure if paper's really the issue. Buying digital comics on Comixology seems to cost just as much as buying a paper copy.

That is probably because selling them cheaper would kill the paper versions. The digital price is always the same as the physical version. The same thing happen in games, I believe. The steam price is always the same as the store price, even though the digital version is clearly cheaper to make. Steam make up for it with multiple sales all the time. I believe Comixology probably does the same thing (they seem to have a sale right now, but I am not sure how common they are).

Pretty sure prices follow demand, which means they should decrease as less people want them. Of course should doesn't equal does.

Yes, companies with more money can invest in the resources to make a better product, but if that product can't be made affordable well...hell just make sure the anatomy doesn't look like Leifeld and I think people will forgive you if they're getting more for their money.

Prices follow demand, yes, but it is not that simple. For starter, demand is not the only factor, for another, demand itself is effected the price also. There is no magic that instantaneously match price and demand. In the end of the day, it is still some person somewhere that needs to make the decision about the price. If they never actually lower it down then we will never know if the current demand would support lower prices.

As you said, "should doesn't equal does" and, very often, it doesn't.

Lowering prices is a risky gambit, though; if the sales increase is less than expected, you risk losing money on the venture. And if a company is barely breaking even, that could torpedo their finances.

It's like how, if a working class person bets half of everything they own at a casino, and loses, they'll be financially crippled for years to come, and may very well descend into abject poverty. However, if a billionaire bets half of everything they own, and loses, their life style won't have to change that much, since they've still got half a billion dollars to fall back on.

That is why it was proposed the cheaper paper. So there is a tangible basis for lowering prices. Cut the costs and cut the price appropriately.

I've always found the paper of American comics to be ridiculously fancy, anyway. My own comics have a considerably cheaper paper (while still not being newspaper shit paper) and they survived years so far, despite I never taking a particularly good care for them. The shiny paper from US seems frankly like a waste of money, money the industry clearly doesn't have.

edited 1st May '15 2:57:42 PM by Heatth

How much more does the fancy paper actually cost, though?

If it costs an extra fifty cents or something an issue, then switching to cheaper paper might be a good idea. If that only saves something like ten cents, though, that's not enough to really register with most people; they'll see one product being sold for $2.99, and another for $2.89, and mentally round both up to an even $3.00.

Now, they could switch to cheaper paper but leave the cost the same, and pocket the resulting savings. But if your cheap paper comics are stacked on shelves next to glossy paper comics, you risk customers dismissing your product out of hand, assuming that, if you skimped on the quality of the paper, the rest of the comic must be a cheaply-made slap-dash affair, too.

There are some comics that use cheaper paper actually. The trades for those cost around 14-20 bucks, depending on the length. Trades for standard comic paper are pretty much always $18.00 - $20.00.

That's why I'm asking what the cost difference is, because no, it wouldn't make a difference if it's only a few cents cheaper to print it on different paper, but it could make a big difference if it allows them to lower the price by a dollar or so.

Thats what I love about graphic novels, they tend to be longer than the average trade, and are cheap.

Let's look at some objective prices.

Volumes 1 to 11 of Rebellion's 'Judge Dredd'' collections are printed on non-shiny paper in black and white. They average ~390 pages each and cost £15.99, or ~4p per page.

The rest are printed in colour on shiny paper. They average ~320 pages each and cost £19.99, or ~6p per page.

That's a 50% increase. Even accounting for the cost of colour printing, that's a pretty significant difference.

The lower-quality paper also has an advantage in being easier to read, since there's little if any glare.

I'm a big fan of DC's Showcase line (Marvel has one just like it, but I can't remember what it's called) of big, phonebook sized paperback black-and-white reprints on newsprint. You get an enormous amount of material for a pretty reasonable price (if you priced them by every single issue they contain, I think it comes out to about 65 cents an issue). The Archie digests are a pretty good deal, too, and you can find them practically everywhere.

That doesn't really tell us much concerning paper, since my understanding is that the cost difference between black-and-white comics and full-color comics is huge, due both to the cost of the ink and to all the extra work the artists have to do.

Most of the people I have talked to about this say that they just don't like the style. Y'know, the style of having the majority of the book as drawings instead of words. I guess it just doesn't appeal to a lot of groups. Comics are kind of that weird middle ground in a way. People who like motion-pictures are going to wish the comics were in movie form, and people who like to read are going to wish they were in book form.

I honestly don't understand this.

Most people, I think, are probably used to the idea of comics by now. They could understand it.

They're only sold in comic book stores, among other problems, with quite a few of the modern ones being traceable back to the inept and corrupt Diamond Comic Distributors.

Manga is less expensive and more widespread because distribution of it hasn't been monopolized, and because it isn't colored, it's made with cheaper material, and the people responsible for it are willing to work slave hours for slave wages.

edited 16th May '15 1:18:59 PM by CL