No, I’m not talking about the economy. I’m talking about my “Publishing Partners” (as they call themselves when they are trying to cozy up to us) not playing fair. I’ve gotten used to Marvel doing stuff without telling us, ie, offering us a book, then putting it on their website for free before we get it and then saying oops or cancelling a book in the press without ever telling us. They send us emails every week and it is amazing how much information is NOT in there that really should be. But 2 recent things that have happened I find troubling.
DC announced their new digital plan with Batman Beyond.
Basically, the book will be released online first and then in print later. An interesting experiment. But one that makes me double think how to order it. Wednesdays are my busiest days. People want to get the new books right away. They want to read the stories without finding out anything about it. That is the reason for the big push for same day digital. Now the print book will be out well after the story is made available online. I really don’t know how to order this.
Dark Horse announced their digital program on Wednesday (11/30/11) night. This is troubling to me for 2 specific reasons.
1: Dark Horse sent me an email at 6:12pm on 11/29/11, (the day before) and there was no mention of this. To date, they have not sent us any of this information officially via Diamond or directly from them. You may say that it is none of my business what they are doing digitally, but it does matter when I have to order their books on a non-returnable basis and now they are offering the books directly at what may be a lower price. I looked at the Dark Horse website and it says nothing about price.
2: I already have my non-changeable orders in for these books. I can’t adjust my orders to account for lower potential sales. Why not make this announcement a month out, before my orders are due?
I see that some stores are now stating that they won’t be stocking Dark Horse products for the shelf. I won’t be doing this, but I certainly understand it. We (the publishers and retailers) are in this together. They put out the books and we do our best to promote and sell them. I absolutely realize that publishers need to look at digital as a new market and need to find a way to grow it. I read a lot of comments on message boards about how we (retailers) are the antiquated system and we are holding the industry back. Do I realize that there are a lot of bad stores out there that only hurt the perception and business of comics? Sure. Do I realize that a lot of people live in markets that don’t have a comic shop? Absolutely. Do I understand that a lot of new readers (and some old) like to read stuff on a computer or tablet and don’t want to deal with the storage issues associated with paper comics? Yup. But does the public (people on message boards specifically) understand that while they may want digital, digital may not support the industry? That when a publisher prints a book, they know going in exactly how much they are going to make on it. But when it comes to digital, its a big unknown. I also realize that there’s no easy way to integrate the selling of digital without concerning the retailers who sell their printed product. Its direct competition from the people that we buy our product from.
People like to use the digital copy in a DVD package as an example of digital, but that analogy is off. Compare it instead to download vs theatrical release. How do you think movie theaters would respond if the same day a movie is released in the theater, it is also made available for download at a lower price? I think you’d have some upset theater owners. That is pretty much the same situation here. Its one thing to make digital copies available. Its another to sell them for less than they sell us the printed copies. Suddenly, I’m not just in competition with other local stores and online discounters. I’m in competition with the publisher who is trying to sell the same product to my customers for less that they expect me to.
I guess my biggest problem that I have with Dark Horse right now is that they have made no attempt to contact me regarding this. Neither directly nor via Diamond Comic Distributors. They have a statement up on their website, but very little details. This is what is causing some of the problems. Its the same problem DC had with the new 52. They made a statement, but did not give enough information. And people reacted badly. But at least DC sent us an email to let us know about it. Dark Horse made an announcement through their website and Newsarama. Consider me suspicious.
Of course they have to do what’s best for them. Now Dark Horse isn’t my biggest seller. Its my 4th best selling, between Image and Dynamite. They sell less than 10% of DC for me. If I were to lose all of my Dark Horse sales, it wouldn’t hurt a ton. If I stopped ordering Dark Horse books, they probably wouldn’t notice. My problem with the whole thing is just the way that its been handled. If you are going to make a change in the distribution of your product, it might be a good idea to tell your customers before you take their orders for products that will be affected by this change. And it would be a good idea to tell them directly, rather than a press release sent to the media.
We will see how this all shakes out. Like I said, we don’t have any real answers yet, just a vague announcement of same day digital starting in 10 days. I hope they let us know what they are doing.
UPDATE——
Apparently Dark Horse has clarified their pricing. I greatly appreciate this, but once again, they haven’t told me directly. They did it through a press release. I really don’t understand this. They have our contact info (or at least I know they have mine) and every week we get a Dark Horse email from Diamond telling us all of the great things coming out that we should order lots of. Why not make use of this at least? They had to know about all of the bad internet stuff going on regarding them and this. If this was their plan all along, why wait 5 days to clarify it?
Now I do realize that Dark Horse itself never said anything about price until yesterday. But the only news article I saw that printed their press release announcing it stated “New single-issue releases sell on Dark Horse Digital for $1.99, typically $1 to $1.50 less than the print price.” This is where the problem arose.
Was it simply a misunderstanding? Sure. Could it have been corrected easily and quickly? Yup. We, as retailers, have developed a sense of distrust regarding the publishers. I completely realize that they are going to do whatever is in their best interest. I understand that for many of them, we are simply a means to distribute their product. That is fine. All I/we ask is that you let us know what you are doing before you do it. Digital is a huge threat to retail stores. It is a touchy subject with us. Making this kind of announcement in a press release without specifics that they had to know were important was really a bad way to go about it. And this came from the same company that ran a banner ad for their digital program saying “Why Overpay For Comics?” when they were promoting 99 cent digital comics. And they wonder why they are not at the top of our Trusted Publishing Partners list.
To clarify, I am not changing my ordering on Dark Horse books. I never really planned to. My concern was the lack of communication and they lack of clarification through the whole thing. I do not expect a publisher to maintain a model that is not working for them only to appease the retailers. What I do ask, is that if they are going to make a change, to at least let us know. Directly, not through a press release.
Here’s the press release:
“Dark Horse retail partners and fans,
You may have been surprised by our recent announcement regarding digital pricing.
We apologize for the confusion and concern surrounding Dark Horse’s recent announcement of simultaneous release in print and digital. We want to make it clear that nowhere in our announcement (see below) did we indicate that our same-day digital pricing would be less than that of our physical books. Due to some miscommunication, there has been widespread speculation based on our current pricing model.
To clarify: We have chosen to release all new single-issue comics digitally for the price of $2.99 for the first month, dropping to our standard digital pricing of $1.99 after that.
Dark Horse values our retail partners and is grateful for the twenty-five years of business we’ve done together. We have considered the retail community in all of our digital decisions and look at direct-market shops as crucial to our continued success. With that in mind, Dark Horse will make every effort to keep our comics retailers strong in a changing market.
We continue to value everyone who both buys and sells Dark Horse products, and thank you for your support. All of you are the reason we are here today.
Mike Richardson”
I would love to see options when purchasing online comics (Which I do not btw) to buy “through” your local store. Some sort of incentive to keep you stocking the shelves but also not have the publisher compete directly with the people providing the product to consumers. There shouldn’t be a head to head sales competition between specialty stores and specialty companies like this. It creates unnecessary competition.
I completely understand the convenience aspect of it. Sitting on your sofa, you can download the next one. Why go to the store? I have the links here on my site, but to date I have sold 3 comics through that. Comixology kind of pulled a fast one on me any way. I only get credit if you go through my site on a computer to purchase it. But they make it so easy to do right through your device, why would you go through an extra step? I am interested to hear the details about a coupon Marvel is doing. Nothing official yet from Marvel. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/12/05/marvel-launches-5-digital-comics-coupons-for-print-copies/
Dark Horse. Ugh. How DO they keep publishing? I’m reacting, of course, as a person who only has Dark Horse books on my pull list. And they are all parts of a dead Universe of comics, now. I have collected Marvel comics, the old Valiant Universe (seeing publication next year again!) and a smattering of Dark Horse comics here and there. The industry is certainly changing, and I understand the validity of Dark Horse selling comics digitally, but these moves seem counter-intuitive to he industry’s success.
Let me digress.
In the thirties, fifties, seventies, etc… Sales came from a casual reader. Purchase, throw away. Then, for whatever reason, insane people like myself started hoarding comics. Preserving, bagging, and hermetically sealing these suckers to preserve every bit of a comic. Occasionally selling the book to some other guy to pick up a larger amount of book from somebody else.
Then, publishers got stupid greedy.
How many copies of Robin II do I own? And I never even read Batman. Re-launches of fifth,sixth, seventh identical copies of runs bagged within card stock bearing secret signed trading card copies ticked off a ton of collectors. And we stopped buying. Period.
Here’s the stupid part of it. Comics are enjoying a small renaissance now. Is it because of DC’s relaunch of books. Sure. But within that mess, a darned good lot of them have actually been complimented by readers. They like reading the books.
I am sick of hearing that publishers need to push out crazy liite variants, or purposely short orders. Or have some one-in-two-hundred variant cover to flood the market with useless books, so collectors will have to buy of the alternate market, or retailers will have to purchase over-inflated orders to re-sell limited variants at some over-inflated price to break even. All of these choices will lead again to the same thing. Collectors will stop collecting, then retailers will stop buying, and readers will not have any way to buy. Killing the industry.
I would love to know a solution. Really. But everything is changing. When I first saw a Kindle, I thought it was a terrible idea. How dumb I was. CD format has transitioned well to a digital medium. Music retailers don’t really exist anymore. Some bookstores are still around, but Kindles have carved out a distinct niche of success.
I think the comic book industry is a unique one. It’s driven by a very small number of very rabid vocal population of technologically savvy nerds. We don’t like something, and we speak up. We are disgustingly tough to please. We are fickle, complain about prices, then re-sell our own collection at a profit to someone else a bigger sucker than us.
What I do know is that if the industry decreases the collectable nature of the comic book, collectors will turn from the industry. That may hurt all of us.