$3.99 for floppies on fancy paper, or $1.99 for floppies on newsprint?

[Bor]

Look up there at the prices I just posed. Does $2.99 look like the wave of the future to you? It doesn't to me.

With newsprint, you can figure that those $4.99 titles could cost $2.49, and the $5.99 titles would cost $2.99.

2,99 is the reaility we have now, and its clear most posters reailize it is more realistic to expect that in the near future then what you are suggesting.
Eventually yeah like everything else here in life when it comes to most things, espescially entertainment, the price will rise, but what you are suggesting is simply so unrealistic for so many reasons already stated.

This is not a case of “they should do this” but “they are not going to do this because of a 1000 different reasons”.

[JasonTodd428]

What can't (or won't) Amazon do?

Guess I'll have to inform my nephew about these free ponies then. My grandniece was wanting one for Christmas and was so disappointed that she didn't get one but now the problem appears to be solved.

[Osiris-Rex]

Then you should urge DC to cut their prices to $2.99 and keep using 50-pound paper.

DC already has over 35 title that are $2.99. Why should they cut the price on all their titles when Marvel, Archie, Aftershock, Boom, Darkhorse, Dynamite, IDW don't have a single book under $3.99?
And Image only had four that are $2.99? And if you get past the Doomsday Clock event book and Batman, Marvel sells as well as DC, if not better. Spider-Man at $3.99 outsells Flash at $2.99.
Dr. Strange at $3.99 outsells Superman at $2.99. So if people are willing to pay $3.99 for Marvel, why should DC take a loss? The surprising thing isn't that DC has books for $3.99, it is that DC
has dozens of books for $2.99 when no other major comic book company does.

I don't like newsprint period anymore.
I've been spoiled with the good quality paper. I don't want to see them go backwards.

Good paper lets us have sharper, nicer looking artwork. Newsprint just looks cheap and dated. It was fine when people didn't know any better or when it was just little kids buying comic books.
And doesn't high quality paper last longer?

[JasonTodd428]

Look up there at the prices I just posed. Does $2.99 look like the wave of the future to you? It doesn't to me.

With newsprint, you can figure that those $4.99 titles could cost $2.49, and the $5.99 titles would cost $2.99.

Well if what MRP posted earlier in the thread is accurate then I rather suspect that the prices would be higher instead of lower due to that newsprint you are so desirous of them using again because of the amount of books DC prints regularly month to month. So instead of lowing the price your suggestion might end up inflating the price all around. They have already gone into detail on that so I'm not going to bother. Just look at their post.

[JasonTodd428]

Good paper lets us have sharper, nicer looking artwork. Newsprint just looks cheap and dated. It was fine when people didn't know any better or when it was just little kids buying comic books.
And doesn't high quality paper last longer?

I would think that it would last longer as well. At the very least I can open up a book from a few years ago and not have a smell coming from it whereas with most of the earlier books in my collection there is a smell to them that reminds me of the workbooks we used back in grade school.

[MajorHoy]

These are the prices of the DCU comics that are listed on icv2.com for November.

$4.99 DC
$5.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$5.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$5.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$12.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$2.99 DC
$4.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$7.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$7.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC
$3.99 DC

Those prices you used are meaningless without explaining what they are for. Not every single comic book published in a month by DC has the same page count, etc.
Examples: Your first listed prices were for Doomsday Clock #1 regular cover ($4.99) and issue #1 with a lenticular (motion) cover ($5.99).
Then came Batman Who Laughs#1 ($3.99) and Batman Lost #1 ($4.99). Some other issues that were priced higher than $3.99 were Annuals, the $12.99 one was Batman The Dark Prince Charming Book One, a hardcover graphic novel.
The pricing from DC these days is typically that main DC Rebirth monthly books are regularly $3.99 U.S. cover price, while twice-a-month Rebirth titles are regularly $2.99 U.S. cover price per an issue. All-ages books like Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo have been $2.99 U.S. cover price. The Young Animal and Vertigo titles are more likely to be $3.99 per a regular issue, but that's not necessarily always the case.

[ed2962]

I want a free pony with every comic book I buy. If I started a poll, I bet everyone would also want a free pony with every comic book they buy.

I do not want a free pony.

[CaptCleghorn]

I do not want a free pony.

This viewpoint is completely foreign to me and I will need some time to properly process it. Perhaps an "I can haz free ponies" interwebs meme with a cute kitten on it would change your mind.

[IMG]freeponycat.jpg[/IMG]

[Trey Strain]

An analogy is books being published in hardback form first, then later as paperbacks.

Except with comics it would work the other way around.

[dancj]

You're assuming that DC would be willing to cut the price by a dollar and keep using 50-pound paper on the floppies. I don't think they'd do that.

You're assuming that changing the paper quality would knock $2 off the price they could charge. That's not even remotely true.

One of Steven Grant's old Permanent Damage columns covered the reason that comics shifted to higher quality paper. I'm probably getting some details wrong, but it was when it went to direct market, and the books were no longer returnable. When the comics were returnable, they needed to keep the price low because they were going to wind up trashing a load of them. Once it was direct market and every book was paid for by the retailer regardless of whether it sold, the actually fairly minimal difference in paper and printing costs because much more insignificant so there was really no reason to not use decent quality paper and printing.

[Carabas]

You're assuming that DC would be willing to cut the price by a dollar and keep using 50-pound paper on the floppies. I don't think they'd do that.

You're assuming that DC would be willing to cut the price by a dollar or more, period.

[Jody Garland]

You're assuming that changing the paper quality would knock $2 off the price they could charge. That's not even remotely true.

One of Steven Grant's old Permanent Damage columns covered the reason that comics shifted to higher quality paper. I'm probably getting some details wrong, but it was when it went to direct market, and the books were no longer returnable. When the comics were returnable, they needed to keep the price low because they were going to wind up trashing a load of them. Once it was direct market and every book was paid for by the retailer regardless of whether it sold, the actually fairly minimal difference in paper and printing costs because much more insignificant so there was really no reason to not use decent quality paper and printing.

This. It's also likely coloring would have to be redone to accommodate for the change in paper, as coloring shows up different on different paper types. That's another expense DC would have to accommodate for.

[Lee Stone]

Put me down for the $1.99/newsprint.

My reasons being:
1. The lower cost would be more affordable.
2. I prefer the 'warmer' colors that newsprint gives. Glossy paper tends to be too brightly colored for my tastes.
3. The over-rendered art styles of today would look muddy on newsprint, so they would be forced to use less over-rendered art, which is a plus in my book.
4. The lower quality paper (and cost) would make them feel less like 'The Crown Jewels'. People will leave them out for others to read, leave them in their car, give them away or trade them instead of enshrining them after one read.
5. If readers wanted 'better quality', they could opt for the trade paperback or digital. Floppies would become 'comics for the commoners'. Instead of 'Let them eat cake', it can be 'Let them read comics'.

[MRP]

Put me down for the $1.99/newsprint.

My reasons being:
1. The lower cost would be more affordable.
2. I prefer the 'warmer' colors that newsprint gives. Glossy paper tends to be too brightly colored for my tastes.
3. The over-rendered art styles of today would look muddy on newsprint, so they would be forced to use less over-rendered art, which is a plus in my book.
4. The lower quality paper (and cost) would make them feel less like 'The Crown Jewels'. People will leave them out for others to read, leave them in their car, give them away or trade them instead of enshrining them after one read.
5. If readers wanted 'better quality', they could opt for the trade paperback or digital. Floppies would become 'comics for the commoners'. Instead of 'Let them eat cake', it can be 'Let them read comics'.

3. Not likely, if the final goal is to collect the works in trade and the trades will be the product with the longer shelf life. If you are paying for cut rate quality product, you'll get cut rate quality product. That means the art will be prepped for the final product (i.e. the digital and trade editions) not the transitory product i.e. the newsprint floppies. They will already will have to pay to redo the colors for the trades (and likely retrain colorists how to do hand separations for the newsprint increasing labor costs in the production computers to do things that used to be quicker, easier and less expensive on computer but that now have to be done by hand to accommodate the engravings necessary for newsprint printing processes, they're not going to change art production as well and create the need for alterations for the trades and/or digital output as well.

4. Is this how collectors treated comics in the Silver and Bronze Age once their value as a collectible is known and that there was a collector's market for them? Sure some people treated them that way, but what's left in the market place is those with the collector's mentality, and they never treated the books that way no matter what the price or format, so why would they start doing that now? The mass audience who treated comics as cheap reading material is long gone from the market, and not likely to come back even if they become cheap products again, because despite price or format they are still niche products sold in a specialty destination shop that isn't accessible to the mass audience and in fact there are large swaths of the US where you can only get them via online or mail order because there are no shops that sell them. Lowering the piece and changing the format isn't going to change the availability of the product to the marketplace to regain the audience who would treat them like cheap reading material to be shared.

You're making huge assumptions based on your preferences here rather than on how the market has actually operated for the last 25-30 years and the behavior of the customer base and producers in that market during that time.

Also a lower price point dis-incetivizes distributors and retailers from carrying your products and giving shelf space to them when there are other products that make you more.

If I am a shop owner who sells 100 copies of Batman and makes $200 dollars from it, and you half prices and I still sell 100 copies but now only make $100 for it, where's that other $100 going to come form. Multiply that across the DC line and how much less revenue am I going to get from selling the same amount of product? Is my landlord going to lower my rent because you lowered prices? Is UPS going to charge less to ship those books? Will my electric bill go down? Insurance? Will sales increase enough to cover the shortfall? Or will hey decline as people who don;t like the change drop the book because they wanted a better quality physical product? Will gains outweigh such losses of customers? If I have less coming in, I have less to buy inventory for the shop with? What an I going to cut? Books that make me more money or less? Will I still carry shelf copies of those books that only earn me half of what they used to or will I give it to something else. The shop is DC's customer not the reader. It is shop owners and their orders that determine the success of the book and those numbers do not reflect actual end sales to customers. If retailers cut order you cannot buy copies they do not have. If the loss of revenue from less money generated by your second biggest line means you don't have cash flow available, something has to give or you go out of business. Most shops operate on razor thing margins to begin with and cash flow is a a major concern. A drop in revenue is a killer blow for a lot of shops. Every shop that closes is less books sold by DC in whatever format the floppies are sold in.

If you lower prices to try to sell more units, the first question you have to ask is where are the additional sales going to come from? If they lower prices is there going to suddenly be an influx of people who never went to a comic shop before rushing in to buy the products? Are Wednesday Warriors who buy habitually going to give up their habitual buys and suddenly start buying the products instead just because they are cheaper? A few regular customers may buy additional books keeping their spending the same, but some may drop their buys because of dissatisfaction with the physical product as well. If getting x amount of revenue by selling y number of products is the norm, why make a change where you have to sell 2y number of products to generate x revenue? Where's the incentive? Where's the guarantee that sales were increase and that you won't still sell y number of products but now only get 1/2 x revenue? Sure your % of profit may remain the same, but the actual dollars and cents you generate won't and that is more important to the bottom line than profit percantage.

-M

[Trey Strain]

This. It's also likely coloring would have to be redone to accommodate for the change in paper, as coloring shows up different on different paper types. That's another expense DC would have to accommodate for.

No, not at all. With Alterna, the TOTAL PRODUCTION COSTS of the floppies dropped by two-thirds with a switch to newsprint. Not just the cost of the paper. You use a different ink with newsprint, but it's less expensive, not more.

As for the expense of the collections, who cares? The people who buy those things are the ones who tend to be blase about the costs.