How DC can lower the price of their comics...

[Lee Stone]

How DC can lower the price of their comics and bring in more readers:

1. Lower the paper quality. I think many readers would settle for going back to regular paper if it meant a price reduction. Not everything looks better on shiny paper, anyway.

2. Sell advertising space. DC has hardly any advertisers. I glanced at a print copy of Teen Titans #1 the other day and it was almost all house ads. Sell some ads!
If they won't buy ads, find out why. Use that information. Advertisers are good market research, too, btw.

3. Use the profits from digital sales to offset the price of new comics. Before, once a comic was printed and sold, that was "all she wrote". But now with digital and a backlog of titles spanning over 75 years... Use that.

4. Use an ad page to offer subscriptions. These are direct to customer sales. Many readers don't know that subscriptions are possible. I haven't seen a subscription page in so long, I don't even know if it's still possible.

Anybody else have any other ideas?

[Sirzechs]

Was reading Brightest Day last night nearly died every time i saw drawing the line at $2.99

fully agree with #1. Digital comic shouldn't be at the same price has the printed one.

[Air Wave]

How DC can lower the price of their comics and bring in more readers:

1. Lower the paper quality. I think many readers would settle for going back to regular paper if it meant a price reduction. Not everything looks better on shiny paper, anyway.

2. Sell advertising space. DC has hardly any advertisers. I glanced at a print copy of Teen Titans #1 the other day and it was almost all house ads. Sell some ads!
If they won't buy ads, find out why. Use that information. Advertisers are good market research, too, btw.

3. Use the profits from digital sales to offset the price of new comics. Before, once a comic was printed and sold, that was "all she wrote". But now with digital and a backlog of titles spanning over 75 years... Use that.

4. Use an ad page to offer subscriptions. These are direct to customer sales. Many readers don't know that subscriptions are possible. I haven't seen a subscription page in so long, I don't even know if it's still possible.

Anybody else have any other ideas?

I'd have no problem with any of this.

[MajorHoy]

. . . 2. Sell advertising space. DC has hardly any advertisers. I glanced at a print copy of Teen Titans #1 the other day and it was almost all house ads. Sell some ads!
If they won't buy ads, find out why. Use that information. Advertisers are good market research, too, btw.

Who wants to buy ads in comic books these days? In case you haven't noticed, a lack of interest in buying advertisement in publications is an INDUSTRY-WIDe problem, affecting national magazines and newspapers, too.

Digital comic shouldn't be at the same price has the printed one.

So, we should just lower digital prices and rob comic book shops of sales on print comic books? I'm sure sales of print copies wouldn't be affected by lower digital prices.

[Lee Stone]

Was reading Brightest Day last night nearly died every time i saw drawing the line at $2.99

fully agree with #1. Digital comic shouldn't be at the same price has the printed one.

True.
Imagine if they went all digital and still charged for paper quality. Would that make sense?

Or would we enter the era of SD and HD comics and pricing?
"See... this one emulates newsprint... and this one emulates glossy paper..."

[Qwathings]

According to what I've heard from comicbook professionals in interviews, there's no such thing as cheaper paper these days. The decline of the newspaper industry has caused a decline in the amount of news print paper that gets manufactured. This lowers the supply of it, which increases the cost of it because there's only so much of it to go around. It's just as expensive to use the current paper stock, which is manufactured in higher quantities than the pulpy paper, and so there's a larger supply of it to fulfill the current demand.

[Qwathings]

Didn't DC already increase the amount of ads when they decreased the story pages to twenty instead of the usual twenty-two?

[ImprobableQuestion]

Is Marvel's paper higher or lower quality? Because I actually like that paper better. Feels less fingerprinty.

And yeah, I'd definitely push subscriptions. They're a great deal if you know you're going to get all 12 issues. It's just too bad that more than a dozen comics aren't currently offered.

[Lee Stone]

Who wants to buy ads in comic books these days? In case you haven't noticed, a lack of interest in buying advertisement in publications is an INDUSTRY-WIDe problem, affecting national magazines and newspapers, too.

True... the value has come down quite a bit. So charge less. You'd still make more than running a comic full of house ads.

So, we should just lower digital prices and rob comic book shops of sales on print comic books? I'm sure sales of print copies wouldn't be affected by lower digital prices.

I don't think that's what Sirzechs intended. I think she's referring to the fact that it costs much less to make a limitless supply of digital comics than it does to make print comics that have limited print runs.
However, you're right, it would definitely effect print sales. It would separate the readers from the collectors.
So there's not an easy way around that one. At least until they figure out how to charge fairly for reading something vs. collecting something.
Gimmick covers can not reproduced digitally, so there's that.

[nightrider]

Is Marvel's paper higher or lower quality? Because I actually like that paper better. Feels less fingerprinty.

And yeah, I'd definitely push subscriptions. They're a great deal if you know you're going to get all 12 issues. It's just too bad that more than a dozen comics aren't currently offered.

marvel has a lower quality paper. Not sure why you liked it cos everything looks more dull.
But Marvel's lower quality only occurs for the $2.99 comics, the $3.99 comics are the same as DC ones.
On the other hand Marvel's collections are slightly better. The rims tend to let the pages fall flat.
Funny thing is DC's monthlies sell worst than marvel whereas DC's trades sells a lot better than marvel.

[Lee Stone]

Didn't DC already increase the amount of ads when they decreased the story pages to twenty instead of the usual twenty-two?

I only recall seeing two ads in Teen Titans #1 that weren't house ads.

[nightrider]

I'd have no problem with any of this.

I do... When I buy monthlies, I hate low quality paper. The inks are dull and you don't really enjoy reading it. I used to buy Hellblazer and vertigo books are printed on lousier quality papers which I don't really enjoy reading,

[Iopy]

Advertisers are abandoning print for online.

google-and-print-advertising-revenue-trends-2004-2012.jpg

Selling ads for books with relatively small circulation like comics isn't going to bring in enough money to provide much reduction in price.

[nightrider]

If I'm in the marketing department, I wouldn't place any ads in comic books. It'll reach an audience of like what 100k max? Why bother when you can just put them online. Unless its comic books related, like the new Flash TV series or Constantine TV series or a new comicbook game, I really doubt it'll be useful to put ads on comic books.

[MykeHavoc]

There's also the issue that comixology gets a piece of everything downloaded, which at the end of the day, makes the profit more or less the same.