What are your thoughts on single issues and their future?

[Citizen Kane]

I'll only buy floppies for a few reasons: A) it's a #1 issue with a cool cover for a character I like, or B) it's a limited series that I actually want to read. I never really buy floppies for ongoings except for in the odd case, and I'll normally opt for the trades. I refuse to read any comics/manga digitally.

As for what I see in the future of floppies: I don't really see them ever completely phasing out single issues. There's still a very steady stream of cash flow coming from single issue sales, and variants do sell quite well, for the most part. I'm not worried they'll be going anywhere.

[MRP]

One thing to remember when considering pricing on single issues, is how little Marvel and DC actually get of the cover price of each issue. It doesn't matter to our wallets, but from their perspective it does. Marvel or DC sells to a distributor (in the past Diamond, now Luna or PBR) who sells to the retailer, who sells to the end customer. Everyone gets a piece of that $3.99 or $4.99 on along the way.

In retail, standard mark up is 100% (it varies by industry for certain, which is why margins vary, but comics cleave pretty close to that 100% mark up standard), so a retailer buying something that sells for $4.99 is buying it at $2.50 from the distributor. Same mark up applies here, the distributor who sells it for $2.50 is buying it at $1.25, which means that is what Marvel and DC are getting per copy sold of a $4.99 book. For a $3.99 book it's $1 per copy.

So let's say a $3.99 book is a top third seller selling 50-60K copies per month. Go with 60K, and Marvel/DC makes $60K for the book, with 20 pages of content, plus whatever ad revenue they get for the ads in the book. Out of that they have to pay an artist's page rate x 20 (industry standards vary by publisher, so let's call it $200/page for penciller, $100/page for an inker, $50 per page for colors and letters) so $4k goes the penciller, $2K to the inker and another $2K to the letterer/colorist, so that's $8K to the artistic creators. Still have to pay the writer and editorial staff as well. Then you have to pay the production staff who take all that creative effort and turn it into a printable product, then pay for printing, shipping, warehousing, etc. to get the product to market. That's all without taking into consideration any overhead costs (maintaining your offices, janitorial staff salaries, legal costs, marketing costs, that come out of the revenue pool generated form sales of comics, and the margins on those single issues start to look very, very slim. Obviously digital sales expand that revenue pool as well, but when you start adding it all up, the margins are razor thin at the end of the day, so print comics are not the most profitable venture in and off themselves. Now they lead to other revenue streams (collected editions have much lower creator costs because they were paid out of the revenue pool for the single issue and reprint compensation to creators is much less, licensing, etc.). At some point, single issue publishing will stop making sense to companies because it will either not generate enough profit if margins get too low to make return on investment worthwhile, or they will start losing money if sales slip too low-because remember economy of scale means per unit rises making margins shrink.

We often get fooled when articles proclaim the health of the industry and cite revenue/sales increases going up. If an article says revenue jumped 20% form one year to the next, but prices went up from $3.99 an issue to $4.99 per issue, what it's telling you is that sales were flat, they sold the same number of units, it just cost more per unit so revenue was up. When they say sales are up, they are talking dollars not units sold. And if dollars are up, but not units, it means there is no growth in the customer base, it's just costing existing customers more to get what they have always gotten. Focusing on dollars is spin to make the market look healthier than it is. The key to the industries health and growth is units sold, not dollars generated, especially when the dollars generated total encompasses all the ancillary stuff sold alongside comics (statues, toys, apparel, etc.) that shops and distributors deal with.

-M

[CrazyOldHermit]

I think the industry will eventually get to the point where monthly single issues are digital-only releases. Maybe not with independently owned publishers, owned and operated by people who hate the idea of shitcanning floppies, but with the corporate-monstrosity-owned Big Two? It's a matter of time IMO.

As for dumping the format completely, I don't see it. Serialization pays for the creation of the material, after which it can be reprinted indefinitely. It's a lot harder to commit to a 200-page graphic novel upfront than it is to try out a miniseries.

[Captain Craig]

I think the industry will eventually get to the point where monthly single issues are digital-only releases. Maybe not with independently owned publishers, owned and operated by people who hate the idea of shitcanning floppies, but with the corporate-monstrosity-owned Big Two? It's a matter of time IMO.

As for dumping the format completely, I don't see it. Serialization pays for the creation of the material, after which it can be reprinted indefinitely. It's a lot harder to commit to a 200-page graphic novel upfront than it is to try out a miniseries.

What if the evolution looks like this in the future. Where as monthly product = material to reprint indefinitely it moves to Serialization( i.e. miniseries[4-6 issue]) becomes the "monthly" format.
Sure there maybe 22pg floppies released digitally but physcial media comics essentially become tpb's and then after a few of those the Collections process proceeds as normal.
Regarding any digital releases the push could be the "first time in print" when collecting that content as a means to sell it more broadly.

[hyped78]

I personally only buy physical collected editions, I never buy floppies and I don't like the digital format too much.

But looking around, I live in London and there's only a handful of physical comic book stores in a city of 9 million people. Most people I know buy online here and they buy collected editions rather than floppies.

Will they die out completely? I don't think so, but they will arguably become residual. Just my 2 cents, I don't feel too strongly either way.

[Enigma]

I stopped buying floppies at all for a couple of years (prior to that I was 20 or so monthlies I think), recently I started floppies again purely for Wonder Woman because I want to keep up with WW as it comes out and I enjoy the discussion. That said, I absolutely prefer reading collected editions. I find it a better reading experience and it's more cost effective. I only buy floppies again because it's WW and she is WW is life. I'd rather it just came out in arcs and discuss those instead since I generally find the discussion is also better.

Summary: I'm happy for floppies to die off.


Edit: I also read a lot on Marvel Unlimited.

[hyped78]

Could it be that the biggest advantage of floppies vs. collected editions is that, with floppies, you can avoid spoilers as you read the stories as they come out?

[Enigma]

Could it be that the biggest advantage of floppies vs. collected editions is that, with floppies, you can avoid spoilers as you read the stories as they come out?

I think it is an advantage, but not an especially big one for me, although it may be for others. I guess it depends on a person's risk level for spoilers. Certainly, I wouldn't buy floppies just to avoid spoilers.

[captchuck]

I still buy single issues out of habit. I've been a regular reader since the 12 cent days when comics were sold everywhere. I doubt if I would start collecting or reading single issues today with the current price. I suspect that when Super-Hero movies start making less money, that Disney will pull out of the comics business very quickly. AT&T Discovery can't keep on doing what they're doing now with so many Batman titles forever. Brick and mortar stores will have to feature increasingly different collectibles.

[CarlC259]

A couple of years ago when my daughter was first born and money was tight, I stopped buying floppies. I had been buying about 20 titles a month before that. A couple of times after that when my financial situation improved I tried getting back into comics by buying a few titles a month. They never stuck because given my more mature outlook on my spending I had more and more trouble justifying spending the amount that is charged for monthly comic books these days. I've settled into buying collected editions of comics. Started with the Marvel Epic line (I had gotten several Essential collections years ago) of characters I cared about and other trades. Lately I've been moving more towards omni's. They just seem like a better way to spend my money these days than paying 3.99-4.99 per issue.

I think that if a lot of LCS start going away that comic companies will go to full digital for single comics and selling collected editions in book stores. Or they will lean into the subscription models like Marvel Unlimited/DC Universe/Comixology Unlimited.

[TheRay]

Well they most likely won’t collect every single issue ever printed, so there will have to be some sort of market sticking around.

[Mace Dolex]

Before colllected editions were getting more common place I was a single issue kind of collector with my allowances and later when I was fully working this would have been around when I graduated high school in 1996 and then when I discovered comic conventions and was going crazy buying back issues in the discount bins that I had accumulated aproximate close to 41 short boxes of single issues.

Around 2015 I seriously had to get rid of the many useless junk I had bought because they were "hot" speculative comics and currently I'm down to 19 short boxes but now with Tpb's I've amassed nearly 30 short boxes (damn).

[MuckieMuck]

I've been getting comics since I was about 8-10 years old and have been off and on ever since (I'm 43 now). I would consider myself a reader first and collector second. Over the last 15 years I've accumulated a pretty large collection of Hardcovers and Trades, but recently I have started picking up floppies again. Probably just Nostalgia and an excuse to go to the LCS. What the Hell is going on with the prices on current comics (comics released in the past 10 years) being so inflated by the collecting market? I've been following this app called Whatnot, youtubers, and Ebay sellers, and prices on Variants and key issues are hundreds of dollars. It boggles my mind who wants to pay hundreds for a single issue that was released in the last 5 years. There seems to be a new trend of collecting and flipping these books. Not really sure what is going on with that. I've also been aware of variant covers in the past, but coming back into it recently I've seen pretty much all Marvel titles at least, are having like 10 variant covers per issue with some of them coming out of the gate at $50-$100 each! Who are buying these and how is this going to sustain? I understand the concept of low print runs etc, I'm just wondering what is the appeal of these high priced comics? Is this a result of the pandemic or was this going on before the pandemic?