Do floppies have a future?

[superduperman]

There seems to be a lot of speculation about the future of comics and what they will look like. With comics being $4.00 and up these days, how long can prices keep going up before fans just abandon them altogether and publishers go directly to digital or OGN's? And if they do, where would they be sold? Bookstores are also dying. Comic shops should still do fine for the time being. Sites like Amazon seem to be fine but it's kind of hard to decide if you want to buy a book when you can't look over it first. Since both companies are owned by big corporations, the future of comics may not be comics at all but movies and TV shows. Hopefully that particular future is far off.

[Lee Stone]

There seems to be a lot of speculation about the future of comics and what they will look like. With comics being $4.00 and up these days, how long can prices keep going up before fans just abandon them altogether and publishers go directly to digital or OGN's? And if they do, where would they be sold? Bookstores are also dying. Comic shops should still do fine for the time being. Sites like Amazon seem to be fine but it's kind of hard to decide if you want to buy a book when you can't look over it first. Since both companies are owned by big corporations, the future of comics may not be comics at all but movies and TV shows. Hopefully that particular future is far off.

I see floppies moving to indie only and then either as collectibles for titles that are available digitally or as promos sold/given out at conventions.
Sorta like how mini-comics are.

I see the comics industry going full digital before long. Most through Comixology and some through free webcomics. With both being collected into trades for bookstores or comic shops.

And comic shops will shift their focus to trades and collectibles. Some already have.

[colonyofcells]

Comic shops maybe will survive as toy stores.

[GlennSimpson]

Yeah, I'm not sure how long it will be, but I'd speculate that at some point it will just be digital only, with the digital reprinted as trades that are sold in bookstores.

At some point digital will hit a tipping point where the major publishers decide they can start to lose the physical shops. That's when the digital prices will start going down, which will start a spiral.

Again, just speculation. It's ALSO possible that digital might level off and stop growing, thus requiring the publishers to maintain the combination of print and digital like they are now for quite some time.

[cranger]

I see 'floppies' doing just fine. If anything, other alternatives, whether it be digital or OGNs, will just grow the market, not replace it.

[Sirzechs]

Yes Floppies will always serve their purpose, Erik Larsen posted something on twitter awhile back which I have to agree with, when reading a story line from floppy compared to a trade, is the story is more suspenseful you don't get that feel from a trade as the answer or conclusion is always on the very next page, so that excitement you feel when waiting for the next issue isn't there.

[colonyofcells]

My guess is in the future, all the land will be used to grow food so there won't be paper anymore for floppies. Maybe there will be edible floppies.

[FanboyStranger]

No, but I've been saying that for a good fifteen years now, so take it with a grain of salt. I've never been a fan of the 20-24 page format, but that's what people buy.

[numberthirty]

As long as hard copies are a revenue source that reader's cannot just put up on the internet, single issues aren't going anywhere.

[Nathan Irwin]

Plus, the monthly issue model provides regular infusions of cash for the publishers. Until digital sales are high enough to cover the monthly operating costs of DC and Marvel, they need physical comics.

Also - even if all sales were digital, prices would not come down. The cost of making and distributing the physical comic isn't that much higher. If all the people who now buy physical comics switched to digital, the publishers would make only slightly more money.

[colonyofcells]

Graphic novels can be digital and or paper.

[Lee Stone]

Plus, the monthly issue model provides regular infusions of cash for the publishers. Until digital sales are high enough to cover the monthly operating costs of DC and Marvel, they need physical comics.

Also - even if all sales were digital, prices would not come down. The cost of making and distributing the physical comic isn't that much higher. If all the people who now buy physical comics switched to digital, the publishers would make only slightly more money.

Of course, digital also has the added benefit of unlimited supply. Which means more sales.
And they can continue to make money off of back issues.

[dancj]

The cost of making and distributing the physical comic isn't that much higher. If all the people who now buy physical comics switched to digital, the publishers would make only slightly more money.

I'm sure it's closer for the big publishers, but if you look at the stats from this indie creator, the costs from physical comics eat up 89% of the price of the comic - leaving 11% to split between the publisher and creators - whereas for digital they eat up either 65% or 50% (depending on whether it's bought as an IAP) leaving 35% or 50% to split between the publisher and creators. That's a huge difference.

[dancj]

Yes Floppies will always serve their purpose, Erik Larsen posted something on twitter awhile back which I have to agree with, when reading a story line from floppy compared to a trade, is the story is more suspenseful you don't get that feel from a trade as the answer or conclusion is always on the very next page, so that excitement you feel when waiting for the next issue isn't there.

That's an argument for serialisation, not for floppies,

[cranger]

That's an argument for serialisation, not for floppies,

The argument is not just physical vs digital. The OP mentions OGNs as a replacement for the monthly issues, which would lose a lot of that sense of waiting to see what happens next, even if the writer tried to put in suggested breaks. It is like TV shows, which traditionally have cliffhangers even within an episode right before the scheduled commercial break, and you wait the three minutes for the show to come back on, but if you watch it on disc you do not get that sense, and often you can notice it does not flow correctly. You would lose that natural waiting period with OGNs.