It's time for all new minority characters and creators

[penthotal]

Printing costs for DC and Marvel, I expect, are really cheap. Wouldn't be surprised if it's at $0.10-0.30 per issue. It's that they only get 40% of cover price after Diamond's and comic shops' cut. comiXology also takes a 50% share. In-app purchases, then Apple also takes a cut.

Honestly, go Netflix style. Marvel Unlimited at $10/month is probably equivalent revenue to around 6-10 books and credit card fees will probably be lower since it's just one bigger transaction. Grow revenue by growing the audience. Netflix is nearing 100 million subscribers so that's what, $1 billion revenue per month? Amazon Prime has at least 50 million subscribers.

Creators get at least the same page rates they're getting now plus additional royalties based on reads/popularity. Kindle Unlimited pays around $0.005 per page read. For a 200 page graphic novel read 10,000 times, that's $10,000. Read 100,000 times (reasonable without the friction of extra cost), that's $100,000.

I don't know where you take your numbers. Print it's not that cheap, even with higher volumes than the one comic books have. The print costs for a comic book are 20-25% of the total cost, not a few cents. Retailers, printer and distribution get almost 85-90% of the cover price depending on the volume.

[Wolverine12]

Honestly, you won't actually see how he died in the issue. spoilers:

Apparently he died off panel some time after the Hydra takeover but before the issue having been gunned down out of costume. By this issue his companion Tilda has already secretly taken on his mantle to honor him.

end of spoilers

Well if he that's really the case then all I can say is WTF. I thought Walker really liked the character based on the solo series and to just end it like that is complete crap. I know I saw someone in the Nighthawk costume in a recent issue of Secret Empire so maybe we'll get some clarification. I'd love to see Nighthawk vs Cap.

[gwangung]

I don't know where you take your numbers. Print it's not that cheap, even with higher volumes than the one comic books have. The print costs for a comic book are 20-25% of the total cost, not a few cents. Retailers, printer and distribution get almost 85-90% of the cover price depending on the volume.

I don't get where you get YOUR numbers. Totally out of whack and way too high, given from what I hear from every publisher and independent creator that have spoken on record.

Print costs are less 10%, probably less than that. Retail gets about a third, distributors get another third.

(Example from Justin Jordan:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/3...comment-735399)

[rui no onna]

I don't know where you take your numbers. Print it's not that cheap, even with higher volumes than the one comic books have. The print costs for a comic book are 20-25% of the total cost, not a few cents. Retailers, printer and distribution get almost 85-90% of the cover price depending on the volume.

If you're printing 3,000 copies, sure.

From what I understand, the metal plates are a large part of the cost for offset printing. The higher the print run, the more cost effective since you just have a one-time cost for the plates (except for super high print runs where you would need to replate).

Zub Tales | Creator-Owned Economics: The Changing Market

This is why that pie chart from my original retail post doesn’t scale well to different print runs and doesn’t perfectly sync up with the Image model. A 5000 copy comic has a very, very different money breakdown than one that sells 10k or more. Printing large quantities of something vastly decreases the cost per copy. The “price per unit” drops and the profitability per copy increases, but Image’s base fee doesn’t change.

[Nick Miller]

Yes!!!! New characters that are awesome! That's the key make them awesome with a unique niche.

And introduce them in the established comic. Wolverine didn't get his first series for 14 years!

Unless it's got an awesome creative team, new characters don't have much of a chance.

[rui no onna]

Book publishing already works the way you're describing which is how I, with the old english spelling of my name and the subject matter I write about, "broke in." My skin color is invisible in the publishing world where business is largely transacted via snail mail or email. Hiring in comics is largely based upon personal relationships and handshakes. Difficult to get around what I look like in those situations.

This is unfortunate and really needs to change. For the end-reader, there shouldn't be any prejudices. Unless one is already "in the know", it's not like readers would know skin color if a writer has a typical American name in the credits. Given the world we live in is far from being a utopia, it would be great if ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation is invisible so creators could be judged based on ability instead of built-in prejudices.

[Redjack]

This is unfortunate and really needs to change. For the end-reader, there shouldn't be any prejudices. Unless one is already "in the know", it's not like readers would know skin color if a writer has a typical American name in the credits. Given the world we live in is far from being a utopia, it would be great if ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation is invisible so creators could be judged based on ability instead of built-in prejudices.

in publishing this is an easy fix. that it's taken comics so long to even BEGIN to fix it and the fairly virulent pushback from many in the audience is shameful.

[dkrook]

New characters don't sell regardless of the race/gender/sexuality of the character unless it's connected to a popular brand and even then it still might not sell.

So, the original X-Men bombed. They seemed to be doing fine now. You care to explain why Moon Knight is about to rebooted for the umpteenth time now?

[Redjack]

So, the original X-Men bombed. They seemed to be doing fine now. You care to explain why Moon Knight is about to rebooted for the umpteenth time now?

<cough> Booster Gold</cough>

[Fokken]

<cough> Booster Gold</cough>

This is doubly funny because your avatar appears to be covering his mouth.

[stingray]

They cant charge 5 bucks for mosaic and expect it to be a hit. Dont blame the consumers here, please

Basically this. Comics are hugely expensive now, especially in Canada, where the exchange rate sucks. My LCS doesn't usually get very many extra copies of new titles in, so I have to subscribe, and because he has to order months in advance, I have to commit to at least 3 issues. If I don't like it after issue 1, I'm going to have to put out at least $15 on a title I'm not sure I'll like. Multiply this by all the new titles Marvel puts out, and it gets real expensive, real fast. I've been collecting for a very long time, but in the old days I'd spend most of my allowance on comics, (browsing through them on the spinner rack was half the fun!) but I could buy 4 or 5 of them a week and not break the bank. Nowadays you have to pick and choose, and I'm far less likely to try something new. DC has the right idea by lowering the price on some of their books. It made me try some titles I hadn't read in a long time, and I've stuck with a couple of them. In short, make first issues less expensive (I don't care if it features a minority character and creators or not, as long as it looks interesting), and I'll try it. Leave the prices high, and ultimately a lot of fans won't even give it a chance, regardless of whose in it or writing it.

[Redjack]

They cant charge 5 bucks for mosaic and expect it to be a hit. Dont blame the consumers here, please

I missed this before and I have to be careful how I word the response because assholes will try to describe it as me whining about my book not going the distance. Not whining. Never whining. Books live, books die. The end. I do not care about those things.

MOSAIC died for a variety of factors and that's how it goes. Sometimes you get the bear, etc. All of us who make commercial art for a living understand that sometimes we die in the arena. I feel we did our best and, in the end, that's all I actually care about. Sales, marketing, all that stuff is the publisher's problem.

That said, this meme that the first issue of the book was over priced.

it's a little more complex than that.

a) MOSAIC #1 contained more story pages than a normal Marvel comic. So charging the same cover prices as a book with fewer pages was probably not in the cards. I'm not saying i agree with it or disagree with it but, you don't give more and charge less for it.

b) Prior to MOSAIC #1 there was a MOSAIC: PRELUDE, ten pages, delivered for FREE all over the country which MARVEL advertised extensively. Marvel literally gave away the first issue. So it's a little disingenuous to claim the cover price for #1 was, in itself, off-putting or even poor business. If you combine the free issue price (zero dollars and zero cents) with the oversized first issue you're actually getting MORE story for less money. I'm guessing someone in Marvel Accounting did that math. I'm not sure a company can go farther than GIVING a new product away unless they start paying the readers to read.

Not saying they made the right moves but there is more to it than "DAMN, this book i never heard of is hella expensive!"

As for the content, people like what they like and don't what they don't.

That's the game. There's no crying in baseball.

[dkrook]

<cough> Booster Gold</cough>

Lol...hey you spittin' that truth good sir! Nice one.

[stingray]

"The first issue of the book was overpriced. It's a little more complex than that". No. No it isn't. It really doesn't matter if it has more pages, the initial price is too high, and it discourages people trying it. If it contains extra pages of a crappy story, what's the incentive? Uncertainty is the issue. I only go to my LCS every other week, and there were no zero issues left. Again, I'm not laying out that much for a number one. No thank you.

[Redjack]

"The first issue of the book was overpriced. It's a little more complex than that". No. No it isn't. It really doesn't matter if it has more pages, the initial price is too high, and it discourages people trying it. If it contains extra pages of a crappy story, what's the incentive? Uncertainty is the issue. I only go to my LCS every other week, and there were no zero issues left. Again, I'm not laying out that much for a number one. No thank you.

yeah. it is more complex. which is why i spelled out how it's more complex. You personally may not have wanted to lay out that much dough (and that's absolutely fair) but, in the real world, MOSAIC #1's monthly tally was greater than those of each subsequent issue (which is, btw, the case with most comics, new character or not). Sold more copies at the higher price, IOW.

So the higher price wasn't a deterrent to sales overall.