Brian Hibbs has all manner of interesting information from talking to DC executives at the recent ComicsPro meeting:
The redemption rate on the combo pack for the digital codes in JUSTICE LEAGUE? It was just 20% on issue #1, and it has dropped to just 10% (on #4 or #5, I don’t think was 100% clear) — it appears that DM consumers bought those AS COLLECTIBLE VARIANT COVERS, rather than because they wanted a digital copy… The single best sales day for day-and-date DC digital comics has been and continues to be the first Wednesday of release; when the price drops by a dollar there’s a teeny spike in velocity — evidently it is the 10th best sales day (Is that “on average” or for a specific title? I don’t think that was clarified) — but not any kind of a huge surge; this would seem to indicate that digital buyers are just fine paying the full print price, so that they can be “part of the conversation” at initial release.
There’s more in the post, including DC’s John Rood apparently explaining DC’s digital strategy as being “about aiding physical (format) growth, NOT managing physical decline,” which is more than a little surprising, especially as it’s at odds with almost all other media experiences with the digital market. We keep hearing that digital is an additive market for comics, not one that’s expected to replace print sales, and I can’t help but wonder if that speaks to an overall greater health for the print comic market than many had thought, or an overall greater irrelevance for comics than anyone thought that efforts to discover a digital market haven’t caught on the way publishers would’ve hoped…?
February 13th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Very interesting.
(Also, by treating the digital combo as an additional variant, they actually get it quite on the cheap!)
February 13th, 2012 at 11:09 am
Those are the only two options?
First of all, DC was reportedly telling retailers just seven months ago that the print:digital sales ratio was 630 to 1.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/28/dc-relaunch-sampler-comics-in-july-the-dc-retailer-roadshow-in-chicago/
If the ratio is now 10 to 1, as per the low end of Hibbs’ figure, that’d be a 63x increase – while I’m doubtful that digital has exploded to quite that degree, even a fraction of that number would be dramatic and would show that digital has significant growth potential, which will only improve as tablet penetration rates increase (keep in mind that comiXology is, IIRC, one of only a handful of preinstalled content apps on the Kindle Fire).
Secondly, I don’t see how DC’s digital approach has been a failure – their current primary approach (literal translations of print comics, released the same day as print for the same prices) is the definition of treating digital as an ancillary market for print, and if you treat it as an ancillary market, that’s what you’ll end up with. They’ve just launched a limited experiment with digital-first serialized comics (Justice League Beyond) published weekly in 10-page installments for 99 cents each, which is pretty much exactly what I see as the future of the medium. How did DC promote this promising experiment? By not announcing a release date for the first chapter in advance, and by not even posting about said release on their blog until a week later, when the second chapter was already available.
For a combination of reasons (DM retailers with low profit margins afraid of losing customers to digital, the nascent state of the digital comics market, relative inexperience with digital), DC and other major publishers are simply not putting nearly the weight behind digital comics that they could be. While the current numbers indicate that digital isn’t going to replace print overnight, which was never a possibility, they don’t speak at all to what that market can or should look like in a few years.
February 13th, 2012 at 11:13 am
I suspect you are right about the irrelevant comment. Not as it relates to the entire medium in general, but to the Big 2 super hero genre. The ones who will see the most benefit from digital will be indies.
February 13th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Same story different day. Digital prices are too high for it to find a market. Day and date $.99 maybe $1.49 for event comics is the target price.
February 13th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Agree that $.99 is the target price, I see more sales at that price point every week and that’s really the only time I purchase. Publishers simply aren’t willing to go that route with new releases, and for good reason, but if you’re like me you don’t have a problem waiting 6 months or so to read a book you probably wouldn’t have bought at a shop anyway. Its as if publishers fear the future, but they’re preparing for it.
February 13th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
99 cent day-and-date is a pipe dream that will never happen. The reason: DC wants to actually make a decent profit! Their audience is not big enough to sell at such a low price. When people are willing to spend $3.99 for 20 pages, it’s foolish to think that you can increase your audience 4x by charging 99 cents. Marvel and DC have done 99 cent sales. They know the figures.
February 13th, 2012 at 2:03 pm
99-cent day-and-date is (or at least should be) perfectly reasonable, just not for 20 pages of story. As I said above, what DC is doing with Justice League Beyond is how I envision the Digital Uber Alles future: shorter installments, 99 cents each, published on a weekly or biweekly schedule. (Hopefully with discounted subscriptions available as well.) 20 pages a month is a lousy pace for serialized storytelling anyway, regardless of whether it’s in digital or print.
February 13th, 2012 at 2:20 pm
@Barry, I think the “10-to-1″ figure quoted was for the print / digital combo pack, not overall.
February 13th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
No, I was referring to part of Hibbs’ post that Graeme didn’t quote. Apologies for the confusion:
“It was indicated that New 52 digital books were remarkably consistent and in parity with their print brethren — drops in sales of print were mirrored in similar proportions in digital. They gave us an average percentage-of-print for digital, but I lost the piece of paper I wrote that on (I told you I suck!), so I can’t remember if it was average across the board or on a specific title, or, really what the exact number was. It was very low, however — I want to say somewhere between 10 and 15 %.”
Even if the linewide average were only 5-6% of print sales, that’d still be a vast improvement over what they were reportedly telling retailers last year.
February 13th, 2012 at 4:04 pm
I want to agree with Barry about:
“99-cent day-and-date is (or at least should be) perfectly reasonable, just not for 20 pages of story. As I said above, what DC is doing with Justice League Beyond is how I envision the Digital Uber Alles future: shorter installments, 99 cents each, published on a weekly or biweekly schedule. (Hopefully with discounted subscriptions available as well.)”
I have doubts that the new-to-comics digital consumer would be willing to wait a month for a new episode.
February 13th, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Barry – I think what you are missing is that redemption rate is specifically for copies downloaded using the digital code packaged with the physical comic book which makes it totally different from the numbers reported previously which were pure digital sales.
Also those of you arguing that $.99 is too cheap and is not feasible may well be right but the truth is buying comics is totally out of proportional to the amount of enjoyment that you can buy in other forms of media. Personally I haven’t bought a comic on over two years, I still keep up with the goings on in the industry through various websites and sometimes think _____ looks interesting maybe I’ll buy the trade if I see it for a good price but the fact is I find blu-rays a much better value for the money. A crafty blu-ray purchaser will be able to buy most movies for $8 or less. TV shows are often in the $15-$20 range. Now really compare the entertainment value you get from 2 $3 or $4 of the quick read comic books being produced these days to a movie or a tradepaperback to a season of a TV show, I think most or all of you would be lying if you said comics came close in entertainment value.
Basically if the comic companies don’t find a way to increase the value, while I think the industry will survive, it will continue to dwindle and become even more of a niche market then it has always been
But hey that’s just my opinion.
February 13th, 2012 at 8:48 pm
I feel like a lot of people aren’t really understanding the fact that someone takes a literal month out of their lives (or more) to draw one issue of a comic. That person needs to be compensated for that work (plus everyone else that is putting their time into it). Its not the physical printing that costs the majority of the $3 or 4 you’re paying for a print comic, its the payment to the people who give their time to do this work. If you are breezing through a comic book and never going back to truly admire the work, then you are missing the point, read a novel, it’ll take you longer. And if you are going back and re-enjoying it, then its worth more than .99 for an issue.
February 13th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
@Red: Huh? I didn’t say anything about digital code redemption rates. Read the Hibbs post – the quote I posted above is specifically referring to the average digital:print sales ratio across the New 52 line.
@j dinkhouse: I’m fully aware that comics aren’t cheap to produce, but the fact is that the average 20-page comic takes me only 5-10 minutes to read through, and I don’t have a particular need or desire to read it again afterwards. There’s no Special Comics Magic inherent to the medium that automatically justifies pricing comics like luxury products (relatively speaking); comics are just another entertainment medium, they compete for the same entertainment dollars, and the value proposition they offer should be judged accordingly.
February 14th, 2012 at 4:58 am
“I feel like a lot of people aren’t really understanding the fact that someone takes a literal month out of their lives (or more) to draw one issue of a comic.”
this is one of the larger problems with comics, actually. jack kirby drew practically the whole friggin’ line every month, month after month. curt swan probably drew more pages in a year than today’s artists will draw in a lifetime. and i don’t think anyone will have the temerity to claim that it’s because today’s artists are somehow better. i’m sorry, but it should not take a “literal month…(or more)” to draw an issue. and if it does, that’s your (the artist’s) fault, it’s not mine.
that said,
February 14th, 2012 at 4:59 am
sorry for that dangling “that said,” i changed my mind on adding another point to that post.
February 14th, 2012 at 9:19 am
For $3.99 they need to approach comics as more magazine format to add value. Add a few script pages, some artist sketches, maybe an interview with the writer/artist team about the breakdown of the issue, the letters page, etc. Most of this stuff they have ready and never use unless its for a hardcover or special edition, throw some of it into the monthlies, keep the 20-22 page story and $2.99-$3.99 might actually be worth it. Then the digital versions can be sold without those extras at a discounted price.
And what happened to advertising in comics? Wouldn’t it help DC/Marvel, etc to sell ad space in the books rather than have those pages filled with in house marketing? Same deal with digital, I wouldn’t mind a page or two of a download being for “pepsi” if it means I pay less.
February 14th, 2012 at 11:45 pm
@Barry Convex – It does matter how long/how much it takes to produce. Just because you breeze through an issue and never look at it again, doesn’t mean that there isn’t craftsmanship and time that it takes to to produce an issue. And just because you aren’t dazzled by the Special Comics Magic, some of us are, in my case (and I’m sure other people’s) because I view it as art, pop/commercial art, but art none the less. I converted a few years ago from individual issues to trades because I wanted to feel comfortable reading my comics over and over, and I do, in some cases, particularly with books that have amazing art.
@davesnothereman – When Kirby and Swan were drawing comics, the level of detail was much lower. You can get pissy, but I will put it out there that I have the temerity to say that people like Leinil Yu, Frank Cho, Ethan Van Schiver, JG Jones, Alex Maleev, JH Williams, Steve McNiven, Jim Lee and other amazing modern artists are putting a lot more detail on the page than Kirby did, especially when he was drawing multiple comics a month. Kirby was a genius when it came to design and a revolutionary artist on just about every comic standard, from layout to comic-style anatomy to pacing, but ask anyone who isn’t aware of (or beholden to) Kirby’s historic contribution to the medium, they will hands down prefer modern artists to Kirby. Sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings, but I would rather have modern art styles, and I would wager a majority of comic fans couldn’t go back to an artist who draws like Kirby. I know, sacrilege, but I think, if you weren’t someone who has been reading comics for decades (or more than 2 decades) would probably agree with me.