The Goosing Of Marvel NOW With Variants And Discount

[QCCBob]

Changing content - your good old days, Blade's all ages, whatever - is a gamble when no one is producing books that sell significantly better in those formats.

Yet, you expect me to spend a small fortune to push products I know people don't want very much since the last couple decades have proven it because risking an LCS's money is an acceptible risk while the publishers who make millions shouldn't be expected to invest in growing their market. I believe that's a really odd double standard to justify. The little guy has to pay to push the big guy's product no matter what it is despite the awe inspiring difference in risk and profit margins. Remember, DM comics are ZERO risk to the publisher while the LCS isn't nearly so lucky.

[QCCBob]

You don't advertise to 10 million people who paid to see the Avengers movie hoping or expecting to get them all. You do it hoping to get the 1% of them who double the size of sales on your top book.

Your math is a tad faulty, even if you use Uncanny Avengers as the baseline... Which is their excuse for not even trying, they don't think advertising to 10 million people would double the sales even with the proper math. Truthfully, I think so much of the post-Jemas rhetoric has become gospel to them that they'ed be far more frightened of the impact of gaining 1,000,000 more sales on a book for them to really try.

[Blade X]

they may not have been advertising with cartoon network per se.
Cable operators sell advertising on the local level. The store in question may or may not have paid more to advertise on kid centric stations.

It was definitely advertising on the local level and NOT a national level. My point was/is that it apparently did not help that store's business.

[Blade X]

Sigh....

Cheers

Do you mind being a little more specific?

[Blade X]

Changing content - your good old days, Blade's all ages, whatever - is a gamble when no one is producing books that sell significantly better in those formats.


Cheers

I said it before, and I'll say it again. If the content of the books is changed to eirther "the good old days" or to be more "all ages" and the Big 2 put hot/popular artists on those books like Jim Lee or Steve McNiven and promote these books as being something important and/or major events, those books would indeed sell and some customers might even even notice the change in content. Hell, the fact that their are many current fans and pros who think that Marvel comics from the 80's and 90's had the same level of adult content as current Marvel comics is proof that some of them can't tell the difference between an all ages book written in layers and books clearly aimed at teens and adults.

[Peter J Poole]

SIGH, and you still don't get the fact that there is reasonable risk and there is uninformed people making wonderful sounding proposals based on their own opinions of how things should work with next to no knowledge of the system that exists. How you could possibly have read my posts lo these many years and think I'm the guy who is cautious and quietly accepts the way things are is frankly insane. Hopefully, your 'turn around manager' actually has a working knowledge of the biz before he mangles everything beyond salvation.

Our core disagreement tends to be you playing it safe, not wanting to change anything except the delivery system, keep doing what we're doing, and eventually find a way to make the same thing work against all logic and reason. I want to go 'outside the box' and get new readers (not lapsed readers and speculators) from different demographics than the one we can't keep. I want the guys who make billions to pull their fair share and reach out to bring in those new demographics rather than expect those who make thousands to do it for them because an individual store cannot support one product or product line effectively on the kind of budget required. Again, we can't spend thousands to make hundreds while they can easily spend hundred thousands to make millions, i.e. DC new 52.

Bob, you're certainly not quiet. You bitch incessantly about how everyone else is getting it wrong and how they should fix things. While saying the LCS can do nothing.

Cheers

[D Bell]

See, here's the root of the industry problem. We're not Wal-Mart or McDonalds. An LCS has very little control over the products we carry in many ways especially when it comes to the Big Two. I control numbers as in less or more, but I have to carry the stuff. In the good old days, they put out a book that sells horribly (especially compared to past history), we all cut our orders, the sales keep dropping, and they fix the book or cancel it. Nowadays, they don't care. How many 'relaunches' have books had in the last ten years where they just change the name or an artist? How many times do we see the same failed concept trotted out with a new wrapper? An LCS doesn't make the books and doesn't have the ability to just get a better cheaper supplier when ABC Company's widgets are poorly made or too expensive. Our sales are only going to be as good as the majority of the products we carry will allow. Like I said before, I can go door to door giving people crap and limburger sandwiches for free, but I ain't gonna sell any.

AND as I said before, all you have to do is look at the epic success and equally epic failure that is Free Comic Book Day. It gets hundreds of thousands of people worldwide in the doors of shops to get 'free' comics, yet the overall sales keep dropping. Not anecdotal evidence, not MY store, we're talking an industry wide event.

Oh, by the by, good shelves are the best investment you'll EVER make. I have plexigrass shelves that allow me to full face out stacks of up to 25-30 copies with no impediment to vision. No waterfall, no overlap, just hundreds of full comic book covers staring you in the face. No offense, but the fact that you don't get the investment value of shelves points out the difference between knowing retail and theorizing retail.

Bob, you're making my point for me.

Free Comic Book Day works at its intended purpose - to drive traffic to the stores. It's up to the stores to turn those looking for freebies into paying customers.
I agree there needs to be more all-ages content. But there is that product out there today. Not in the volume you and I and Blade would like but it is there. So, again, it's up to the LCS to match the right content with the consumer that is making his first trip to the store.

I'm just saying there is an opportunity for some stores that might be willing to take a chance. Some might succeed, some might fail. But taking a chance is the nature of small business ownership.

And Bob, I brought up shelves BECAUSE I understand the value of presentation to a business. And I can equate that to the value of effective advertising.

Peter's ship analogy seems appropriate to the DM as a whole today. But in the DM owners/managers defense, I think that's because those people tend to be fans and not business people so they don't know how to take the steps necessary to right their segment of the industry.

[Peter J Poole]

Yet, you expect me to spend a small fortune to push products I know people don't want very much since the last couple decades have proven it because risking an LCS's money is an acceptible risk while the publishers who make millions shouldn't be expected to invest in growing their market. I believe that's a really odd double standard to justify. The little guy has to pay to push the big guy's product no matter what it is despite the awe inspiring difference in risk and profit margins. Remember, DM comics are ZERO risk to the publisher while the LCS isn't nearly so lucky.

Jesus Bob, D Bell has even quoted the costs showing you don't need to spend 'a small fortune'.

How much do you think Warner invested in Nu52? And continue to invest by running at a $2.99 price point?

The little guy has to push to make more money. Speculate to accumulate. Like every other business.

You don't want to buy into the variant/discounted books as a way of trying to get new customers, fair enough.

You don't want to put up $100 a month for advertising, fair enough.

But to then blame everyone else for doing nothing? There's your double standard!!

Cheers

[Peter J Poole]

Do you mind being a little more specific?

Not beyond what others have said. If you think B happening a couple of years after A constitutes proof, I won't waste breath on it.

I said it before, and I'll say it again. If the content of the books is changed to eirther "the good old days" or to be more "all ages" and the Big 2 put hot/popular artists on those books like Jim Lee or Steve McNiven and promote these books as being something important and/or major events, those books would indeed sell and some customers might even even notice the change in content. Hell, the fact that their are many current fans and pros who think that Marvel comics from the 80's and 90's had the same level of adult content as current Marvel comics is proof that some of them can't tell the difference between an all ages book written in layers and books clearly aimed at teens and adults.

Heh... if they can put Johns and Lee on Aquaman and outsell Avengers then yeah, you're right. Because doing that and promoting it can sell anything.

Now try it with just content changes. Because that's the thing you're pushing that we disagree on.

BTW, if you're talking Marvel and DC buying into this, you're talking 120ish books a month. Good luck putting hot/popular people on all of those and hyping them as important/major events.

Cheers

[DarthEwok]

Jesus Bob, D Bell has even quoted the costs showing you don't need to spend 'a small fortune'.

How much do you think Warner invested in Nu52? And continue to invest by running at a $2.99 price point?

The little guy has to push to make more money. Speculate to accumulate. Like every other business.

You don't want to buy into the variant/discounted books as a way of trying to get new customers, fair enough.

You don't want to put up $100 a month for advertising, fair enough.

But to then blame everyone else for doing nothing? There's your double standard!!

Cheers

Gosh. Man, when you guys are done here, you ought to go fill Peyton Manning in on how to be a quarterback too