Marvel's Digital Price Gouging
eduardo_sanchez
Posts: 22
It was bad enough when Marvel bumped the price of most of their comics to $3.99 while quietly reducing the page count but I was shocked when I booted up comixology this morning and saw that they are charging $2.99 for their new weekly digital-first Wolverine title! To me this is another example of Marvel trying to squeeze their readers out of every last dollar they have. It baffles me how they can justify their pricing structure anymore. Many of the current digital versions of their comics are almost a year old and still list for $3.99 an issue. I just feel like their business model of jacked up prices and double shipping just show a lack of respect for their fan base. What are your thoughts?
Comments
We all want to change the world.
The old response for price increases in the past was the rising cost of paper. Paper has always been one of the biggest costs to comic production. However, in our current digital age that excuse doesn't hold up. I believe that the only reason day and date digital comics are priced the same at their print counterparts is to keep LCS Owners from losing their shit. So, for Marvel to put out digital weekly comic with a price 3 times higher than their contemporaries and to expect us to be excited for it is insulting. It's as is they're saying "these sucker's will pay anything as long as Wolverine's in it."
Looking at the listing for it on Comixology, the first issue is 79 pages. Don't know if that is all new content, or if there is some reprint in there or something (if there is, the creative team is not listed). But if the page count is to be trusted, then $2.99 for 79 pages is far from a sucker's bet. In fact, it IS cheaper than the print Wolverine comics that Jason Aaron has been doing for years (as Weapon X and Wolverine & The X-Men were both $3.99 books from the start). And when that is potentially more than three times the size of the digital first comics that other publishers sell for $.99, I am not sure why this Wolverine digital first has is giving sticker shock.
Moving on to the larger subject-- I think the cost of paper defense has always come from the assumption of fans rather than a response from the publishers. (And that may be the response you are talking about- people defending the publishers, rather than the publishers defending themselves). But I think that response may be an uninformed one.
The biggest cost is the talent and human capital costs. The creative team, as well as the production, editorial and other people behind the scenes. And that cost does not change with digital (in fact, some extra human effort is needed to get the content ready for digital distribution-- it is a cost added to the costs associated with producing the comic on paper). I feel that, when knowledgeable people talk about this, and I feel like some insiders have, like Bendis, what they point to is not the cost of paper. It is the cost of the many people involved in making a corporate comic.
I don't know whether the publishers have addressed it directly or often, because of course what they don't want to spend their time talking about is why their comics are expensive because then the conversation is a reminder of the fact that their comics are expensive.
And, at the end of the day, comics are expensive. Or, at least, buying new comics is an expensive form of entertainment. Especially relative to the amount of entertainment time they tend to play to vs. how much they cost. That hasn't always been the case, but it has been the case for awhile. Was the $2.99 to $3.99 jump a hard one, and even a breaking point for some people? Of course. And it is definitely worth noticing and talking about. As was the page count drop in most issues.
But even at an average of $2.99/22 story pages comics were an expensive form of entertainment. And in all for profit enterprises, price is always meant to be just below the breaking point of what the market will bear. I don't see it as a publisher (Marvel or others- there are plenty of other publishers out there with 4 dollar single issues as well as 4 dollar digital issues) disrespecting their fans by setting a price that they think their fans will pay.
And a fan challenged by that price can either opt out; or if they still want the content, there is a lot of savings to be had in time-shifting: waiting for an end of the month DCBS box, waiting for the drop in digital price or a digital sale, waiting for the trade, or waiting for the trade and getting it from the library. There are other options.
But, if you want to read the book the day or even the month it comes out? That might get expensive.
EDIT- I forgot one other bit of money saving time-shifting, when it comes to Marvel: Marvel Unlimited. I had been a Marvel DCU subscriber for years now (and it is now Marvel Unlimited). For $5/mo. I read a lot of books 6 months to a year later that I decided not to buy new.
So they are making money and a good number of people are still getting books at a somewhat decent price. The only ones getting screwed is the LCS owner and customers loyal to their LCS.
I think there is enough current & historical evidence to show that the big 2 really don't care about the LCS.
I am not sure how much digital plays into the bottom line for the big 2 at this point. My guess is that it is a small but growing part of the equation. Maybe in a few years when digital is a larger part of the overall sales numbers, the companies may be more flexible and customer friendly with digital prices.
But I am saying that if you believe they are screwing the LCS and the LCS' loyal customers, then they are doing that to DCBS and their customers, too. As there really isn't a difference there.
In Batman '66 #1, they use a similar story telling style to Marvel's Infinity Comics and so the following is actually considered 4 pages of its 95 page count even though the last sequence is what you would see in a regular floppy (minus Bat's word balloon in the second picture). Still a lot of comic reading, but I think you would find that it's probably comparable to a an actual floppy's page count.
EDIT- And, of course, while my ignorance of the Infinity format (or Batman '66 format, whatever DC calls that) is no excuse, I do think that Comixology as the middle man really has to find a different way to describe the product. I think it is fair for me to expect a page to be a PAGE. To add a word balloon to a static image (as you demonstrated above) is not a &)*#ing PAGE. So to tell me I am buying 72 pages and then give me what looks more like 72 frames is going to feel like bait and switch. They should find a clearer way to communicate that. As elsewhere on their site 72 pages actually means an OGN novella. Or more than 3 typical issues of content. I mean, even using the printing term "page" may now be an expired and misleading term for what they are now selling.
And the fight rages on...
Bottom line is that we don't have to purchase the books. You may really, really want to, but you don't have to.
As for who sets the price between Comixology and the publishers-- I think that is an interesting question. I don't know, of course. Though I would guess they are a distributor rather than a licensee. They make a deal with a publisher to be the exclusive delivery system (as even if you buy digital on the Marvel.com site or app, I believe Marvel is using Comixology to get the product to you). And while Comixology surely has a voice at the table in setting prices, at the time the Big 2 chose them, I would imagine that the publishers had as much (or more) muscle to flex as the content provider than Comixology had as the would-be distributor. Because Comixology wasn't iTunes. It was one of a number of start-ups competing to be the 'iTunes of comics'. But the comic business is also not the music or movie business. It is an industry with really only 2-5 "record labels" providing probably 75% of the product. That put the publishers in a better negotiating position than the record labels were in when iTunes dictated the $.99/single price.
Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to pricing is that in getting in business with a new distributor and distribution model, the publishers also had to keep in mind the interest of their longtime partner and most loyal customer: Diamond, as well as the direct market customers Diamond distributes to.
Sure, Marvel and DC could have decided right out of the gate that digital is different than print, and it should cost less, and therefore the digital version of the content will be $.99/issue day and date, as many people clamored for. Sure, they could have done that. But how do you think that would have gone over in public with the shop owners? Or in private with Diamond? It would have been a much bigger risk.
Also, it would have meant that they messaged to us as the readers that a new piece of their content has an actual cost of $.99. It would be them saying, 'Oh, this is what the story costs. The other 1 to 3 dollars is what you pay for the paper. Sure, this might even have been the sort of price that would have got a lot of the diehard paper collectors to make the jump to digital, to embrace that savings.
To those who never bought single issues on paper before, but who jump onto your content because they have a tablet or a smart phone and are in the market for content, the price you set is what you are suggesting to them is what a comic costs. So a customer you introduce to your content at a certain price point will perceive that as the value.
But then you are stuck with that price. You have now lowered the perceived value of what you make. And you have not lowered any of the talent costs that go into making that content.
Instead, they succeeded in getting people- perhaps not even a small amount- to embrace the comic cover price as the digital price. And you have potentially attracted new readers who have accepted and will read at that price.
I am not saying that would make us love them for it, or feel taken care of. But I do think there are a lot of factors to keep in mind. And, given that they are getting readers of both format to read at the same price, I think they succeeded in monetizing their content across multiple platforms without having those platforms compete in terms of price. They didn't take the risk (or the price hit) to try to convent print readers into digital readers. Instead, they kept their print readers and added digital readers.
I enjoyed DC's digital first 99 cent deals like Ame-Comi. I wasn't getting a full 22-page book but I wasn't paying the price for a full 22-page book, and the artwork and story were there to keep me coming back for the next "issue". Granted, by the time enough material had been put out there to make a complete issue, I've paid about $3 or so, but there was a feeling like I was getting more for my buck, whether or not I actually was.
Honestly, though, I've gone back to trades unless there's something about a single-issue storyline that really appeals to me. 99% of the time I can figure out when a book will eventually make it to trade. It's pretty much the model for any company that isn't in the back of the Previews catalog, and it's how I prefer my funnybooks anyhow.
Hard to justify buying a $2.39 single issue (through DCBS) when I can get a trade of it through the same vendor that'll run anywhere from $7.49 to $12 for 5-6 issues.