Trade paperback, which almost 15 years ago when I was a bookseller was $10-$14, now being that almost makes sense, due to inflation, but also the state of the declining market. It would be ridiculous if you were talking about a mass market paperback, which used to be $5-$7. I haven't bought a brand new novel for a few years.
This book is priced at $3.99 at the comic shops, but at Barnes & Noble, it's $4.99
Could this be the new price point for DC in 2016?
I'd be surprised. DC has been doing that since at least earlier this year for their limited line of returnable comics distributed to bookstores (though not via Diamond). The Beat had some reporting on it a few months ago. I suppose it is possible that they will use those issues as a way to test the price point. But I would guess it has more to do with those bookstores justifying even having those periodicals in the store taking up shelf space-- that they either need to have a price point close enough in line with other magazines, or else they are not worth the display space.
Insightful @David_D - I agree that it looks more like offsetting the cost of returnability than testing a higher price-point, but if they've been doing this for a while, it must be worth it. Surely the big two know that readers like many on these forums who have been reading for 20+ years aren't going to pay $4.99 for 20 pages in the digital age.
That article features a quote from Dan DiDio from 2011 that rings very true:
“The truth is people are leaving (comics) anyway, they’re just doing it quietly, and we have been papering it over with increased prices,” DiDio said. “We didn’t want to wake up one day and find we had a bunch of $20 books that 10,000 people are buying.”
Seems like several publishers are still “papering over” the reality of their shrinking audience with higher prices. Even a regular paperback novels now sells for $16-$18. Comics and other small-item entertainment products require an abundance of units sold in order to make a profit. So when I see Image putting out a tpb collecting 5 issues for the same price as 2 Batman comics, I'm changing my reading/buying habits. I'd prefer to pay a premium price for a valuable product like Omnibuses or Artist Editions. Maybe the way to move more floppies is if publishers revert to newsprint again and drop the prices accordingly.
The Didio quote is certainly compelling. And they have to figure it out at some point. I think DC will have to run the across the board $3.99 for awhile (with an increased frequency of larger, special issues of popular titles like Batman at $4.99, as we have been seeing), and I think things like Dark Knight 3 are a test of a sort of premium periodical.
I can't imagine them ever coming down on the print cover prices across the board (though it would be exciting to see them try). What I expect to see within the next few years, the reckoning that I think is coming, is that at some point we will see a day-and-date price difference between digital and print. That the print comics will finally be sold as the sort of premium, collectible item for those that want that (and, to do this, they would need to continue to use the nice paper and covers), while they simultaneously try to sell the same content digitally to a wider, larger, younger audience. There would be huge pushback from retailers, but in the growing digital age (and with the publishing business being a smaller and smaller part of the overall IP pie at DC Entertainment and Marvel, I think the retailers have less and less weight to throw around. We'll see.
Maybe the way to move more floppies is if publishers revert to newsprint again and drop the prices accordingly.
DC and Marvel might be able to lower their cover prices somewhere between 50 and 75 cents (depending on the price of paper that week) if they went back to newsprint. How many people would rather pay $4.25 for a 20-page newsprint comic versus $4.99 for a 20-page glossy comic? On the plus side, colorists would be forced to lighten their palettes, because most of the coloring being done at the Big Two currently would really be muddy on newsprint.
Trade paperback, which almost 15 years ago when I was a bookseller was $10-$14, now being that almost makes sense, due to inflation, but also the state of the declining market. It would be ridiculous if you were talking about a mass market paperback, which used to be $5-$7. I haven't bought a brand new novel for a few years.
Yeah, that $16-18 is for the larger trade paperback format, which used to run in that $10-14 range. The smaller mass market paperbacks still run between $7 and $10, generally. But I'm seeing fewer sci-fi/fantasy authors being published in the mass market format today, so in quite a few cases it's either the hardcover or the $16-18 trade paperback.
Maybe the way to move more floppies is if publishers revert to newsprint again and drop the prices accordingly.
DC and Marvel might be able to lower their cover prices somewhere between 50 and 75 cents (depending on the price of paper that week) if they went back to newsprint. How many people would rather pay $4.25 for a 20-page newsprint comic versus $4.99 for a 20-page glossy comic? On the plus side, colorists would be forced to lighten their palettes, because most of the coloring being done at the Big Two currently would really be muddy on newsprint.
Then Marvel and DC may need to figure out how they can compete with an ever encroaching Image Comics who is still able to put out quality books with excellent printing for 60% of the retail price of some of the big two books. The printing looks great, the quality of the creators is top shelf, and the work speaks for itself. Now, of course it would mean that Marvel's executive branch makes a bit less money, and if the primary factor is greed (as is their right), then we will never see prices retreat.
Trade paperback, which almost 15 years ago when I was a bookseller was $10-$14, now being that almost makes sense, due to inflation, but also the state of the declining market. It would be ridiculous if you were talking about a mass market paperback, which used to be $5-$7. I haven't bought a brand new novel for a few years.
Yeah, that $16-18 is for the larger trade paperback format, which used to run in that $10-14 range. The smaller mass market paperbacks still run between $7 and $10, generally. But I'm seeing fewer sci-fi/fantasy authors being published in the mass market format today, so in quite a few cases it's either the hardcover or the $16-18 trade paperback.
You may have missed my earlier response, but right now the MSRP for the current sci-fi novel The Martian by Andy Weir in paperback format = $15.00
Hardcover retails for $25.
Obviously the cover price isn't the cheapest that book can be bought for.
Maybe the way to move more floppies is if publishers revert to newsprint again and drop the prices accordingly.
DC and Marvel might be able to lower their cover prices somewhere between 50 and 75 cents (depending on the price of paper that week) if they went back to newsprint. How many people would rather pay $4.25 for a 20-page newsprint comic versus $4.99 for a 20-page glossy comic? On the plus side, colorists would be forced to lighten their palettes, because most of the coloring being done at the Big Two currently would really be muddy on newsprint.
Then Marvel and DC may need to figure out how they can compete with an ever encroaching Image Comics who is still able to put out quality books with excellent printing for 60% of the retail price of some of the big two books. The printing looks great, the quality of the creators is top shelf, and the work speaks for itself. Now, of course it would mean that Marvel's executive branch makes a bit less money, and if the primary factor is greed (as is their right), then we will never see prices retreat.
Trade paperback, which almost 15 years ago when I was a bookseller was $10-$14, now being that almost makes sense, due to inflation, but also the state of the declining market. It would be ridiculous if you were talking about a mass market paperback, which used to be $5-$7. I haven't bought a brand new novel for a few years.
Yeah, that $16-18 is for the larger trade paperback format, which used to run in that $10-14 range. The smaller mass market paperbacks still run between $7 and $10, generally. But I'm seeing fewer sci-fi/fantasy authors being published in the mass market format today, so in quite a few cases it's either the hardcover or the $16-18 trade paperback.
You may have missed my earlier response, but right now the MSRP for the current sci-fi novel The Martian by Andy Weir in paperback format = $15.00
No, not hardback.
To be fair, though-- Image cover prices have been creeping up. That was something I noticed in the January solicits thread you posted. While across the line Image prices are generally lower (and there are often treats like an extra-sized first issue for $3, or a double-sized 150th issue of Walking Dead for the usual price) there are also a lot of $4 books from Image in January, and the median price seems to be getting away from $3 and up to $3.50.
So it may be the work that Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Boom, IDW, and others to train readers to accept a $4 periodical comic is getting embraced by those publishing at Image, too.
good graphic novels fetch $100 - $300 per page, although professionals who have been in the industry for a long time can command as much as three times that amount. In fact, one elite illustrator commanded as much as $1,000 a page (on a 22-page comic book)! Most of the popular titles that artists, like David Cassaday, work on are monthly issues, which end up providing him with a six-figure salary. The back-end royalties on merchandise, trade paperbacks and movie royalties are also generous.
And with current pay scales being what they are, there will not be any retreat in the current pricing and, as suspected by many of us here and in the fandom at large, the prices will continue to climb.
I think the $5 comic floppy will be the eventual tipping point that pushes sales down to an unsustainable level.
Then Marvel and DC may need to figure out how they can compete with an ever encroaching Image Comics who is still able to put out quality books with excellent printing for 60% of the retail price of some of the big two books. The printing looks great, the quality of the creators is top shelf, and the work speaks for itself. Now, of course it would mean that Marvel's executive branch makes a bit less money, and if the primary factor is greed (as is their right), then we will never see prices retreat.
Yes, the difference between the Big Two and Image is corporate overhead. If Marvel and DC didn't have large staffs housed in offices in major metropolitan cities, they could easily cut the cost of their books.
It should be noted that not all Image creators are making good money at those lower prices. Only the books selling 10,000 or more are sustainable at the $2.99 price in the long run, even with as little overhead as possible.
Who's young enough to read those smaller pocket books?!?!
:)
I feel your pain. I'm about to get bifocals. But it does vary from book to book. I do find some mass market books where the font size and leading makes it comfortable to read, though more often than not, the text is just jammed on the page as tight as possible. Having designed a few fiction novels, it makes me cringe, and as a reader, it makes me put the book back on the shelf.
Speaking of paperback novels, just read this interesting article about how, in Canada, this bookseller has seen a 20% increase in book sales over last year. Are paper books making a comeback?
Been in retail for over 20 years. Much of that in game stores or comic stores. If you have a comic shop and don't support games, you are throwing money down the drain. My dream would be to own a comic shop, the reality with the need to eat an feed my family, would be to own a game shop.
Game store profitability is way higher than comic stores. Rarely if ever did I have to sell an item for less than cost to clearance it out. Games are a perpetual product. You sell them, and reorder the same one over and over. There are enough distributors that almost anywhere in the U.S. is two day shipping at best. If a game sits on the shelf for more than a few weeks, that's expected. A few months, fine. More than 6 months start marking it down monthly until it is gone. We sold games at retail (with a 10% back in store credit system).
My store did about $750,000 in sales annually with a profit margin at better than 50% while shooting for a 3 month inventory turn rate. We sold alot of games to our regulars, but also many (especially on Black Friday) to just plain ole walk ins. I used to do a once a year event at a local Mom's group at a church titled "Playing Games this Holiday Season that You Will Actually Have Fun With" in mid to late October every year. I demoed family games and quick games. Nothing from Fantasy Flight, Rio Grande, or any of the other companies that their games take more than 1/2 hour to play (although Settlers was always tempting). I gave the ladies a coupon off any game I played at the event and that generated walk ins all through Christmas. This was one of many ways I got people to check out the store at no cost to me.
Some tips for Wild Pig and anyone else that want to start carrying games (Wild Pig already has alot of this implemented I can see from their site).
Magic singles, are a 75% profit margin item. We would buy at the same price as Star City Games online store buy list prices (25% more if you take store credit) and sell at about 10% below the same online store retail prices. Full boxes of boosters were $100 and you get the 10% back in store credit. Selling boxes are just above a loss leader. More box sales leads to more rare singles in store that you can sell for a high margin (trust me it works). This along with giving out nice prizes for Friday Night Magic (free to enter and we usually gave away packs to the top 10 finishers entry is capped at about 30 players due to space) and one other night dedicated to Magic (Wed night Commander was popular) and that store did enough in sinbgle/pak sales to have almost been just a Magic store some months.
Bigger board games. Carry the top sellers according to the trade magazines and your distributor. Also try to keep as many of the top 25 Board Game Geek rated games in stock at all times. We carried most of those reguardless of turn rates. Carring these shows the hard core board gamers that you actually care about quality as much as you do sales. Offer a 100% return policy on any game as long as it comes back in sellable condition. We would reshrink and mark down by about 10% returned games that we couldn't just reshrink ans sell as new. I cannot stress how important the refund police was. It makes people (especially casual buyers that have never heard of Board Game Geek) MUCH more likely to take the plunge on a $50 plus game. One of the biggest returns on that policy was getting non gamers to come back annually to check out the new games every holiday seaqson. I also had no problem opening games so poeple could skim the rules or look at coomponents. Your shrink wrapper is your best friend. Have a board game night. Offer a customer that loves board games (and usually already owns most them) a nice discount (we doubled his 10% back in store credit every time he ran an event) to run weekly board game sessions (now you have a board game night for free to you!).
Smaller games like Fluxx or some of the deck building games can be played at the counter or a table up near the register. Black Friday I could sell dozens of copies of Fluxx, Poo, Kittens in a Blender, Spot-it, Liar's Dice, just by having a few customers or employees sit around an play it within eyesight or earshot of walk-ins. Their laughter often sells games easier than a demo will. learn how to pitch any game in 15 or so seconds, and give a brief demo for most in about 3 minutes or less.
You love having a kids section (me too!). Many companies like Blue Orange Games make kids games that adults will LOVE to play even without the kids. CooCoo the Clown was our go to game when people came in asking for a drinking game and it's basically kids Jenga.
I could go on for hours (even after this tome of a post) and will gladly do that, if you want. I've been out of the biz for about 3 years, but if anyone at Wild Pig or other stores starting to invest more in games wants to chat me up, feel free to email me and I'll give you my number.
Lastly, please run a "Big Boy Store" as I like to call them. You know, with a computer inventory system, a real payroll as opposed to family members filling in for free on their day off (they don't want to be there and all the customers know it and feel the same way), and for heavens sake have good hours. We were open 10-9 every day, noon to 6 on Sunday. I still don't see how or why stores are closed on Mondays so often. Run a weekly Board game, Warhammer league, or Settlers of Catan Tournaments, or Magic league on Mondays and you will sell enough sodas/food/singles to make it worth it.
Great post @Ironkodiak especially since my son (11) and I finally bought a game this week. I have been wanting to get him a game for awhile but did not know when to start and I knew I would be playing with hime but I didn't have hours to play at a time. This was my perception of board games. You want something quick and playable for adults. Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon makes my head swim.
Well this weekend we went to Youmacon which is a gaming/anime/manga convention in Detroit and had a really nice time. They had a 24 hr gaming room where you could take games from their library and play. We tried out Boss Monster with one of the vendors. Its a nice short game play, 30 minutes, and it was relevant to me since its based on vintage video games. Fun game. We are going to play tonight.
He has been wanting to start buying comics off the racks but I'm like I'd rather get him a Marvel Unlimited subscription. He'll catch up in six months. There is plent for him to read. And I'd rather get a game because that $25 is going to result in hours of play that the 6 comics would not provide. And I guess expansion packs are $10. I give him the credit because he picked it out. And you do have to try the games out. I am not plucking down $45-75 for a game until I get a good feel for it and I will keep an eye out for dealers who offer trials.
Maybe the way to move more floppies is if publishers revert to newsprint again and drop the prices accordingly.
DC and Marvel might be able to lower their cover prices somewhere between 50 and 75 cents (depending on the price of paper that week) if they went back to newsprint. How many people would rather pay $4.25 for a 20-page newsprint comic versus $4.99 for a 20-page glossy comic? On the plus side, colorists would be forced to lighten their palettes, because most of the coloring being done at the Big Two currently would really be muddy on newsprint.
Then Marvel and DC may need to figure out how they can compete with an ever encroaching Image Comics who is still able to put out quality books with excellent printing for 60% of the retail price of some of the big two books. The printing looks great, the quality of the creators is top shelf, and the work speaks for itself. Now, of course it would mean that Marvel's executive branch makes a bit less money, and if the primary factor is greed (as is their right), then we will never see prices retreat.
Trade paperback, which almost 15 years ago when I was a bookseller was $10-$14, now being that almost makes sense, due to inflation, but also the state of the declining market. It would be ridiculous if you were talking about a mass market paperback, which used to be $5-$7. I haven't bought a brand new novel for a few years.
Yeah, that $16-18 is for the larger trade paperback format, which used to run in that $10-14 range. The smaller mass market paperbacks still run between $7 and $10, generally. But I'm seeing fewer sci-fi/fantasy authors being published in the mass market format today, so in quite a few cases it's either the hardcover or the $16-18 trade paperback.
You may have missed my earlier response, but right now the MSRP for the current sci-fi novel The Martian by Andy Weir in paperback format = $15.00
Hardcover retails for $25.
Obviously the cover price isn't the cheapest that book can be bought for.
Incorrect on the Martian. The paperback edition with movie cover has a cover price of $9.99.
We concluded that the price I quoted was for the large edition
Hadn't gotten that far in the thread. That would be the trade paperback as opposed to the mass market paperback. Prior to your quote above, @nweathington offered that that price was consistent with a trade paperback to you and you insisted on maintaining the $15 price point.
Since I had a copy of the MMPB sitting on my shelf, I figured I'd pull it out and offer the cover price.
Comments
Yes, it's ridiculous.
The Didio quote is certainly compelling. And they have to figure it out at some point. I think DC will have to run the across the board $3.99 for awhile (with an increased frequency of larger, special issues of popular titles like Batman at $4.99, as we have been seeing), and I think things like Dark Knight 3 are a test of a sort of premium periodical.
I can't imagine them ever coming down on the print cover prices across the board (though it would be exciting to see them try). What I expect to see within the next few years, the reckoning that I think is coming, is that at some point we will see a day-and-date price difference between digital and print. That the print comics will finally be sold as the sort of premium, collectible item for those that want that (and, to do this, they would need to continue to use the nice paper and covers), while they simultaneously try to sell the same content digitally to a wider, larger, younger audience. There would be huge pushback from retailers, but in the growing digital age (and with the publishing business being a smaller and smaller part of the overall IP pie at DC Entertainment and Marvel, I think the retailers have less and less weight to throw around. We'll see.
Hardcover retails for $25.
Obviously the cover price isn't the cheapest that book can be bought for.
So it may be the work that Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Boom, IDW, and others to train readers to accept a $4 periodical comic is getting embraced by those publishing at Image, too.
And with current pay scales being what they are, there will not be any retreat in the current pricing and, as suspected by many of us here and in the fandom at large, the prices will continue to climb.
I think the $5 comic floppy will be the eventual tipping point that pushes sales down to an unsustainable level.
It should be noted that not all Image creators are making good money at those lower prices. Only the books selling 10,000 or more are sustainable at the $2.99 price in the long run, even with as little overhead as possible.
No, I saw it. That $15 paperback is the larger, 5.2" x 8" format. I can't find a mass market edition available for sale.
Edit: The publisher has the mass market edition listed at $9.99.
:)
Game store profitability is way higher than comic stores. Rarely if ever did I have to sell an item for less than cost to clearance it out. Games are a perpetual product. You sell them, and reorder the same one over and over. There are enough distributors that almost anywhere in the U.S. is two day shipping at best. If a game sits on the shelf for more than a few weeks, that's expected. A few months, fine. More than 6 months start marking it down monthly until it is gone. We sold games at retail (with a 10% back in store credit system).
My store did about $750,000 in sales annually with a profit margin at better than 50% while shooting for a 3 month inventory turn rate. We sold alot of games to our regulars, but also many (especially on Black Friday) to just plain ole walk ins. I used to do a once a year event at a local Mom's group at a church titled "Playing Games this Holiday Season that You Will Actually Have Fun With" in mid to late October every year. I demoed family games and quick games. Nothing from Fantasy Flight, Rio Grande, or any of the other companies that their games take more than 1/2 hour to play (although Settlers was always tempting). I gave the ladies a coupon off any game I played at the event and that generated walk ins all through Christmas. This was one of many ways I got people to check out the store at no cost to me.
Some tips for Wild Pig and anyone else that want to start carrying games (Wild Pig already has alot of this implemented I can see from their site).
Magic singles, are a 75% profit margin item. We would buy at the same price as Star City Games online store buy list prices (25% more if you take store credit) and sell at about 10% below the same online store retail prices. Full boxes of boosters were $100 and you get the 10% back in store credit. Selling boxes are just above a loss leader. More box sales leads to more rare singles in store that you can sell for a high margin (trust me it works). This along with giving out nice prizes for Friday Night Magic (free to enter and we usually gave away packs to the top 10 finishers entry is capped at about 30 players due to space) and one other night dedicated to Magic (Wed night Commander was popular) and that store did enough in sinbgle/pak sales to have almost been just a Magic store some months.
Bigger board games. Carry the top sellers according to the trade magazines and your distributor. Also try to keep as many of the top 25 Board Game Geek rated games in stock at all times. We carried most of those reguardless of turn rates. Carring these shows the hard core board gamers that you actually care about quality as much as you do sales. Offer a 100% return policy on any game as long as it comes back in sellable condition. We would reshrink and mark down by about 10% returned games that we couldn't just reshrink ans sell as new. I cannot stress how important the refund police was. It makes people (especially casual buyers that have never heard of Board Game Geek) MUCH more likely to take the plunge on a $50 plus game. One of the biggest returns on that policy was getting non gamers to come back annually to check out the new games every holiday seaqson. I also had no problem opening games so poeple could skim the rules or look at coomponents. Your shrink wrapper is your best friend. Have a board game night. Offer a customer that loves board games (and usually already owns most them) a nice discount (we doubled his 10% back in store credit every time he ran an event) to run weekly board game sessions (now you have a board game night for free to you!).
Smaller games like Fluxx or some of the deck building games can be played at the counter or a table up near the register. Black Friday I could sell dozens of copies of Fluxx, Poo, Kittens in a Blender, Spot-it, Liar's Dice, just by having a few customers or employees sit around an play it within eyesight or earshot of walk-ins. Their laughter often sells games easier than a demo will. learn how to pitch any game in 15 or so seconds, and give a brief demo for most in about 3 minutes or less.
You love having a kids section (me too!). Many companies like Blue Orange Games make kids games that adults will LOVE to play even without the kids. CooCoo the Clown was our go to game when people came in asking for a drinking game and it's basically kids Jenga.
I could go on for hours (even after this tome of a post) and will gladly do that, if you want. I've been out of the biz for about 3 years, but if anyone at Wild Pig or other stores starting to invest more in games wants to chat me up, feel free to email me and I'll give you my number.
Lastly, please run a "Big Boy Store" as I like to call them. You know, with a computer inventory system, a real payroll as opposed to family members filling in for free on their day off (they don't want to be there and all the customers know it and feel the same way), and for heavens sake have good hours. We were open 10-9 every day, noon to 6 on Sunday. I still don't see how or why stores are closed on Mondays so often. Run a weekly Board game, Warhammer league, or Settlers of Catan Tournaments, or Magic league on Mondays and you will sell enough sodas/food/singles to make it worth it.
Well this weekend we went to Youmacon which is a gaming/anime/manga convention in Detroit and had a really nice time. They had a 24 hr gaming room where you could take games from their library and play. We tried out Boss Monster with one of the vendors. Its a nice short game play, 30 minutes, and it was relevant to me since its based on vintage video games. Fun game. We are going to play tonight.
He has been wanting to start buying comics off the racks but I'm like I'd rather get him a Marvel Unlimited subscription. He'll catch up in six months. There is plent for him to read. And I'd rather get a game because that $25 is going to result in hours of play that the 6 comics would not provide. And I guess expansion packs are $10. I give him the credit because he picked it out. And you do have to try the games out. I am not plucking down $45-75 for a game until I get a good feel for it and I will keep an eye out for dealers who offer trials.
Since I had a copy of the MMPB sitting on my shelf, I figured I'd pull it out and offer the cover price.