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On Having to Pre-Order Comics to Save Them (or "Die Industry, Die!")

Read an epic rant over at The Outhouse where the author takes to task Brian Bendis and other creators who blamed the cancellation of industry darling David Walker's 'Nighthawk' series on comic fans not pre-ordering the book like they're supposed to instead of on the possibility that people just aren't interested. The Outhouse writer, Jude Terror, insists that
the belief that fans need to support books by consuming them in the way most convenient for the publisher is a joke. Terror has a counter proposal to the Brian Bendis method of saving comics: "only buy comics you want to read, buy them in the format you prefer (trade paperback, digital, discounted back issue), and make the decision to buy them whenever you feel like, not based on Diamond's final order cut off. And if books are canceled and the industry declines because of that, then maybe that's exactly what the industry needs in order to learn that it's their responsibility to evolve their business model to meet the needs of the market, not the other way around."
I have to agree.

Excerpts from londongraphicnovelnetwork.com
The biggest problem with Bendis banging the pre-order drum is that he’s only speaking to and about people already reading comics, with no eye towards building the market to a scale that could support a book like Nighthawk. Terror estimates that there are 100, 000 readers being regularly served by the direct market. I don’t know how plausible that is, but assuming he’s correct that means that there were four issues for every reader of Harley Quinn’s Rebirth debut. This means that they’ve hyper saturated the market in an unsustainable bid for market supremacy. The same could be said for the 300, 000 issues that Marvel shipped of Black Panther, which puts things in a much starker light when considering Nighthawk’s fortunes.

Marvel putting such a tremendous amount of their resources behind blanketing stores with copies of Black Panther far beyond demand means withholding those same resources from the rest of the line. A red carpet was rolled out for Black Panther that included a shock and awe campaign beginning with the announcement of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates in the pages of the New York Times. On the surface, it looked like a bold move on Marvel’s part that sought to redefine their image in the public eye, but when taken against the reality of how comics are bought and sold, looks a lot more like empty posturing.

The New York Times is a massive platform to launch a comic from that will attract an incredible amount of attention, but that attention begins to wane once people realize what it takes to actually find a place (i.e. a niche comic shop) where they can buy it. Imagine if Bendis had appeared on The Late Show the night following the Coates announcement to explain to a national audience that they would have to hunt down a comic book store two months before the first issue’s release date and give a code to the clerk to reserve their copy and to either place a standing order there or repeat the process ad nauseum just to keep it from disappearing into the ether? Is this a viable model in today's consumer culture?
Any counter-proposals or thoughts on the pre-order method, other than "this is how it works now"...?

Read the whole rant here:
http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/features/136167-die-industry-die-or-why-letting-comics-fail-is-the-real-only-way-to-save-the-industry.html

Comics Beat's scolding rebuttal:

http://www.comicsbeat.com/kibbles-n-bits-83116-comics-industry-is-in-its-death-throes/

Then The Outhouse's re-rebuttal:
http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/features/136176-doubling-down-comics-is-burning-and-im-playing-the-fiddle.html
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Comments

  • CaptShazamCaptShazam Posts: 1,178
    edited September 2016
    I like the pre order method. If I pre order on line or in a LCS, I save some amount of money allowing me to buy more books. There has been times I have been burned by pre ordering books that turned out bad. The amount of that happening is small enough that I consider it an acceptable risk.

    I only buy stuff that interests me though. If a new book sounds good, I will preorder it. I am not buying something just because the publisher hypes it as the next great thing.

    Maybe pre ordering is not the best way to go for launching new books. I think the problem goes beyond just comic books though and represents a flaw in the entire entertainment industry. Movies, tv, music, comic books, etc, are all largely judge by how they perform with the first episode, issue, 1st week sales, etc. If you do not hit it big out of the gate, you are considered somewhat of a failure.
  • SolitaireRoseSolitaireRose Posts: 1,445
    edited September 2016
    Comics are currently making more money than they have since 1997.

    Yeah, it's all falling down around us.

    And the whole "Let's get comics into grocery stores" argument shows incredible ignorance. DC had lost newsstand distribution in HUGE sections of the Midwest by 1985 because the sales were so low, and the "dollars per square inch" factor was the smallest in publishing.

    But yeah, let's go back to that method of printing 3 books to sell one. It worked out well for TSR's book publishing arm...
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    Oh, I don't disagree with your rebuttals so much as I'm inclined agree with this snarky retort above:
    Imagine if Bendis had appeared on The Late Show the night following the Coates announcement to explain to a national audience that they would have to hunt down a comic book store two months before the first issue’s release date and give a code to the clerk to reserve their copy and to either place a standing order there and repeat the process ad nausea just to keep it from disappearing into the ether? Is this a viable model in today's consumer culture?
    Is this the way to attract new readers? And is Bendis right to blame the cancellation of Nighthawk on readers not pre-ordering the book? What supposedly motivates the average comic reader to pre-order a book 'sight unseen'?
  • I haven't read the whole rant or the rebuttals yet, so I'll keep this brief until I have a chance to go through them.

    Marvel and DC are not forcing readers to pre-order. They are forcing retailers to pre-order—just like any other business in any other industry. Pre-ordering is not the issue, it is merely a symptom. The real issue is returnability.
  • TorchsongTorchsong Posts: 2,794

    Marvel and DC are not forcing readers to pre-order. They are forcing retailers to pre-order—just like any other business in any other industry. Pre-ordering is not the issue, it is merely a symptom. The real issue is returnability.

    Pretty much this. If anything I feel for the LCS owners who have to pretty much know their clientele enough to crystal ball how much to order of anything.

    I've never felt pressured as a reader to pre-order anything I didn't want to read in the first place. Sure, a book will fail due to poor readership, and yeah, sometimes that's a real loss for everyone.

  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    edited September 2016

    I haven't read the whole rant or the rebuttals yet, so I'll keep this brief until I have a chance to go through them.

    Marvel and DC are not forcing readers to pre-order. They are forcing retailers to pre-order—just like any other business in any other industry. Pre-ordering is not the issue, it is merely a symptom. The real issue is returnability.

    Returnability is the elephant in the room. DC has been playing semi-nice in this regard. What Bendis is telling readers is that the reason the comic books were cancelled is because readers didn't pre-order the book. I personally pre-order. I don't use an LCS for pre-ordering. I order directly from DCBS.

    Of course, Bendis isn't going to blame retailers for cancellations because that might be too much like "biting the hand that feeds you" (except that's the retailers, the consumers, and the publisher). Instead, he shames the readers who were sad about a book being cancelled by telling them they should have pre-ordered the book.

    Is it the consumers' job to pre-order a book to prevent it from being cancelled now?


  • CaptShazamCaptShazam Posts: 1,178
    edited September 2016

    I haven't read the whole rant or the rebuttals yet, so I'll keep this brief until I have a chance to go through them.

    Marvel and DC are not forcing readers to pre-order. They are forcing retailers to pre-order—just like any other business in any other industry. Pre-ordering is not the issue, it is merely a symptom. The real issue is returnability.

    Returnability is the elephant in the room. DC has been playing semi-nice in this regard. What Bendis is telling readers is that the reason the comic books were cancelled is because readers didn't pre-order the book. I personally pre-order. I don't use an LCS for pre-ordering. I order directly from DCBS.

    Of course, Bendis isn't going to blame retailers for cancellations because that might be too much like "biting the hand that feeds you" (except that's the retailers, the consumers, and the publisher). Instead, he shames the readers who were sad about a book being cancelled by telling them they should have pre-ordered the book.

    Is it the consumers' job to pre-order a book to prevent it from being cancelled now?


    I do not think it is our "job" to pre order but as a primary trade buyer, I know the best way to ensure something I want gets published is to pre order it, especially if it is something that may be on the bubble regarding sales.

    The next trade of Batman is going to get published. The rerelease of the 90's Starman Omnibus vol 3 had no such guarantee. DC solicited it twice, not enough people pre ordered it, so DC finally cancelled it completely.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    Torchsong said:

    It's a publisher's job to make me WANT to support them by creating books I'm interested in reading.

    winner.
  • nweathingtonnweathington Posts: 6,748
    edited September 2016
    I look at pre-ordering kind of in the same way I do commissioning a piece of artwork. By pre-ordering, I’m commissioning a creator or creative team to make a comic I want. Just as with a commission, it might not turn out the way I hoped it would, but I’ve invested very little in that commission, so no big deal. If I like the way the commission turned out, then I'll commission more work from the creator(s). Pre-ordering is basically Kickstarter in its simplest form.

    I don’t support publishers. I support creators.
  • David_DDavid_D Posts: 3,884
    edited September 2016
    I think there is a lot of beating up on a straw man going on. Especially when you look at the couple of Tweets that inspired all this. I think those ranting have valid points about how pre-ordering is not the entire answer to how comics should work. But I think they are hitching it to what they want Bendis to have meant, rather than what he actually said.

    Bendis never shamed, blamed, or implied that it was the reader's *job*. Did he encourage pre-ordering, and talk about it as making a difference? Sure. And I think he believes that, and has been a publisher and knows the difference. But that is not the same thing as passing any judgment on those that don't.

    He took the opportunity of a loudly-bemoaned, largely unordered title to remind those in his own sphere doing the bemoaning of the best way to support their favorite titles is to preorder.

    Those that want to turn that into his saying that readers *must* do this, or that is how their relationship to every title or every publishers has to be, or that other readers are therefore doing it wrong, are spinning to beat up on the straw men they want to beat up on. Big mean old Brian Bendis is telling you how to live your life again with his all-powerful tweets, that suggest that pre-ordering has an influence on the market. What a bully! He suggested I pre-order comics! I don't even read comics, I just follow comics writers on Twitter!

    What I see his handful of Tweets on this is a reminder to those who are bummed that something they like is gone have the option to be proactive in supporting the next title that is their favorite.

    And the premise that instead of reminding already invested comic readers (his Twitter followers) Bendis should have instead spent that same 30 seconds growing the audience of potential comic readers by influencing non-comic reading strangers to read comics neither understands how Twitter works, nor does it take into account that growing the overall readership of comics as a medium is not the burden of any one creator.

    He's one writer reminding his followers on Twitter that pre-orders matter. And for that he's the problem? Because those tweets didn't instead fix the whole comic industry? That is some real backbending on the part of those who must have found themselves with a slow outrage news day.

    TLDR: Saying 'you can make a difference' is not the same thing as saying 'if you don't do this it is your fault.'
  • RedRight88RedRight88 Posts: 2,207
    If you really want to bring in new readers, putting comics back into grocery stores isn't the way to do that. The fact of the matter is kids today don't really want physical media; they want things they can look at on their phones/tablets.

    The future is in digital comics, the comic companies need to look into making the digital comics cheaper than the physical copies. I know that's irksome to most people, but it's the way the world is going.

    As for Nighthawk, maybe Marvel could have promoted it a little more (did he show up on Ultimate Spider-Man, Avengers Assemble, Guardians of the Galaxy?). Maybe do some animated shorts on Disney (or Disney XD) website or even YouTube. Heck, do a :15 ad on YouTube. Maybe that would get kids attention.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    edited September 2016
    Personally, I don't blame a lack of pre-orders for David Walker's Nighthawk getting cancelled. I blame it on it just not attracting readers, being too on the nose with its politics, and its writer insulting a large percentage of the potential audience. He got 5 issues to find an audience, and once issue 3 is out, all us pre-ordering types have finally had a chance to sample what we took a chance on, sight unseen.

    The onus to keep a book from being cancelled is on the creators, not the consumers. And if the consumers want to voice their sadness, then yes, ask them why they didn't preorder it. I'm somewhat certain that a great many of them actually did, in fact, preorder it, just not enough to overcome its abysmal sales numbers.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    edited September 2016
    On the other hand, manga titles like Attack On Titan are putting out several million copies of their books worldwide, and I don't even know who publishes it or who the creators are.

    There's a good argument to be made that Marvel & DC superhero comics are no longer even the mainstream. If Nighthawk sells around 16,000 copies and Attack on Titan is selling in the millions, there's a paradigm shift that's happened.

    But manga is a topic better commented on by @Torchsong, @Mihawk, @mwhitt80 and the like...
  • Personally, I don't blame a lack of pre-orders for David Walker's Nighthawk getting cancelled. I blame it on it just not attracting readers, being too on the nose with its politics, and its writer insulting a large percentage of the potential audience. He got 5 issues to find an audience, and once issue 3 is out, all us pre-ordering types have finally had a chance to sample what we took a chance on, sight unseen.

    It didn’t attract readers because it’s freaking Nighthawk. You’ve got a writer who’s just starting to make a name for himself, and an artist who no one knows (and who’s sort of a Frank Quitely/Chris Burnham imitator), working on a third-tier character for a publisher with 50 other (more marketable) titles. And I heard literally nothing about this book outside of the announcement of the creative team back before the series launched. Nothing.
  • nweathingtonnweathington Posts: 6,748
    edited September 2016

    On the other hand, manga titles like Attack On Titan are putting out several million copies of their books worldwide, and I don't even know who publishes it or who the creators are.

    There's a good argument to be made that Marvel & DC superhero comics are no longer even the mainstream. If Nighthawk sells around 16,000 copies and Attack on Titan is selling in the millions, there's a paradigm shift that's happened.

    But manga is a topic better commented on by @Torchsong, @Mihawk, @mwhitt80 and the like...

    If you’re going to talk worldwide sales, that shift happened probably as far back as the ’70s if not earlier. I think Astro Boy was probably outselling every US comic back in the ’60s.

    If you want to keep the discussion within the US, Renee Telgemeier is where mainstream comics are at today. Her books are in every public library and hundreds of elementary and middle schools. She is to the newest generation what Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams were to my generation. But manga certainly is part of the discussion as well.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    edited September 2016

    Personally, I don't blame a lack of pre-orders for David Walker's Nighthawk getting cancelled. I blame it on it just not attracting readers, being too on the nose with its politics, and its writer insulting a large percentage of the potential audience. He got 5 issues to find an audience, and once issue 3 is out, all us pre-ordering types have finally had a chance to sample what we took a chance on, sight unseen.

    It didn’t attract readers because it’s freaking Nighthawk. You’ve got a writer who’s just starting to make a name for himself, and an artist who no one knows (and who’s sort of a Frank Quitely/Chris Burnham imitator), working on a third-tier character for a publisher with 50 other (more marketable) titles. And I heard literally nothing about this book outside of the announcement of the creative team back before the series launched. Nothing.
    Yes, that's what I meant by "not attracting readers", the character was handicapped by lack of popularity, but again, that was covered in the Outhouse rant. It's a salient point, but that doesn't seem to matter to Bendis or Walker, or apparently Marvel, who launched the book to initial orders just north of 30k. I'm just addressing what these creators are implying. Curiously, Marvel are launching a couple of more third-tier character books. Guess they figure one of them will hit or maybe they have a strategy or agenda in mind. Hopefully those creative teams won't blame readers when their books get unceremoniously cancelled too.

    As for Marvel and DC books in the worldwide market, aren't they available globally? I must admit that Attack on Titan snuck up on me. Had never heard of it, but kept seeing dozens of cosplay at cons, and it was already a manga sensation long before it showed up on my radar. 60 million copies dwarfs 16k.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    As for return ability of comics, although Marvel doesn't offer it, ComicChrin looked at the sales numbers over the last year of books that WERE returnable and it turns out that the median returnable comic book in 2014-15 wound up eventually selling 10% more copies than Diamond initially reported. Either retailers didn't return any books, the excess came from reorders, or (most likely) some combination of the two — but for half the returnable books in Diamond's charts from 2014-15, their calculated 10% reduction wound up being erased by sales. I find that to be very interesting.

    Hopefully Marvel is paying attention.

  • No one is saying the obvious here: Nighthawk is not a character that enough people know or care about to order a comics series. It sold poorly before it came out, so any discussion of quality or lack thereof is moot. Omega the Unknown by Latham was a brilliant book that sold poorly because...come on, it's Omega the Unknown.

  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967

    No one is saying the obvious here: Nighthawk is not a character that enough people know or care about to order a comics series. It sold poorly before it came out, so any discussion of quality or lack thereof is moot. Omega the Unknown by Latham was a brilliant book that sold poorly because...come on, it's Omega the Unknown.

    Actually the articles I posted DID mention the lack on name recognition of Nighthawk. Did you read them?
  • mwhitt80mwhitt80 Posts: 4,637
    Nighthawk, he was in the Loners right?
    (Just kidding I know he was a part of the New Defenders ;) )

    As for manga, I dabble a little more than most but @Torchsong devours. Your comment made me think of @John_Steed; I miss Werner.
  • No one is saying the obvious here: Nighthawk is not a character that enough people know or care about to order a comics series. It sold poorly before it came out, so any discussion of quality or lack thereof is moot. Omega the Unknown by Latham was a brilliant book that sold poorly because...come on, it's Omega the Unknown.

    Actually the articles I posted DID mention the lack on name recognition of Nighthawk. Did you read them?

    No one is saying the obvious here: Nighthawk is not a character that enough people know or care about to order a comics series. It sold poorly before it came out, so any discussion of quality or lack thereof is moot. Omega the Unknown by Latham was a brilliant book that sold poorly because...come on, it's Omega the Unknown.

    Actually the articles I posted DID mention the lack on name recognition of Nighthawk. Did you read them?
    Yes, but the one that started it all off didn't. And since we got into the political leanings of the writer, I felt it was important to return to the core since the number of people who care about the political leanings of comics creators can meet in a nice sized hotel room and still have room for all of their hurt feelings.

    I am the most lefty person on the board, but I still read work by Chuck Dixon, Mike Baron and others. If you restrict what you read because of politics, you are no better than the person who blocks people on twitter because they don't go to the same church you do.
  • mwhitt80 said:

    Nighthawk, he was in the Loners right?
    (Just kidding I know he was a part of the New Defenders ;) )

    As for manga, I dabble a little more than most but @Torchsong devours. Your comment made me think of @John_Steed; I miss Werner.

    I think this version is the one from Squadron Sinister. The one from the Defenders has been relegated to crowd scene status since no one knew how to write him but Steve Gerber.

  • DoctorDoomDoctorDoom Posts: 2,586
    edited September 2016

    mwhitt80 said:

    Nighthawk, he was in the Loners right?
    (Just kidding I know he was a part of the New Defenders ;) )

    As for manga, I dabble a little more than most but @Torchsong devours. Your comment made me think of @John_Steed; I miss Werner.

    I think this version is the one from Squadron Sinister. The one from the Defenders has been relegated to crowd scene status since no one knew how to write him but Steve Gerber.

    I thought this one was from the Mark Waid's Squadron Supreme. Though I haven't read the title yet. I could be wrong.
  • TorchsongTorchsong Posts: 2,794
    mwhitt80 said:

    As for manga, I dabble a little more than most but @Torchsong devours. Your comment made me think of @John_Steed; I miss Werner.

    All I can really add to the manga discussion - and this is hardly news - is that the majority of manga get printed weekly in massive, inexpensive (relatively speaking) phonebook anthologies printed on cheap paper that are designed to be thrown out or recycled when you're done reading them.

    So just imagine that:
    - Weekly comics
    - An anthology of different stories where creators are maybe only producing 5-10 pages, not 22-24 for their stories.
    - People throwing their comics out when they're done with them!?! (Not everyone does this, of course).

    But the idea is from these anthologies publishers figure out which stories are worth collecting into tankobon (those cool digests lining the Barnes & Noble shelf) and which aren't. Most of these phonebooks include a mail in card or online survey where fans write in to tell the publisher which stories they enjoyed, which they didn't, etc.

    This occurs every week.

    I can barely remember the last time DC reached out to their fans (it was a survey maybe 5-6 years ago?) and I don't know that Marvel has ever done it (someone out there feel free to correct me)...to ask "Hey, what are you guys really enjoying from us?"

    I don't think the Japanese model works in America. As much as I'd love weekly comics in a big disposable book, I think the cost would be prohibitive.
  • David_DDavid_D Posts: 3,884
    edited September 2016

    mwhitt80 said:

    Nighthawk, he was in the Loners right?
    (Just kidding I know he was a part of the New Defenders ;) )

    As for manga, I dabble a little more than most but @Torchsong devours. Your comment made me think of @John_Steed; I miss Werner.

    I think this version is the one from Squadron Sinister. The one from the Defenders has been relegated to crowd scene status since no one knew how to write him but Steve Gerber.

    I thought this one was from the Mark Waid's Squadron Supreme. Though I haven't read the title yet. I could be wrong.
    Close-- I think Waid might have done a later volume. But this version of Nighthawk started in Supreme Power (a Squadron Supreme reboot, alternate Earth, and a MAX book) by JMS and Gary Frank. The character ended up in the 616 as part of the Secret Wars fallout, I think.
  • TorchsongTorchsong Posts: 2,794
    To throw another iron in the fire...where I think bigger companies ARE doing well is online. Or at the least they're getting there.

    A while back I subscribed to ComiXology Unlimited. I wanted a platform where I could read funnybooks on my Kindle Fire and Marvel Unlimited isn't there yet. The Comixology model is also a bit different - books don't just stay up there. If something's not getting regular reads, they take it down to make room for other books. In addition, complete runs aren't always up there. Sometimes it's a drug pusher deal - first few books are free, then you KNOW whether or not you like it, and you should probably scoot out and support the book with your money.

    I like this model so far. Without it, it's unlikely I would have ever picked up something like Archer & Armstrong. After poring through the first two volumes of the series, I'm convinced it's one of the best books I have ever read IN MY LIFE. I want it in paper format. I want to read more Valiant books now (I pretty much only picked up Quantum & Woody up to this point).

    Without some kind of legal online presence, I'd likely never have bothered with it. And what a loss that would have been for me.



  • mwhitt80mwhitt80 Posts: 4,637
    Geez on a serious note, I actually confused Squadron Supreme's Nighthawk with New Warriors' Night Thrasher.
    My previous comment is 65℅ less good upon that realization. My bad guys.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967


    If you restrict what you read because of politics, you are no better than the person who blocks people on twitter because they don't go to the same church you do.

    I agree and think this is a very appropriate topic for another time or thread perhaps.
  • bralinatorbralinator Posts: 5,967
    Torchsong said:


    I can barely remember the last time DC reached out to their fans (it was a survey maybe 5-6 years ago?) and I don't know that Marvel has ever done it (someone out there feel free to correct me)...to ask "Hey, what are you guys really enjoying from us?"

    I think this would be great, if there were action taken with those findings.

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