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On Having to Pre-Order Comics to Save Them (or "Die Industry, Die!")
bralinator
Posts: 5,967
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
Excerpts from londongraphicnovelnetwork.com
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
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.Any counter-proposals or thoughts on the pre-order method, other than "this is how it works now"...?
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?
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
Comments
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
On another thread I talked about ordering the Alpha Flight Hernia-Inducing Omnibus. I do believe if there weren't enough pre-orders for it, Marvel would likely not print it, and I'd get a credit on my DCBS order down the road. Both of the big companies are reaching into their back catalogs of late to ride a wave of nostalgia - I'm a fan of this, btw - and I think pre-orders play a role there.
Now that's a collected edition of material from a bygone era.
If I was told my lack of pre-ordering was preventing an ongoing title - particularly a big-name book like Batman or X-Men - from regular publication, I'd laugh and say "Make better books" to any publisher bemoaning it. You're obviously not doing enough to entice me to pick up a monthly book from you.
By that same token, small press and indie titles thrive on the pre-order. I know if I don't back Athena Voltaire by Steve Bryant, I'm not going to get to read it. Bryant has actually said in interviews that "Pre-orders are the lifeblood of independent publishers".
This is all a long-winded way of saying no, it's not my job to support a publisher with my money. It's a publisher's job to make me WANT to support them by creating books I'm interested in reading.
I don’t support publishers. I support creators.
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.'
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Hopefully Marvel is paying attention.
(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 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.
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.
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.
My previous comment is 65℅ less good upon that realization. My bad guys.