Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 246
Are Books Getting More Expensive Or Am I Getting Poorer?
A SLOW ONE
Greetings from Belfast. This has been a place I’ve wanted to visit for a couple decades and it’s been fulfilling to finally see it. I stayed in an area I’m told still has some sectarian concerns, but all I saw was working people. Maybe they wait for the Americans to leave. The city was cool. Very grey but I like that there’s some hills in the near distance to give you something green to look at.
I’m not ready to announce the things I got cooking, and I’m a bit too fried to pontificate much. So this will be a laid back newsletter. Welcome.
COMIC NEWS: PUBLIC EXECUTIONS CONTINUE
A comic art dealer has pissed off his clients and they dropped him. But instead of doing that quietly by changing the “original art sales via ____” in their bios, they opted to tar and feather the guy on their way out.
I don’t know the parties involved have no investment in how they arrange their businesses. But I really do hate a public murder.
For comparison. There’s a couple people that when I see them, they can expect I’ll slap their faces. I try to get along with everyone. But, you know, life is long and things happen. So we’ll sort that out whenever it happens.
Did you notice I didn’t say their names here? That’s because I just don’t believe in that. I’m 1000x more likely to roll around a parking lot with someone I’ve got a problem with than ever air them out publicly.
I’ll try not to put a moral judgement on it. Maybe it’s a matter of preference.
PRICE CONCERNS
Confessing some fascination with Kindt and Torres’ SUBGENRE, a title they’re doing for Dark Horse. I enjoyed the first issue, which reminded me of the self-aware genre examinations/dissections from Hine and Kane though less over-the-top. I’m indifferent to the magazine format. Those dimensions look GREAT as a hardcover, but on floppies it’s whatever.
The part I find so interesting is the price. $7.99 for 24 story pages. This is something to examine.
Comics, I imagine like most businesses, are about sales floors and sales ceilings. Right now there’s a number of titles at Dark Horse that ‘should’ be at Image. That is to say, the books are from creators who’ve worked with Image in the past and the titles would do better sales at Image. I cannot speak to the specifics of anyone’s relationships. I do not know if these books went to Image first and were rejected or terms couldn’t be agreed on, or whatever. People have preferences, on both sides of every equation. I do not know and I won’t speculate. But what I do know is that the floor AND the ceiling at Dark Horse is lower than Image. So if Image was an option there would have to be a very convincing other reason to do creator-owned work at Dark Horse.
I understand that, for certain creators, Dark Horse is willing to mirror the Image deal in meaningful ways. Ok. But again, a failure at DH is a worse failure (in raw sales numbers) than any at Image and a success at DH is not as big a success. This is not a knock against DH, by the way. I admire a great number of their books. It’s just the reality of the market and does not reflect on anything else. So back to the deal, let’s say you’ve got a gun-shy creative team that worries they won’t sell enough at Image to make the type of money they’d like. Or perhaps they need an advance to complete the requisite two-three issues Image asks to you have in the can before solicitation. And perhaps Dark Horse is willing to pay SOME type of page rate or advance. Even if that rate is ultimately lower than what one would receive on the backend of a decent-selling Image title, it’s safe. And people do have families. Let’s operate on this premise for a minute.
Here’s where a touch of cynicism hits, and I wanna be very careful about whose motivations I impugn here. Comics are a hard business and there’s more than one way to ‘win.’ But I worry that if top talent is entering deals WITH the knowledge that their work will reach fewer people, we’re entering a true Netflix Era. A certain class of creators is constantly accused of writing for Amazon. Pitches in comic form. And there’s some truth to that. Even the greats did/do it. And for some, maybe it is one way to win.
But damn is it not gonna help comics.
Crowdfunding is another way to win. You reach 1/10 the readership or less that you would by going to the direct market, but, potentially, you make more money. Families to feed, etc. Understood. But it is very difficult to leave any type of impact on the market OR medium through the avenue of crowdfunding. And that’s not to say these books “don’t matter.” The mainstream creators/editors/etc who assert that crowdfunding “doesn’t matter” are strung-out on cope, desperate to feel better about their own weightlessness. And they will have to adjust their thinking sooner than later. But there is no doubt you will reach fewer human beings.
Now, back to SUBGENRE, is it possible there’s a low (relatively speaking) ceiling for Dark Horse books from Kindt and Torres? Yes. But is it also possible that like crowdfunding, the floor has been quantified and now marketing is simply a matter of making sure the low number of people who want this book are aware it exists? Yes. Very possible.
Let’s say 4000 people want SUBGENRE, and they will buy it regardless of price. Could be $2, could be $10, and they’ll buy it. So why would you not price it at $8? It’s not a greed move. A book could not sustain at 4k with a $4 price. But at $8? Lights are staying on, at least for the creators.
I think that’s entirely cool. Except it actively pushes away new readers. Nobody who doesn’t already love Kindt or Torres is picking up a book for $8 an issue. So there’s no hope of expanding these titles. Now I’m really not saying it’s anyone’s job to put the market on their back, but I worry.
It’s hard for me to criticize here because I think if you’ve got a vision you’d like to see realized, you should find the avenue to do that. Sometimes that will be lower sales. That’s just the way things go. Maybe not every idea needs the biggest possible platform. I just fear (and this does not apply to SUBGENRE) that if some of the name brand guys are happy with lower sales in exchange for free-and-clean Netflix pitches, we’re in a bad way. And if we all jump off the ‘DM as an arena / only the strong survive / biggest sales wins” mentality, the DM will shrivel and become pure hobbyist in nature.
I’VE GOTTA GO
I really wanna talk about character attractiveness and if it matter, what genres it may be more important, and if it’s something to break away from. But I’m in motion and typing on this computer sucks with it on my legs. Best of luck this week. Be productive. I’ll be doing my best to. Do for self.