Patman

Anyone notice that Marvel has higher prices on some of their newsstand editions (a recent example is Amazing Spider-Man 572 was $3.99 on the newsstands, while still $2.99 for the direct market edition)?

Mhepburn20

I had not noticed this never really seeing the newstand editions anywhere but if Marvel ever raises their general price (or DC) I will be forced to cut down majorly or switch to dcbs which while cost effective just seems so unfortunate. I've been with my store for five years (they've been only been open six and are just wonderful).

Rogue588

As long as they don't raise the price on the direct editions, it doesn't bother me.

Bronkster

I've heard grumblings/rumors of a possible price increase, but figured it would be to $3.25. There's just no way I'll continue collecting current issues if it jumps to 4 bucks for regular comics. The money I save on not buying new comics will go towards those old issues I've been wanting.

Overall, I think it's a bad move to jump that much in one price change and will result in a lot of people giving up on comics - these are hard times we're in and if it comes down to the newest issue of Spider-man or lunch, I go with lunch.

dx23

Great way to bring in the casual reader or kids back to comics. Idiots.

Josh-da-man

The newsstand is a completely different market.

One, the unsold stock is returnable. So Marvel (and DC and whoever) have to eat the unsold copies. That's going to drive the price up.

Two, the newsstands don't want to deal with anything that's priced too low. From the store's point of view, why should they stock $2.99 comic books when they could use that space for $3.99-$5.99 magazines.

That said, I think that before 2009 is over, the base price for direct market comic books will be $3.99. Marvel will raise their prices across the board, and DC will follow suit a couple of months later. The way both companies have been quietly kicking a lot of their cover prices up to $3.99 lately seems to indicate that they're preparing to move in that direction.

hitmanjules

The price of everything but salary go up.

$3.99 for a comic you can read right there on the rack is not going to fly.

Bronkster

"Hey, kid! This ain't no library!"

boredsilly

$3 seems to be about as high as a modern comic should be to me. I love the things, but $4 seems insane. If you only read one, two, or even three titles then I think a person could justify it. But it seems like most comic fans read more than that. That shit gets ridiculous with the quickness.

cousindave

the floopy needs to be treated as a loss leader - unless the publishers start selling more ads in them. The profit should be coming from the collected editions, and story arcs should then be "animated" and sold on iTunes (and disc) like Watchmen. The publishers are able to sell the same work in 3 different formats - that's the future.

cousindave

Oh I'm pretty sure when the average marvel was $2.25 (direct market) the newsstand editions were $2.99 - this is for titles like Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Uncanny X-Men, etc...

Houstondon

One, they will eat a lot more comics with higher prices. Do newstands still cut the top off to submit or are the whole books sent back in (we used to get the cut up ones cheaply at local dealers)?

Two, they should consider the profit margin of selling quantity vs having a lot more comics that sit there to be returned (zero profit margin).

madcougar

I feel like a jackass paying $2.99 for a new comic book. The day is coming when I am going to all but abandon this hobby based on financial reasons. I just can't afford it anymore.

macnorton

I did that not too long ago. I personally feel the big boys have been slingling crap for a long time (oh don't get me wrong, there are some good ones in there) but the smaller companies have better stuff. But, $3.99 for crap or quality is why too much. I don't need fancy paper, news paper is fine as long as the art and story are good. But that is just me.

stingermck

Lucky for me I read 1 Marvel title, and use DCBS.

Zbu

This is why I collect the hardcover editions. I'd love to get single issues but given how fragile they are and how much they cost, the hardcover editions are much better. And I'd rather wait.

Superboy

Yet another reason why the comic industry is slowly dying and becoming little more than a mine for movie properties.

slop101

Yeah, as we covered in the other thread, a 25-cent comic form the early '70s, adjusted for inflation would only be $1 today. So even $3 is a rip-off. There's no fucking way I could justify paying more then $3.50 per issue, regardless of how much money I make.

Heck, the big Omnibus books only come out to $2 per issue (after discounts) and they're oversized, high-quality hard-cover books with no ads. So it's absolutely ridiculous to pay that much more for floppies.

darkside

I still remember when they went from $1.00 to $1.25. I don't know why, but that price jump pretty much ended my love of comics. I was a young teen with little cash and it seemed liked they were starting more and more to price them for adults instead of kids. With all the crossovers they started doing in the late 80s and early 90s I could no longer afford to keep up with all the storylines and started dropping books one by one till I was no longer buying them at all.

If paper is the issue then maybe comics can no longer survive as a paper medium. I find it hard to believe they sell any at all at $2.99 much less $3.99. Maybe their digital thing will catch on, but I certainly don't see comics ever returning from the minor niche it is left in. Kids don't read them anymore and eventually the older fans are going to die or move on to other hobbies.

davidh777

That's my downer thought for the day

fujishig

We should probably look at the increases in other forms of entertainment too. For instance, I don't go to the movies very often, but movie ticket prices seem sky high compared to what they were when I was a kid. Of course, they're not really suffering in terms of fan attrition. The less popular comics are, the less are printed, and the more expensive it becomes to print each copy. And I'd like to think that writers/artists/etc. are compensated much more fairly than they were back in the day, but who knows?

Josh-da-man

That's the way I've heard the newsstand situation explained by people close to the industry.

The newsstand vendors and distributors really don't want to deal with low-priced items like comic books. The publishers, like Marvel and DC, want to keep up at least some newsstand presence in order to hook new readers.

I agree that it's counterintuitive, but it looks like the only compromise that the publishers and distributors seem to be able to make.

I have to wonder, though, if Marvel and DC want a newsstand presence, why they don't just produce magazine-sized Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, etc., magazines aimed at younger readers. Make them about eighty pages, include three comic books in each issue, and sell them for $4.99.

fujishig

Magazines are done the same way... the stores aren't supposed to sell them, but they return the torn covers for refunds on unsold stock and pulp the rest. Super inefficient. So it wouldn't be saving them any money. Also, magazines are propped up by advertisements, which are largely sold by the number of subscribers.

Although this may quickly be changing, they should have done manga-sized collections: as books, they could be in the system for a longer time then magazines, they could be reordered, and they take up less space than the larger American collections. Of course, I always wonder just how many people actually buy them... there are a ton of kids lounging around reading them on the floor of the bookstore, but how many spend their hard earned money on it? Either way, 10 bucks or less for a volume beats 4 bucks for an ad-filled pamphlet. I understand that the marketing is different (manga volumes being pretty much reprints) but you'd think they could use this to have a presence in the bookstores since comics are far from the impulse buy they used to be due to price.

I've always wondered how a book store, for instance, figures out which monthly comics to stock up on. It always seems like a random collection. When I was in college, the local bookstore was the only place I could get comics for a couple of years, and I missed a ton of issues just because they either did not get them in, or they were torn to shreds by the time I got there.

slop101

X-Men: Ghost Boxes (issue 1 of 2, direct-market edition): $3.99 for 16 pages of story/art.

un-fucking-believable...

stingermck

Heres a good article abour price increase, and brief mention of floppies VS trades:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=18625

"...comparing the rate of price hikes for comics to the rate of inflation over the last 31 years, and comics prices outpace inflation about 3:1'"