I went to the New York Comic Convention this past weekend. In between wandering the show floor, meeting authors, artists, and book store owners who had booths there I decided to take in a couple of panels on the state of the comic industry. While the comic industry is slightly different from the book industry, there were still a few things discussed that I feel have merit for bookstore owners to think about. This is in part due to the fact that bookstores and comic book stores do cater to somewhat similar clientele, but when a bookstore gets especially specialized (I’m thinking of stores like Bakka-Phoenix, a Toronto-based science-fiction bookstore, or the Sleuth of Baker Street, a mystery-genre specific store) it can start to run into similar issues to comic stores.
At one of the panels I attended there was a discussion about DC comics dropping the price per issue by $1 to $2.99. One fan asked why Marvel doesn’t do the same. The response from one Marvel writer, Peter David, was vociferous: “we can do that if you want your local comic store to go out of business.” He then went on about how the price of comics rises with inflation and that the cost-per-unit that the storeowner is paying would not change. If they start undercutting the brick-and-mortar store’s price there is going to be more trouble with retailers. DC did this price cut by quietly dropping 2 pages per issue, thereby allowing them to charge the retailers less per issue.
Other panels felt more like focus groups with the audience being asked more questions than the panelists were. The panelists at one panel, on the future of DC comic’s digital sales initiatives did reveal some interesting figures that I hope would help convince bookstore owners that they don’t have to fear the eBook. What was found was that by starting titles in a digital environment then moving on to a physical sales environment the sales were extremely high on what had been previously low selling material. In the case of the comic industry they were talking about selling single issues of low selling books online only, then selling them as trade collections in stores. This is something that I can see the book industry doing. In fact, it seems that some are already doing this. Amazon currently offers a self-publishing service where it will provide eBooks of your book, taking a certain percentage of the profit, of course. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if soon those books that are offered up via the Amazon self-e-publishing and sel extremely well end up being printed and sold as physical books.
What the consensus seemed to be was that publishers do not want the bookseller to go out of business, they want to find a way to combine the digital and the print publishing industry in a way that a) keeps their retailers in business and b) earns everyone money. They floated ideas to the audience such as paying an extra dollar for a book and getting a digital copy (like is being done with DVDs right now). [As an aside, I suggested this idea to a friend of mine about a year ago and he shot it down, so I feel vindicated right now.] The audience agreed that this was a good idea, since they like the convenience of a digital format, but, as one audience member put it, they were into books as “a fetish item.” They want to have the physical books. This is true of book buyers, not just comic book buyers, as well. Another audience member mentioned he was hesitant to buy digital books because “it’s not really ours.” All the consumer is buying is a license to view content, they don’t have the physical volume, and it seems that is very important to people. I know that I have been hesitant about buying eBooks simply because I would miss having the physical book afterwards. Jim Lee, of DC Comics, agreed that there was an issue with the “sense of ownership” of digital comics. He likened it to the difference between seeing a classical painting and seeing a picture of a classical painting.
In attending these panels I discovered something that I think you will all like to know: Book Sellers Do Not Have To Fear the eBook. Dan DiDio, co-publisher (along with Jim Lee) of DC comics stated that in the marketing of print versus digital formats it isn’t VHS vs. Beta. They aren’t trying to determine which will “win” they want both to succeed.