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The majority of $3.99 DC Comics will drop back to $2.99 in January, as announced Thursday afternoon by the publisher.
This news means the effective elimination of the company's "Second Feature" back-up stories, that ran in 40-page titles including Action Comics and Detective Comics. Additionally, $3.99 32-page comics that featured the traditional 22 pages of story will now have 20 pages of story for $2.99.
In the company's official press release, co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee stated that the move is a reaction to fan and retailer complaints that $3.99 was too much to ask for a single issue of a comic book.
Though, the drop to $2.99 seems to come with a drop in story pages from 22 to 20:
....ongoing titles, previously priced at $3.99 for 32 pages/22 story pages, will be priced at $2.99 with 32 pages/20 story pages
Last edited by BobBretall on Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
About a half an hour after the DC announcement Marvel Senior Vice President of Marketing & Sales David Gabriel, who was speaking at the ICv2 Conference on Digital & Comics at the New York Comic Con, stated that because of growing revenues from the sales of digital comics, Marvel would be able to reduce the cover prices of a number of its print titles starting in January of 2011. Gabriel did not name the titles that will be affected.
So it looks like both Marvel and DC are backing away from the $3.99 price point.
My concern is that sales will continue to go down, the price hike will be shown not to be the cause of the sales drop and prices will go back up.
The bottom line is that the publishers/creators need to do a much better job at justifying the price of the comics. The issues need to have more story content in them (which does not mean more pages, just better use of the pages). If they tell great stories, we tend not to be that concerned about the price point. It is when the story is only "ok" that we seem to start putting a ceiling on the price we are willing to pay for the title.
I was not that bothered by the 3.99 price point. The price point pushed me to pick up the trade on a few title. Like John I do wonder if this will really help the 2nd or 3rd tier titles that seemed to plummet over the last year. I also wonder if the Marvel spokesmen was actually telling the truth. It would be a good sign if both companies really were picking up some steam on the digital market.
spid wrote:I was not that bothered by the 3.99 price point. The price point pushed me to pick up the trade on a few title.
I think this is consistent with DC's general policy of pushing monthlies over trades (or, at least, trying for the double dip). DC is much worse than Marvel about getting trades out shortly after a monthly storyline is over. Where Marvel is typically 6 months or so (or less), DC is typically over a year (or more).
With the new price drop, I'll bet we'll find now that DC comics will be clearly cheaper to buy in monthly form rather than TPB form. I think that's smart - b/c it seems the writing is on the wall for monthlies (I hope not, though), in favor of trades. But I also think it's two different types of markets - admittedly with a lot of overlap - so that it makes sense for a publisher to push BOTH of the markets, rather than give one up. I think this price drop helps DC do that. and from a consumer POV, if you don't care much about the format, and are keyed on the content, this is a great move.
JohnMayo wrote:So it looks like both Marvel and DC are backing away from the $3.99 price point.
My concern is that sales will continue to go down, the price hike will be shown not to be the cause of the sales drop and prices will go back up.
The bottom line is that the publishers/creators need to do a much better job at justifying the price of the comics. The issues need to have more story content in them (which does not mean more pages, just better use of the pages). If they tell great stories, we tend not to be that concerned about the price point. It is when the story is only "ok" that we seem to start putting a ceiling on the price we are willing to pay for the title.
This is the key point that publishers need to hear. I was thinking about this while I was reading Fantasic Four 583 last night. That issue could've easily been done in 20 pages. It was a good issue and it's already 2.99, but there's a lot of close-ups of characters faces without any dialogue. A little more could've happened in that one issue.
About a half an hour after the DC announcement Marvel Senior Vice President of Marketing & Sales David Gabriel, who was speaking at the ICv2 Conference on Digital & Comics at the New York Comic Con, stated that because of growing revenues from the sales of digital comics, Marvel would be able to reduce the cover prices of a number of its print titles starting in January of 2011. Gabriel did not name the titles that will be affected.
I think this is a total BS smokescreen.
The REAL reason Marvel is considering dropping prices is:
a) Because DC did it (obviously this has been in planning for a while, not just since the DC announce yesterday, so more likely since they got wind that DC was considering this "on the grapevine")
MORE LIKELY REASON:
b) Because sales were dropping on print comics
I in no way believe that if sales were strong at the $3.99 price point they would have EVER considered dropping back to $2.99.
Making growing revenue from digital comics would just be more money in their coffers, it is NOT a reason for a business to drop prices elsewhere out of the kindness of their hearts.
What a bunch of douches at Marvel. At least DC said they were doing it out of realization that fans were having a hard time with the $3.99 price.
AND.....Marvel is not doing it "across the board" like at DC, but only on "select titles".
Last edited by BobBretall on Fri Oct 08, 2010 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"I think this is the first time in history that a major comic publisher has 'rolled back' prices nearly across the board," said Mike Wellman, owner of The Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach, Calif. "Hopefully it will force the competitors to reconsider their prices as well."
According to some retailers, their customers have scaled back purchases on comics that are priced at $3.99. "At $3.99, I've seen many ancillary titles get dropped from pulls and wind up clogging the shelves," Wellman said.
"People keep dropping the $3.99 Marvel titles," said Charlie Harris, owner of Charlie's Comic Books in Tucson, Ariz. "At least the DC books that were $3.99 gave extra pages that weren't reprints that no one asked for
Note the difference between the positions of DC and Marvel:
DC:
In the company's official press release, co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee stated that the move is a reaction to fan and retailer complaints that $3.99 was too much to ask for a single issue of a comic book.
Marvel:
About a half an hour after the DC announcement Marvel Senior Vice President of Marketing & Sales David Gabriel, who was speaking at the ICv2 Conference on Digital & Comics at the New York Comic Con, stated that because of growing revenues from the sales of digital comics, Marvel would be able to reduce the cover prices of a number of its print titles starting in January of 2011.
Both are lowering prices. But DC is doing it, or at least claiming to be doing it, because of the negative feedback from the fans and retailers in the print sales channel while Marvel is claiming the profitability of the digital market is allowing them to essentially subsidize the print sales channel. Very different positioning and both are potentially indicative of how the publisher sees the print sales channel.
Although no one predicted this move would dramatically increase overall sales numbers in the short term, their hope is that readers will try more titles and maybe, in the long run, sales will pick up as a result.
Probably the most telling reaction was that retailers reacted positively in particular to the DC Comics organization itself, expressing a feeling that the publisher cares about retailers and readers.
My main fear is that the damage has already been done. Although there are exceptions, many people don't start buying more when prices go down. Especially, if someone just dropped a title a few months ago and is not particularly missing it. People tend to be creatures of habit.
killyrcomics wrote:My main fear is that the damage has already been done. Although there are exceptions, many people don't start buying more when prices go down. Especially, if someone just dropped a title a few months ago and is not particularly missing it. People tend to be creatures of habit.
We'll see. Personally, I'm going to be picking up a few titles again I had dropped due to the $3.99 price point. Can't say what fans in general will do, though. However, lots of people (myself included) were vocally unhappy about the price increase and did drop books, so given that they seem to have listened, I'd be personally hypocritical not to go back and give stuff another chance I dropped due to price. (No favors for stuff I dropped due to not liking the story).
An interesting thing that Jim Lee says (that is kind of a challenge to fans) is that they are giving fans what they wanted (lower prices) now it is a challenge to retailers &fans to show them that it matters & he wants to see excitement for comics and circulation to rise if they keep the price points low (I'm paraphrasing, this is about 50 seconds in).
In general, Lee & Didio came off as pretty sincere.
Just my own personal opinion, but Quesada came off sounding kind of jerk-y.
Spent some time talking about how he isn't involved in pricing & it's in marketing's hands, then about how digital sales will allow them to lower prices on some books (which would imply that if a $3.99 book is not available & selling well digitally, it will not go down in price. He went on to say he didn't think retailers would really want the prices to be lowered (They don't want to hurt retailers by lowering the prices), and took a few shots at DC.
I dropped a lot of my books which went to $3.99 and probably... will not be going back, even with a reduction in price.
My concern is with the smaller publishers that don't have a corporate partner (WB and Disney) with deep pockets to support a drop in cover prices. Most of the smaller publishers raised prices to cover publication costs and reduction in readership (I am guessing on this one).
The question I have is can Image, Boom, IDW, Oni Press etc. follow the big two and reduce prices?
will not be going back, even with a reduction in price.