Hooboy, this is something I've been meaning to cover forever so sorry for the thread.
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
Recently Didio and some other folks at DC mentioned their trades didn't sell very well in 2018. There is a reason for that. DC is bad at how they handle trades. https://t.co/IVYLxJprnX
Marvel, Image, and everyone under the sun typically releases trades a month after the final issue. DC waits six months. And in an industry that relies heavily on FOMO to sell copies, waiting six months essentially makes the trades obsolete to anyone trying to follow the story
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
This heavily discourages audiences who enjoy reading in trades. Also it hurts ongoing series because trades are the quickest way to catch up to a series if you want to get into it.
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
Let's say you want to get into a Marvel series. Buy the trade, then if you want to keep reading you're only one, two, maybe three issues behind.
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
At DC you read a trade you could still be 6 issues behind at minimum, ten or eleven at most. You can't expect people to track that down
So you try and trade wait at DC eventually you just say "Screw it, I'm tired of being almost a year behind. Either I'll drop this series or I'll just jump in to the single issues and try and figure it out."
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
And I haven't even brought up hardcover trades. Marvel still does this from time to time but for the most part they realized "Oh nobody wants to pay extra for hardcover collections of five random Spider-Man issues."
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
DC on the other hand still thinks "Yes $25 for a hardcover of five random Batman issues. Sure it cost more than the single issues thus negating the main reason to buy trades, but don't you want to proudly display the hardcover edition of Part 2 of City of Bane in your library?"
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
Sorry for going on this long tangent but having recently bought hundreds of dollars in comics for our Best of the Year lists I just had to deal with DC's befuddling trade practices because these poor business practices extend to their digital side as well.
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
Marvel, Image, almost every other company - Our digital trades cost much less than our physical books and we discount the single issues within when the trades are released
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
DC - Our digital trades are discounted by about two bucks and single issues stay at the same price for years
Just to drive that home about 1/5th the books I bought for the Best of the Year list we're DC, but that 1/5th cost as much as the other 4/5th combined.
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
So point is, yes, DC's trades haven't done well recently because DC doesn't know what they're doing with their trades. Everyone else has figured it out for the most part but DC is still way behind.
— Aaron Bishop (@ProfessorThorgi) January 12, 2020
You know, I was planning to add my own commentary to this, but honestly, I think @ProfessorThorgi covers pretty much everything! I'm just left wondering what the hell they're thinking over at DC!
2 comments:
Holy crap this is dumb.
This makes DC's legendary fumbling over price increases, many decades ago, seem like a reasonable, modest error in comparison.
Kind of makes you think the "Has DC Done Something Stupid Today?" counter should be reset on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
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