Marvel and DC's Digital Comic Book Strategy in the US is a disaster... but it doesn't have to be.
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- Опубліковано 14 лис 2020
- Comic book publishers in the US have absolutely failed to create a coherent digital strategy... which is shocking considering the clear and simple to follow business plan that other regions are using to generate success. Part of the problem lies in the false argument that the collector market, that prefers print, must somehow accept a move to digital... which does not need to be true. Why do the big US publishers like Marvel and DC continue to blow this business, and what is the strategy that will be successful and not a disaster?
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An editor at DC famously whined on Twitter that he saw all these kids on their phones instead of reading comics. He saw that as a problem instead of an opportunity.
Talk about thinking backward. I bet he was laid off. 🤣🤣🤣
@@Madbandit77 I bet he was promoted
@@turtleanton6539 Yikes.
The biggest factor in me starting to buy digital was the fact that i just don't have the room to own everything i read.
To be fair, if you told Marvel or DC that Shonen Jump has Discord they'd probably think that you mean that they're in a fight with someone.
Ha! 100%.
Amen, Perch. They are not the same customers, and the problem is for the industry, they cannot rely on acquiring digital customers with any help from print customers / collectors. For once, they are going to have to actually market a product in order to create a market. This is why the digital numbers haven't moved, except for Batman 😉.
Great video. Will be using it to inform our marketing strategy over at Animated Concepts.
Thank you!
Enjoyed what you've had to say on stream Mr Dargan. Looking forward to supporting your new venture Sir!
@@simonbarnett8668 Thank you, sir! I hope it wasn't all gloom and doom as we sometimes accused of being 😁
Since Day 1 Comixology was clear that digital is a rental service. Not ownership. Yet you pay the same price. The reason why the collectors don't like digital is due to the fact: 1. You don't own the comic book. 2. You can't re-sell the comic book for a profit. This is not as prevalent as the Japanese market. 3. I've never heard anything negative about digital from a comic book shop yet.
Exactly. And it's not just that way with comic books, it's all digital media. Don't remember the specifics, but Amazon is actually facing a class action lawsuit right now (or was) because a bunch of people who built digital film libraries had them taken away. And in Amazon's response they said the suit was baseless because in the fine print of the TOS it says you don't own what you buy, it's a license. Collecting is a great hobby, but it's an expensive one, and people understandably don't want to sink hundreds if not thousands of dollars into something that could be taken from them at the drop of a hat.
It’s all about promotion and presentation and marvel and DC are doing a horrible job at that when it comes to digitals. Basically their way of handling digital is that they say hey here’s tens of thousands of books on our app, check them out. They don’t try to help new readers get into their product. They don’t promote books to get people into reading comics digitally and most importantly they don’t bother trying to create reading orders. At best they put some important events and story arcs together so you can access them but that’s it.
Another aspect that hasn't really been brought up is that, possibly, the digital comics market isn't as interested in superheroes.
That’s mostly true... the key is the digital market is so new, young and small that we really don’t know what it will go for. A bigger variety than superheroes for sure... but we’re talking about a tiny sample size right now.
It seems like a big opportunity for digital would be licensing things like Fortnite and Minecraft for digital exclusives. Frankly, they strike me as being the modern equivalent of G.I.Joe and Transformers. If someone licensed those and built a format friendly to start phones as well as tablets with a child friendly cost the market could start to grow very quickly. These aren't properties that attract the interest of modern comic collectors so there probably wouldn't be as much backlash about being digital only at a lower price point.
I do agree that digital comic books should be cheaper than print because they're not spending money on paper or printing ink. I guess I'm a weird digital comics buyer because I mostly by digital comics because it's a convenience and it's not taking up space in my house. I only buy print TPB as hardcovers when it's books I really liked and have it as a collector's item on my book case because I want to show off to people what books are worth reading. :-P
The collectors' market will always exist. If anything, I would think it makes the rare more valuable to them. I can easily Google an image of Mona Lisa, yet people still visit The Louvre. Apple Music did this two decades ago with the Beatles and then figured out they had more to gain without sacrificing the vinyl market.
My beef with digital is that it cost the same as paper copies (last I checked).
What are the publishers playing at?
marvel does have unlimited which already has features the shonen jump app doesn't so I don't see why they wouldn't just upscale the price and get in the newer comics
Yeah I was initially hesitant to read manga on my phone but when I actually did, it wasn't inferior. In fact, I started reading more manga on my phone. Digital reading is so much more convenient where it makes consuming content (manga/anime/comics) that much easier. Whether I am on a train or in a situation where I only have access to my phone (lunch break/airport/plane), having the option available to access content opens up such a massive opportunity. In the 25 minute train/bus ride, I can watch an anime episode on my phone or read several manga chapters. Now that I have dived into the digital experience, it's weird not to continue consuming content without it.
It would be crazy for companies not to embrace the digital experience. This is why youtube and mobile gaming are so successful. People have free time on their hands and they want to use it consuming something. If comics don't make themselves available, people will be fine sticking with youtube/gaming/manga/anime.
Really interesting listen Perch. I’ve gone digital for the last 8+ years on ComiXology and get a physical collection if it’s a story I enjoy. Space has always been an issue for me where digital works easier to access so much on a tablet.The idea of owning/renting digital comics doesn’t really matter to me as long as I have unlimited access to what I have bought, but I do feel digital should be cheaper than physical comics.
That's exactly how I do it. Glad I'm not the only one lol.
I like the picture of Pooh & Piglet, it makes me think it's Perch & Wes from Thinkng Critical heading off into the deep woods as Perch instills his vast knowledge of comics to his young, eager padawan.
More like Perch & Rich Johnston, Perch trying to show Rich the way of actual journalism, research and analysis.
@@crimsondragon18 Haha you gave me my first laugh of the day. Thank you!
Marvel should have a comic section on Disney Plus
TO SUM IT UP
JAPAN : Business first & a priority
They consider the entire world as a huge market place for their products and publish good stories accordingly also promote them through online apps and good anime adaptations.
They don't wait for the film industry or Netflix to save their asses.
--------------------------------------------
US : Culture, representation, LGBTQ+, diversity, body positivity, no more sexy female characters and politics first.. business doesn't matter much.
Caters only to specific groups of people in the US who are not even die hard comic book fans to begin with and they don't care about the world market or most of their own reader base any longer.
PS : and they question why comic book is dying? Lol how dumb can you get? the answer has always been right under your noses. Tbh the US mainstream comic book industry especially MARVEL and DC are doing everything WRONG.
Look at a manga scans website. See how many works of various genres you will find. Romcom, action, drama, comedy, slice of life, shounen (young male audience), seinen (male adult audience), shoujo (young female audience), josei (female adult audience), yaoi and yuri (for LGBT audiences). .. manga has always aimed at all audiences and the Japanese industry is much more successful than the American one.
American comics have basically focused on the same genre of superheroes and the same characters that everyone has had enough of for almost a century. Marvel and DC haven't done a good job, but trying to reach a new and different audience is not a mistake (just look at what the Japanese do).
@@viniciusporto9863 I am fine with american superhero characters and shared universes as long as they are written well. Sadly Marvel and DC writers are so lame these days that 99% of them ruin characters.
I do think your basic argument that digital and print customers are different is completely wrong. Not sure what younare basing this idea on. I am someone who owned 4,000 comics over 20 yrs and went fully digital because I don't want to deal with physical anymore and I would bet there's a lot more folks like me than people who have never collected in the past and just discovered comics when they went digital.
Every new comic (and only the comics sold to shops) should have a QR code inside that allows you to obtain a free copy on digital. That way, people can support their LCS AND get day and date. It's technically a BOGO, thus increasing it's value.
Thanks for breaking this down in an easy understandable video. I don’t know why we have to reinvent the wheel. We should learn from others.
I loved comixology when it first started. App was clean, easy to use and you could make purchases directly from it. From the moment Amazon bought them the service was destroyed. The App is a nightmare to use and worse they managed to break its basic functiionality - the reading interface. Forcing aspect ratios and fixed text sizes makes the reading experience horrible. Don't get me started on how utterly awful the "smart" view is. I never use it anymore and I invested heavily in going digital when it Comixology first started.
So how come Perch is not at Marvel, DC, Image, or the mainstream companies. They should hire him!
That would be an admittance of ineptness.
At this point I’d do this job free. It’s a very simple job.
Excellent run down. Another factor in this death spiral comics is in but doesn't have to be is price. In my heyday of comics of 1970 a comic was 15 cents which means you could buy 30 comics a month for about $5. Factor that up to 2020 prices and it's about $33. I thought comics were too expensive for me when they were 75 cents and monthly comics were 5 times more expensive at about $25 a month. Factored up to 2020 that's about $60. What is the price of 30 comics today, assuming you're only doing $3.99, it's $120. This is while netflix is about $10 and Shonen Jump which gives you about as much reading as 30 comics per WEEK for $2 a month. I don't know the answer for the current companies. What might happen is they'll get their "death of comics" they're afraid of and a generation after these companies are gone there'll still be comics but not by these companies. Maybe the successors will have bought out all the logos and characters and they'll still be around. Maybe not.
Lol the only person I heard "it's a different culture" was from Pele on that discussion stream you had with EVS on Thinking Critical
I collect print, trades, graded comics, and digital. Simultaneously. Soooooo
I personally prefer digital, I think it's better in every way. However, I always buy my favorite books. I plan to buy all the Ultimate Spider-Man omnibuses because I love that story. I recently got the 6th Young Justice Book because it is one of favorite runs. I own the entire run of Naruto which was hundreds of dollars. Viz has gotten most people to use their official website and app because they get translations out relatively quickly. Only a few fan translation groups are able to beat them by a few days, so most people just stick with official most of the time. On top of that Viz has a huge back catalog that only costs $2 a month to read. Viz's service is convenient and easy to use which is why they've succeeded in the US digital landscape.
If you think "Manga is doing great" then you don't really know their struggles. Both sides are fighting phones and the internet for attention. It's easy for a kid to get addicted to phone games and iPhones alone have millions of free online games where you can play for days on end... Comics does not contain any addictive factors for new generations that can compare to that. Marvel movies didn't boost comics sales, they did boost video games sales tho.
I totally agree with you on this video as some who collects and have the jump app this video is the truth
I wanted to try the ComiXology unlimited subscription, seemed fair for $5.99 / month, b/c It would allow me to read up on comics I cannot easily get here in Europe (or for a lot more money).... turns out you can only get it with a US issued creditcard! This means they are excluding European and Japanese fans, which is potentially a large digital reader audience because hardcopy ownership (collecting) is less important. I can get the Marvel digital subscription.... but that’s only Marvel comics for $9.99 / month ....no thanks!
I know that this is an older video, but I just feel compelled to point out that Shonen Jump not only releases the first three chapters for free, but also the three *most recent* chapters for free, ie you never have to spend a dime to read your favorite series unless you fall behind. They also average about 15-20 pages per week on most books.
Excellent video. Got my mind going...
We should talk soon. :)
@@ComicsPerch anytime!
A few things to mention or quibble about:
A. The $ 120 million revenue that was talked about could be worth $ 300 million in print if done in the Diamond model since around the Retailer and Distributor cut lops off around 60 points --- so close to DC already?
This is dependant on the platform costs and transaction fees of the monthly, or is it yearly costs --- but you don't have the printing costs in digital. I'd be interested to see this costed out.
B. Marketing costs for digital plummets, you can bulk e-mail catalogues out to everybody for next to nothing, along with a website rah-rahing your product.
C. Tablets that work on digital platforms are available as low as $ 200 (on sale) eg. RCA's with 10.5 & 11.6 inch screens.
My take is that digital are for readers ( that can wait ) and print is for mostly for customers who think that they are going to make money off of floppies, or customers who intend to re-read the issues --- and they usually end up buying trades or hardcovers.
And yes, Digital, or any other form of cheap, consumible type product is a great way to get new customers into the market, and then upsell them into trades, hardcovers, or any other upscale product.
P.S. Nobody has ever been able to explain to me how you get a bunch of collectors into the market without them being readers first --- with the exception of the speculator imbeciles who have screwed up the market !
Great points... and to add to you #1... when you bring in the print sales (which most estimate at over $150m) and trade sales (which most estimate at over $200m) the company as a whole is absolutely over most US companies in revenue. The fact that they are getting there with digital alone is shocking.
@@ComicsPerch Thanks.
One last point .... Ad revenue ! When you can deliver 5 million sets of eyeballs to an advertiser you can charge a good buck. When the number is 20 million it gets really profitable with a capital P.
The Big Two lost a huge amount of Ad revenue around twenty years ago that they have never recovered --- let's face it, the reason they have so many house ads is because they can't sell the space.
Toss the Ad revenue into Shueisha's print and digital money and you'll probably have a net income that would make Marvel or DC cry !!
Hope somebody from the publishers is reading this, and has watched your video !!
Not only that Shonen Jump constantly looks for potential series that could be the next big hit and they leave no stones unturned to ensure their mangas sell in millions or multi millions on a monthly basis. Even going so far as to making good anime adaptation deals for the said series with potential so that it can become even more popular worldwide. A terrific example of this is MHA and the recent JUJUTSU KAISEN anime. Their popularity is soaring even more due to anime and in turn manga sales are seeing a considerable increase.
I have seen people world-wide love watching DC's animated series and movies. Justice League Apokolips War animated movie alone inspired many to check out Rachel Roth and Justice league comics. This is a small example..but this is an excellent method as well to make your franchises popular worldwide.
I don't think that is the case. Japanese industry works in synergy. You finish an anime season, get curious to know what happens next and buy the manga. A new reader.
American industry confuses its audience. You leave the cinema after a DC movie, buy a comic and get 60 years of chronology that doesn't make sense and infinite retcons. You are interested in the stories that the DCU/MCU/animations showed you but that is not what you find in the comics. It is no wonder that despite the success of these characters in cinema and other media, American comics didn't get more readers.
I have 4000 plus marvel comics. I now am predominantly digital buying omnibus hardbacks only now physically. Comixology is superb - a great digital solution
Some good points. But isn’t DC trying some with $1 digital first line. Of course I’m one of the few that has both DC and Marvel digital platforms. I still spend $50 a week on floppies, $4-12 for my daughter. DC dropping the ball by pulling their digital platform from TV. I enjoy sitting on my couch and reading comics on a big screen. I’m seeing DC and Marvel titles in Manga form. This is stupid, represents some of that same backward thinking. My generation and older wont fully accept digital. We grew up with daily paper at doorsteps. Younger generation don’t care for that and don’t have the same nostalgia for paper products. My baseball card collection be damned. I loved it as a kid. It brought my dad and I closer. I’m trying that with comics with my daughter. Big difference is I’m not trying this as an investment. Using it to get my daughter to read. I’m an outlier in the market. We consume digital where we both have copies in hand and read from it like a play. I use digital cause the events got to crazy to collect. I wait 3/6 months and don’t have to buy it all. Please the Empyre then X swords not King in Black. Too many. And in this digital formate I can read the issues I like and the one I don’t, I don’t waste money on. It such a dumb business approach. The amount of Marvel title I buy is just what Cates is putting out. Was Deadpool too, but that is godawful and GOTG is only getting bought for sentimental reasons.
Perch you should have gotten paid for the gems you just laid out. Damn that was a clinic!!! Salute!!!
The thing I've noticed about comic book readers in general is that they're non tech nerds.
Not that they don't use tech but in the sense that they're very late adopters of tech roughly 10 to15 years behind the curve when it comes to tech. With a large segment that is routing for any new tech to fail as you said. That is until they finally cave to it.
Also diversifying the stories a bit wouldn't hurt (real diversity not skin colour). In Japan each magazine is centred around a target audience and perhaps some themes related to those audiences. Boys = adventure, power of friendship, action, coming of age, romance; older boys/men = horror, psychological thrillers, action, romance, philosophical; Fantasy = supernatural/magical world, action, high fantasy/Tolkien, Harry Potter; Etc.
If the comics companies opened up more for new IP with new stories (not superhero) from passionate dedicated authors they'd do great!
me: Okay let me see where to start off to understand which series is the first chapter.......
*open dc digital comic.................. and all random comic book with no plotline comes and fall in*
me: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tbh while you might be right most comics are subpar nowadays so what’s it matter if it’s digital or physical?
I used to be all for digital, and I still think it's an interesting convenience, but I'm heavily going back to physical media in both film, animation and comics in regards to back issues and manga.
The "I don't know what to do" model, that's always been *my* business strategy. XD
This was an incredibly insightful listen! Very interesting! I really hope someone in the American comics industry listen to this and dust the SJW off their sandals and moves forward to excellence!
Comics has long been out of american pop culture. The last time it was, was for a brief moment from early to mid 90s when it captured millions of readers world wide. The influence was massive that my small backwater of a town in a small third world country had 5 bookshops selling american comics and now it seems like the people have never heard of comics.
What's funny now is that old comic guys sneer at this period, not realizing that the comic readers now keeping the industry alive were lapsed readers from the 90s who returned back to their hobby. I myself was a reader till the end of the 70s and then came back early 90s and then stopped again by the entry of 2000s, I just came back again to comics about 3 years ago but just buys tpbs, omnibus, comprendiums or deluxe editions now.
Great video essay. I completely agree with almost everything you said. I wonder if some higher ups realize this at DC/Time Warner want to implement this kind of strategy and that is part of why they put that new guy in charge of DC and are purging a lot of the old executive staff.Also, I think we're expecting something to come from Marvel or DC, but I think this is a great opportunity for one of the smaller companies. Maybe Crossgen was just a few decades too early?
One thing I disagree with is that when I was in japan, I lived there for ten years from 2006 to 2016, technology was way more expensive than in the US.
Great video ! . I have that digital $2/mo SJ subscription and want to comment 2 additional things: (1) it’s everything, new, old, and everything in between vs the partial subscription Comixology unlimited or DCU and a la carte purchases for most and new things. (2) they found a way to stream comics. Comixology and DCU loads at an unbearably slow rate if not downloaded. . And I didn’t process how this made sense until you outlined here how digital is truly additional to the print sales.
It’s because they actually hired technical people who know what they are doing! Steaming and cloud management isn’t hard, but it’s a skill.
it sounds like the model you have laid out would be great for one of the smaller publishers to convert to or a new company to start with as this model.
It strikes me that digital offers all kinds of opportunities for extras that would be otherwise impossible; i.e., select digital editions could include the original pencils, etc.
And I would jump all over a real digital model; at the moment I don't buy any floppies, buy trades from discount retailers. In other words, I don't use a comic shop in the first place.
That is the core of the problem we are treated like an either or option.
I prefer print since I am one of those people who has sought comfort in the simpler times represented in the Golden, Silver and Bronze Age eras. Also, I hate dealing with DRM encumbered digital media, so the only digital comics I've bought were the DVDs from several years ago that had the PDFs of comic runs like the Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Star Trek comics so I could have them on whatever device I wanted without having to worry about having an internet connection to get them there. They were decently priced and I didn't have to worry about the publishers coming back at some point down the road and take them off device on a whim. Also, I find reading digital comics is increasingly harder on my eyes the older I get. The contrast of the printed collections is much easier to read. I wish we had more affordable e-reader devices with color e-paper, especially if it was the same size as the iPad air. That would be my ideal platform for reading digital comics.
This is one of your best video yet. Well explained and argued. Success in digital will bring in new readers, and will help the print readers as well, not to mention merchandise avenues and licensing.
Thank you!
Well, what people other than collectors do US comic publishers see as potential customers, and how interested are those groups in existing superhero comic brands?
Well, just judging from the films there is a strong interest in superhero content... from people not touching comics.
At the end of the day It would take someone who cares and believes in digital to make digital successful and if that person also knew a fare few successful creators and could convince them they probably could have a really successful publisher similar to image at its start
The other thing that the big publishers fail to understand is that many of the readers who do like digital are already getting their fix from webcomics. And yes, you can argue that the quality of most webcomics isn't pro-standard, and that's obviously true. But the point is that webcomics are free. Thirty pages a month (if the comic is updating daily as many do) of as many comics as you like. For free.
Charging $4 or $5 per month for twenty pages online, just isn't going to persuade that particular market that it's good value for money. (Especially when the quality of comics like Squirrel Girl and America Chavez was little better than the webcomics they were already reading for free anyway!)
Secondly, the content that webcomic readers are seeking from their online comics is completely different. Just as many DC and Marvel fans turn their noses up at the slice of life or yaoi/yuri genres, many webcomic readers look down on mainstream superhero comics with disdain. It's precisely because the mainstream wasn't catering to their needs that they turned to digital in the first place.
Same goes for the gaming industry Perch. With the move towards digital distribution of games, gaming companies and publishers will more likely release their latest titles by download only. Not just the issue of ownership comes to mind but also the convenience of having the physical game in hand let say for reinstallation purposes. With games now hitting the 100+ GB in size this is an extreme inconvenience to customers in wasting time (and internet bandwidth) to redownload them. Even though this is not a real problem in comics, comic collectors who put value in their collection would definitely lose out. With what's happening with DC and to a lesser extent Marvel right now it's a wonder if the industry will survive.
Hey Perch I must be one of the few like print and digital. I read both. I enjoyed both.
Yeah, I'm the digital customer, even though I started collecting comics in the 80's. I've completely transitioned.
I am a print customer, but I try to be open minded.
What I don’t understand is why people treat this as a zero sum game. They act like we have to get rid of physical comics and go digital right now. You can have both. Not only do you not have to get rid of physical comics but there isn’t a reason to get rid of them. They are making plenty of money and are collectible.
It sounds like what DC is planning to do.
I felt bad for you during your exchange on Thinking Critical. It was clear you knew what you were talking about yet you got interrupted again and again. I like your input on this. My children read of off tablets like my wife with here Kindle while I never will. My son and I both read comics, but he would move to digital.
Thanks, Perch, I don't really care about Western comics anymore. You've ruined me lol
A non logical : when you buy a DVD from Marvel or DC. At a certain price (if you live in USA) you get the free download of it also. ( not fair for me in Canada but we are not even an aftertough with our only 32 million )
I colected comics for close to 40 years. It payed for my daugther's collège...for real. And still have many doubles of the sold ones.
Then late 90s. Just decided the stories art, and espacialy the prices ( 2.99 USA is 1.20 more here, 5.99 USA is 8.40 sure in the 70s when our dollar was worth more we paid "" even"" LOL)
So i stopped buying paper except those i always loved the most.
Why not do like the DVD and include a digital copy? Surely $$$.
I do use comixology cause i prefer older comics. Its not perfect, but im older and money is not something i make a lot on pention.
Si digital on tablet or even laptop gives me what i need mostly now. But man some of the comics in digital you have to use the zoom so much it Will never be as much fun .
They have done a free digital copy with the floppy... but it was often under marketed and really only worked for the people who were already interested in going that direction. It didn’t catch any new audience, and didn’t move others.
Well done, Perch. The West has already accepted the only thing that is culturally unique about Manga - the content. As you say the rest is business etc. I just can't see Marvel or DC changing 20 to 30 years of their way of doing things, I don't see them as being that reactive. Comixology is a typical dotcom - it wasn't ever designed to sell comics it was designed to sell Comixology to a big name.
i see that DC is pushing little by little the manga approach
Yeah