Direct Market Continues to be Schroedinger's Cat of the Comics Industry

Comics Alliance's lead blogger, Laura Hudson, just put up a great essay on the continuing demise of the direct market. Go give it a read now if you've yet to see it.

I wish I had the historical background (or the time to look up the relevant info) to compare this to the previous publishing extinctions like the end of the pulp novel era or the, for all practical purposes, death of short story magazines, because I've got a hunch there are going to be a lot of parallels between those and what we're going to witness in comics over the next decade or so. Just like we still see short fiction magazines today, we'll still have periodical-length comic books with us for a while, but they're going to become an ever-dwindling portion of the market, a curiosity read by only the most devoted and nostalgic fans.

Recent circumstances for me have led to me switching from someone who usually waited for trades to someone who now, for the first time on any kind of regular basis, is making a weekly stop to the comic store to pick up the week's new releases. And, to be perfectly honest, as a reader I found my previous approach much more satisfying. So I'm not exactly going to be shedding tears if the trade paperback becomes the standard method of release for new comics material.

But the point raised in the piece that's really got me thinking is what this is going to mean for comics publishers trying out new talent. To jump back to a comparison, it used to be that writers trying to establish themselves would start out getting short stories published and then work their way up, but with the increasingly diminished role of short stories today that's often no longer the case. Without weekly comics as a proving ground for new artists and writers, are companies going to be willing to take a chance on publishing a new graphic novel, perhaps equivalent to 4-6 issues in length, from otherwise unknown creators? Is the web and competitions like Zuda going to become the new proving ground? Or are risk-averse publishers going to hold on tight to established creative talent whose names sell books and lean more heavily on them for material?

Also, I'm going to encourage anyone reading this to jump in with comments on Comics Alliance as you see fit. To keep up to date with the site's articles, you can follow either the Twitter feed and/or the Facebook group.

More on Diamond Policies

Robot 6 rounds up more reactions and predictions about what the new Diamond threshold will do for publishers and direct market retailers.

Comics Reporter gets a few interviews on the subject.

Lying in the Gutters offers a very readable explanation of the difference between the threshold increase now and the one in 2005.

I don't want to weigh in too heavily because I'm entirely an outsider at this point (if only someone who ostensibly contributes to this blog could weigh in with the perspective of a small retailer... if only), but I do want to point out that Diamond isn't acting to crush the dreams of hopeful cartoonists. They're making a business decision. It can be hard and sobering to face the economic realities of art and it's frustrating when you're more interested in the suffering fringe than the relatively robust mainstream, but economy can't support everyone. Perhaps, small press publishers will band together and create a separate distribution service loosing Diamond's virtual monopoly. Perhaps, everyone will flee into the burgeoning graphic novel market or turn their businesses online.

Some will adapt. Some will be causalities. Things will change. That's the reality.

New Diamond Policies

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2009/01/19/new-diamond-policies-expected-to-have-massive-effect/

Heidi talks with some publishers and has analysis. Small press people predict doom and gloom. This will decidedly shift the direct market landscape.

EDIT: Joe Nozemack makes a few interesting points.

A Rant About the Place of Comics in This Our Modern World

As I'm quick to point out, I didn't grow up on comics and until I was involved with the direct market, I never went into a comics store on a Wednesday. So the summer blockbuster "events" of Final Crisis and Secret Invasion came alongside my first exposure to reading new material as it came out.

Well, I've now been out of the direct market for three months and I'm behind on virtually everything I'd been reading except Final Crisis. And my reaction at this point isn't "Good goddess, I need to catch up." It's "damn, Secret Invasion is still dragging out?"

This isn't about cost- I can't even drag my ass to websites to download issues. And you might say quality is to blame, but I used to read them duly and very happily when they were at arm's length.

The real hurdles my interest faces are effort and amount of story. And I think this speaks to something larger underlying the industry and the direct market.

Television serves as an easy analogous comparison to comics, because it's similarly serialized with small chunks of story adding up to a larger narrative. But comics is a niche market, whereas television is big business. What gives?

Now, remember, television and the modern comic book both come out of the 20th century. For decades comic sales were on the magnitude of millions of copies. The explosion of superhero films shows it isn't a matter of interest in the material. People will pay money to see spandex-clad figures punch each other. But Heroes garners 13 million viewers per episode, while Secret Invasion tops charts at 1% of that number.

Well, television is accessible to me at any moment. I don't need to head out to the comics shop and hand anyone money. Hell, with VCRs, TiVo, and streaming video online, I don't even need to plan ahead when I'm going to watch. I'll point out that my alma mater, Midtown Comics, is doing well selling mail order weekly and bi-weekly subscriptions. And Marvel is putting toes in the water towards online distribution. So I think there are fixes to the issues of effort.

But (and this is the "but" I was really building towards), with television, each week I get an entire story or at least a satisfying narrative unit where themes develop and something resolves. Each week. Whole story. With comics, each month I get a scene. For taking time after work to head to a store, shell out $4, I get a snippet of story. 22 pages isn't even 22 minutes.

I think it's no wonder where the direct market stands today: teetering slowly back and forth with the explicit aim of some publishers (and merely the aspiration of others) to serve as an IP farm, selling their characters up the chain to more popular and profitable media. And who is buying comics: the fanchildren who will see their favorite characters through any storm. I don't mean to be dismissive of this group: they're ones with a lot of patience and a lot of interest. And the current strategy of the Big Two is to bleed these loyalists dry: tying together as many of their books as they can and forcing fans to follow a maximum number of titles.

I don't mean to act like a prophet of doom, ranting with a "The End is Nigh" sign on a street corner. I'm just seriously considering what the 21st century has to offer. And, remember, I'm speaking about the place of the direct market. Graphic novels are doing relatively well, selling in book stores, located in libraries and classrooms, and webcomics are a burgeoning field. I don't want to make the ole life blood argument about the direct market, but, simply as an audience member, I'd like to see the medium survive and even thrive.

There's my jumble of thoughts for the day. Maybe tomorrow I'll take the time to unravel them and formulate a list of "What needs to be done."

Until then, may you consume satisfying units of story.

October Sales Figures

Sales figures are up for October, but no one's quite certain what they mean. The top is rattled a little bit. Series always suffer downward slopes and we're hitting the 2/3 marks for the big events, but the effect seems slightly more dramatic. The surprising news, though, is how well things are going in spite of that, especially for tier 2 and tier 3 books.

As Heidi points out:

Obviously, rising comics prices had much to do with it, but as we pointed out earlier, and Miller affirms, the overall sales on the chart were much higher than in the past, with even the #300 book selling over 4000 copies. In January 2005, the #300 comic sold 679 copies.

Maybe I'm just a goddamn optimist, but it's an exciting prospect to me when more niches can thrive within the already niche market of the comic book.

Kirkman's Call Out Fallout and (my attempt at) the State of the Industry

Two weeks ago, Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead, Invincible, newly made Image partner) released a video statement encouraging the stars of the industry to focus more on creator-owned work. Very specifically it suggests if you've made a name for yourself in DC and Marvel and you want to work on your own projects, you should go ahead.

This struck me as odd because it seemed so obvious that it didn't need to be said. Of course DC and Marvel pay better and they have fun toy boxes of characters, but what artist would only aspire to work on others' creations? That's like being a captain who doesn't want to explore uncharted waters. And I don't know what successful work-for-hire creator (excepting perhaps Johns) hasn't also done a hefty share of creator owned works. It seemed to me like Kirkman was pussy-footing around a rather benign (and obvious) call out, both in his video and in his followup interview with Word Balloon.

Apparently though, anything that resembles an attack on the mainstream ruffles feathers. Robert Scott responds as a retailer with some interesting and valid comments on problems of small press, but misses the point.

Firstly, Kirkman's advocating to creators, not retailers. He suggests writers and artists who can sell books based on their reputations should cash in on their own names, rather than let companies do it. Financially, owning your IP means an investment in yourself. WFH pays bills, but, as Millar tells, it doesn't work as a long term strategy. And creatively, freedom is worth a lot. Restrictions have their place and everyone has a Batman story they want to tell, but I've never known a writer who's isn't brimming over with their own ideas.

But secondly and more broadly, the industry needs very desperately to focus more attention on strong material that will attract new readers. From the Word Balloon interview: "I see problems and everyone else sees problems. And everyone seems to be waiting for someone else to fix them... we should be talking about it." The industry is teetering. It's heading into a transitional stage and people should think very hard about what comics will look like in the next few years.

Here's where we stand right now (in my estimation):
-DC character breaks virtually all movie records, DC comics fail to capitalize
-Marvel's movie studio has huge successes
-Marvel events continue to dominate sales, but fail to capture Civil War numbers
-Tokyopop takes big losses, Virgin closes up shop, Platinum may be in trouble
-"Independent comics" score a number of a huge successes, including Walking Dead, Y the Last Man, Fun Home, Fables
-The graphic novels are big business, often bypassing the direct market entirely
-Popular webcomics attract hundreds of thousands of readers, many launch succesfully print books off of web success
-Watchmen print run of 900,000 copies after a 2 min trailer, currently in legal battle to exist
-Big companies joining the digital game, Zuda attracts (mixed) attention

I guarantee I'm being short sighted here and missing some large factors, but the question is: what's bringing new people into comics? Movies, the web, and a handful of (usually more literary) independent series. What's not? DC and Marvel whose business strategies seem be based primarily around cannibalizing their existing customers by tying together as many of their books as possible.

If we care about the future there's a lot that needs to be done:
-Companies need to figure out a suitable strategy for online distribution. I don't know what it'll look like, but it won't resemble their paper distribution (and probably will be distinct from current web models for long form comics like act-i-vate).
-The entire direct market (but I'd place the onus on Marvel, DC, and retailers) needs to court new readers and present them with easy entry points. The focus should be on turning public attention (such as movies bring) into book sales as well as better marketing at children.
-Creator owned comics, including webcomics, need to hoist themselves to professional standards. As Scott points out, this means better marketing, realistic distribution schedules, and strong editorial backing.

And I'll tell you what we don't need:
-Incentive covers. Seriously, did we learn nothing from the 90s?