Old discussion I know, but I'd be interested on people's views, especially those of the shop itself.
For years I only collected single issues, and then started collecting Trades when books like Ultimate X-Men appeared. Since then I've collected a lot in trades, stuff like Walking Dead, Invincible, basically most new non-Marvel stuff that takes my fancy. But recently I've come to think how I need to cut back on the floppies because of money and space. 15 comic boxes take up a fair bit of room, wven when stacked on top of each other, whereas a bookshelf can hold a lot of Trades, at around 6 issues per trade.
The whole "waiting for the trade" thing often makes people shout about how it will kill the comics because the monthly book will lose out on sales, so I'd be interested on the thoughts of a retailer on this.
I'm getting more and more tempted to either stop buying a lot of monthlies and buy the trades, and slowly replace my back issues with trades, or possibly cerry on buying the monthlies and then sell them off every now and then and use the money towards the collections.
if you buy the single issues then buy the trade then thats just paying double but it would be more space saving, I think alot of people want to know what happens in the comics they buy as soon as possible, i know i do.
i buy a mixture of both, and they both have their charms
monthlies: - you get the story quicker - are collectable -offer the opportunity to sample something new at low cost
trades -work out slightly cheaper in long run (although marvel charge LOADS for some of their trades) - easier to look after -easy to pick up a long time after original printing...
and the last point is very important to me, with film/music/novels you can enjoy something that was released many years earlier. thanks to collections (whether hardback, paperback or whatever) the same can be said for some comics. although we could all name something from yesteryear which we can't currently get in reprint. which gives us all something to moan about.
"if you buy the single issues then buy the trade then thats just paying double but it would be more space saving, I think alot of people want to know what happens in the comics they buy as soon as possible, i know i do."
exactly, I like to keep up to date witht he stories month to month on most things, but I also don't want to move just to trades cos if we all did that then there would be no money for the companies to make the monthly comics in the first place.
If i did buy the singles and then buy the trades (of ones i really want to keep) then i'd be selling the singles and getting some of the money back. I'm starting to lose the "collector mentality" and thinking "do i really need a full run of X-Men comics from 1991 to the present?".
I'm a traditionalist. No offence to anyone who buys them, but stuff the trades, there's nothing like the feel of a comic. The only collections I buy are the Showcase or Essential editions.
If you're going to wait for the trades you might as well wait until the comic turns up in the bargain boxes. Works out even cheaper.
I like having a bookshelf full of trades, there's something about being able to browse the spines that appeals to me much more than flicking through my comics boxes.
You're at the mercy of the publishers with single issues - I got into The Ultimates through the first two trades, then I started buying the issues as they came out. Ultimates 2 #1 came out in December 2004 - #13 is allegedly due to come out in March. Seriously, why bother? I'll only have to re-read everything when it finally turns up anyway.
Stuff like The Ultimates, The Authority and Ex Machina I only get in trades. I love Criminal and am considering just getting it in trades once the first arc is over, but then I hit the moral wall of "if we all did that then the series wouldn't last".
Midnighter that's a damn good point. But on the other hand to the moral dilemma you've got to weigh up the finances and personal circumstances. And the sheer fact that I for one would rather spend £3.60 or whatever on two issues of a comic to find that I don't particularly like it, than £10 or whatever to buy the collection and find the same thing.
same with me, I'll make absolutely sure that it's worth me buying a volume, but like clemfold said with the single issues you can have a look at something to see if you're gonna wanna buy the rest of the series or just leave it.
In the last 10 years I've seen a massive shift from monthly comics to reprinted books. When I first started working at Space Odyssey we'd get in two or three of a new graphic novel, if it was a popular title like Batman, maybe 5 copies. Now we expect to sell between 20 and 30 copies of a new Batman book in the first month. All the new wave of Vertigo series sell much better as books than as comics. In the last two years we must have sold over 500 copies of Walking Dead vol 1. I think the needs of the reader/collector have prompted a shift in the way comics are written. Most Marvel or DC comics are written as part of a 4, 5 or 6 part story which we just know is going to be a book quite soon down the line. The Canadian comic artist Seth, who writes and draws Palookaville, once said he produces graphic novels, but as it can take six months to a year to produce a full book he's got to bring out the comics so he has a regular income. Charles Dickens' novels were serialised in newspapers before they were even finished. I think the same kind of thing is happening to mainstreem comics too. More and more revenue from adverts is taking the risk out of publishing a new comic series, so the real money can be made when the book comes out. Large US bookshops are more inclined to stock graphic novels than monthly titles. It's pretty clear that publishing the paperback or hardback is the main part of the business now. But regular monthly income is still required by the writers, artist and publishers. Personally, I read loads of comics (20 or 30 a week, It is my job to know about this stuff y'know) but I only collect a handful of titles. If I'm likely to want to re-read a story I usually get the book for my shelf, well it's a whole room now actually. As a retailer it's easier to keep the books in stock. We do get a lot of people not reading series because they're "waiting for trades", that makes it difficult to know how many of the book to order. If a great series has sold badly, how do I know how many of the book to buy in? It'd be interesting to know how readers/collectors would react if Marvel stopped publishing monthlies. Imagine that folks, no delay between issues, no fill in artists... Any thoughts?
Right here, right now given the current shodstorm of their output if Marvel stopped publishing monthlies I would probably give with a big cheer. (And what of the struggling independent DC? Care you not about DC?)
TPBs are the future. The pamphlets days are numbered, but we comic fans are gentle creatures slow to accept change so those days will probably add up to years. The floppy will go though, no doubt. And I care not what form my four colour thrills come in as long as they are quality fodder. I don't buy for the delivery system just the content.
Interesting conjecture but I don't really believe it's financially viable to the publisher. I'd be interested to see how the contracts for artists and writers on regular books are worded these days, as I think that the publisher probably benefits more from the profits of the reprint volumes than do the creative team.
Possibly only comic publishers are slower to embrace change than comic fans. As I understand it (and I could be wholly incorrect here) the current system of renumeration is set up to support the floppy, but they still have a royalty system for when TPBs break a (no doubt ridiculously large) set number of sales.
A bit of tweaking with contracts is all it needs to change the system into one that primarily supports TPBs. Whatever they do, it will always be more beneficial to the publisher than the creative teams. It's the downside of working for the Big Boys. But to be fair, for once in my life, the publisher does take all the financial risks.
I think trades of books like Nextwave would transfer to trade only a lot easier than something drenched in continuity like Spider-Man.
I don't like the idea of not getting my monthly Spidey fix, but I don't mind waiting 6 months or whatever for each volume of the Walking Dead.
I guess I'm gonna have to take a long hard look at space and finances and decide what I'm gonna get in trade and what I'm gonna carry on getting. I already decided to get The Boys in trade form (so fingers crossed a publisher picks that up!) as well as NewUniversal, rather than buy the monthlies. And there are a few other titles I should have done that for.
"Morally" I think the reader's doing a good thing in buying the singles (at leat through the first 10 or so issues) if it's an indy title. Marvel and DC can afford to support a low-selling title if it knows the trade will sell. An indy (and I use "indy" to include the likes of Criminal and Walking Dead) is on the breadline from the word go and can go under without early support.
I see a couple of problems with all-tpb output from publishers. One is the loss of advertising that they get in singles. I would presume that makes up a pretty large chunk of revenue.
The other is that a publisher paying for a full book based on no proven record for a new title is a pretty big risk.
as i said, i like getting a bit of both, and i hope we still do get a bit of both in future. but i hope that the trades stop dictating the pace of the story. have they not realized that if the trades ends on a cliffhanger we'll anticipate the next book even more?
R.e. advertising - if they can crack the book market they shouldn't need the advertising revenue. There aren't any adverts in text only books and those Manga books that sell like crazy things- do they have adverts (I honestly don't know)? I'm sure Marvel at least will manage to sneak ads in though. Possibly even in the middle of a double page spread. Then they'll apologise and it'll all be OK.
When I said TPBs are the future I meant new stuff would be delivered that way too. They'd probably bundle different ongoing series between two covers (with adverts) - including new series - have a vote on reader preferences every (bi-monthly (?)) issue (a la 2000AD) and collect the popular ones seperately (without adverts).
So they still get people to pay twice, which they like. Hey! Marvel/DC employ me! Comics will be saved, I'll take you into the 21st Century and we'll all get rich. Hmmmm! Rich! Rich I say!
And you'll be telling me there's an easter bunny next.
I still don't think it would be financially viable. There's a lot of down time (for want of a better description) where there would be nothing published due to the lead in time required for the creative team. And when you look at the track record of some of today's artists I don't think any publisher would be prepared to take the risk. And a monthly comic sustains interest in a product. If you knew you had to wait six months (and I use that time scale because at least there's 120 pages of comic as a minimum) or longer between books interest would wane.
It's the same as producing monthly comics, you just bind them together with a spine and charge more. Ta-da suitable for bookstores. Ker-Ching! As President Jon Voight said in the searingly brilliant Pearl Harbour: "It's risky, but it's bold!"
non-monthly comics have survivied for years in Europe, in fact in Spain and France the only monthlies I have ever seen are ones re-printing American stuff, everything else is just in the nice big hardback "album" format.
maybe alot of people buy the monthlys to things and then buy the volumes to make more space so the publisher is getting double money, I don't think they'll ever stop selling monthly issues, i think one of the best things about comics is the waiting for your favorite issue to come out.
I'm not sure that titles like Criminal and Walking Dead are a risk to the publishers. They're both creator owned and the creators only get paid when they've covered all the publishing/advertising/distribution costs. Saying that, Kirkman makes a healthy living from the Walking Dead and I know Sean Phillips is looking forward to the first Criminal book coming out. Criminal is a great new series and selling really well, but there are a lot of people "waiting for trades". So who knows how well the books are going to sell. Image is doing pretty well at the moment as they publish loads of Creator Owned stuff, at pretty much no risk to the publisher.
And if there's six months 'downtime' between volumes of Punisher, Y The Last Man or Walking Dead (three of our best selling 'trades' series) then maybe people will pick up something new and interesting in the off-months. Personally, I like seeing graphic novels in Borders and I love seeing people sat around reading them. (though I think it's odd that they rack obviously adults only stuff with StarWars, and I do find myself tidying their shelves a lot).
I'm glad we stock and sell both graphic novel books and monthly comics. When comics are sold on disc, then I'll have to seriously think about a career change.
comics are sold on disk they seem to be able to get alot of issues on for a low price but it just doesnt seem right id rather pay £130 for a load of b/w essential books then have the comics in colour for £10 if they were on disk
Until they invent a handheld device with a screen the size of a comic, and release comics as downloads INSTEAD of on paper, I'll stick with real paper comics. reading things on a computer screen does my head in, never mind trying to read a full comic on there!
Late 80s ~ early 90s there was a US company that issued a hell of a lot of golden age titles on micro-fiche. I thought nothing more of it until I came across a freebie monitor. Never took up the offer of the freebie after using Halton library's micro-fiche system which gave me a bloody big headache. I've tried the available comics downloads and found them to be a tad painful. And as much as I would like to invest in the official and unofficial DVD comic collections, I'm not prepared to put up with the eye strain or mental discomfort. Cheeez, it hurts my eyes enough reading my Lovecraft ebook collection.
