Sales for pamphlets decreased in 2014
4 Comments Published by Avi Green on Friday, July 03, 2015 at 6:51 AM.
Paste magazine recently said that sales for comics had an increase last year. However, there's two segments that saw a drop:
*Digital sales actually experienced a decreased growth rate from 2013 (11 percent to 29 percent), though they did surpass the $100 million milestone.But even more telling:
*The only actual sales decline came in newsstand sales of periodical comics, which fell by $5 million, largely as a result of Marvel pulling out of the market.That's another sign the pamphlet industry is becoming outdated, and with more noticeable 4 dollar prices, few want to spend so much money on stories that are experiencing reduced page counts and halving of pages. But again, it's also partly the Big Two's fault because they neglected their printed properties in favor of the movie and toy business. It's more likely that smaller companies make up the increased sales, and if they want to build up their audience, that's why it's a good idea to both concentrate on talented writing, and adapt to better markets by publishing their output in paperbacks instead of pamphlets. That's how to maintain better recognition with a wider audience.
Labels: dc comics, marvel comics, sales, technology
Please stop using the word "pamphlet" to refer to comic books. If the editor kooks get wind of your word choice, then they might actually shrink the size of the average comic book to that of an actual pamphlet.
Heh. Sadly, Drag's words might come to pass at the rate we're going with these issues. Hell, I'm so old I remember paying only 2 bucks for these things, way back when.
I now use "floppies," or I've heard some sites I read use that as a term. Because, frankly, pamphlets is real hard to spell right off the bad. If anyone has any better shorthand terms, I'll consider it.
Two bucks? Now I feel old. I remember when regular monthly comics were twelve cents, and annuals or "giants" (72-80 pages) were twenty-five cents.
Back then, comic books were intended as inexpensive entertainment for kids. They did not have graphic sex and violence. They were not left-wing propaganda. And they were not pretentious.
And their usual sales figures dwarfed those of today's best-selling comics.
Technically, the proper term would be "magazine," but "comic book" is so firmly entrenched that it's hard to think of them by any other name.