I completely agree with this. Having different viewpoints is great. And not agreeing is fine as along as it is done with a mutual respect.drew102e wrote:lets keep is civil, I hate it when co-hosts fight
I don't think pre-ordering isn't an inherently flawed business practice. In a non-returnable market with a lead time to product the material sold, it seems required. Pre-ordering does have some very unfortunate impacts on sales, particularly if/when it is difficult to accurately estimate the demand in advance.drew102e wrote:not saying its biased, just saying its slanted in big twos favor because of a very flawed business practice (preordering)
Keep in mind that the direct market and pre-ordering came about as a result to existing market conditions in the returnable mass market that was collapsing at the time. Instead of blaming pre-ordering and the direct market for the current state of the industry, perhaps we should be thankful for the industry to still be around at all.
Suppose for a moment that pre-ordering wasn't required but that a more just-in-time sort of ordering process was available. Would sales on the smaller publisher titles suddenly go up?
I doubt it.
Certainly some retailers might be able to sell a few more comics from the other publishers but assuming the only change was pre-ordering (and not the different discount levels between publishers) then those other comics would still be less profitable for the retailers. The reduced risk would certainly help but it is unlikely to help enough to level the playing field.
DC and Marvel would still have a larger marketing budget and a pre-existing larger mind share. People are simply more aware of the Marvel and DC properties. The younger companies don't have that advantage. The smaller publishers are what is known as "challenger brands" and need to act and compete accordingly.
Perhaps the solution to leveling the playing field is in opening up the economies of scale to the smaller publisher. Imagine if a company were to help the different publishers coordinate the printing, shipping and other aspects of trafficing a comic book and using that larger footprint could get better deals than the individual publishers could get now. That would help make those items more profitable for both the publisher and hopefully for the retailers. An umbrella brand, if properly done, could also help raise awareness of the various properties which would also help. I don't think it would completely level the playing field but I think it could help and is much more workable than eliminating the pre-ordering system which (for good or bad) the industry currently is reliant upon.
. The only DC title I'm reading right now is Harley Quinn and I guess I just didn't realize that the Convergence titles were so different from what was coming before. I did pick up Convergence #0 and was pretty unimpressed so I didn't get anything after that except for the Harley Quinn tie-ins. On a related note Convergence #0 and Secret Wars #2 were basically the same story, at least concept wise, but I enjoyed Secret Wars #2 A LOT more. I hope that means good things for the event going forward. I've enjoyed all of the tie-ins that I have read so far as well.