Hi Tom, (PART 1) Let me add my 2 cents as another retailer. The biggest problem with maintaining sales is price. Going from $2.99 to a $3.99 price made a lot of buyers make hard decisions. If there is one thing that I wish Disney had done when they purchased Marvel it would have been, drop the price to $2.99 on all new launches. Considering what the cinema branch produces, they certainly could have subsidized the publishing branch a bit. You would've blown your competition out of the water. Jeff

This is a good question to address with a retailer, as you’ve got some strong firsthand information about it, based on your own sales history.

So let me walk you through some thinking. See if this makes sense and holds water for you.

I agree that the higher price point makes it more difficult for readers to buy as many books, and so they need to make choices about what they’re going to spend their dollars on. Where I disconnect a little bit is in the thought that if the books were cheaper, tons more people would sample them and buy them—enough to make up for that difference in price.

So let me turn this around on you a little bit.

As a retailer, assuming that all other things are equal, you’re making a greater profit on your $3.99 books than you are on your $2.99 books. It’s pretty straightforward math—three $3.99 books bring in as much revenue as four $2.99 books.

Now increase that by a hundredfold. You’d need to sell 400 $2.99 books to make the same money as you did from 300 $3.99 books. So you’d need to entice an additional hundred readers to sample and buy, simply to remain in the same place.

I don’t know the specifics of your store, but I do know the state of the market as a whole. But in your shop, do the $2.99 books perform that strongly over the $3.99 ones, regardless of content? I don’t think so. You might get more readers on a $2.99 launch, but proportionate to that 400-300 ratio? I don’t think so, not routinely.

This is why we do what we do.

The books that we launch and run at $2.99 as new series launches are the ones that have the toughest time, and the ones that are the most likely to be cancelled, because they need to work harder to meet the same margin. This is also why, when we have a title like SUPERIOR FOES that we think has an audience ant that we want to keep around, we’ll increase it’s cover price to $3.99. That’s no fun for anyone—but it does ensure that the book is operating within a healthier margin more easily.

And the idea that the cinema branch should subsidize the publishing branch is nonsense. That’s no way to run a business. Marvel publishing is very healthy and very profitable, and that is what will keep it around and keep it viable. Being the tail on somebody else’s dog is a good way to find yourself without an industry. Marvel continues to be able to forge its own destiny because Marvel makes money, consistently and year-round. If that wasn’t the case, publishing would have been shuttered ages ago.