I just wanted to briefly talk about something that's recently interested me, and that's the now commonplace practice of waiting for the trade paperbacks to come out when following a favorite title or so.
I don't know why, but this sort of thing is happening more and more, and I'm wondering if it's eventually going to hurt comic sales in the long run. In a somewhat similar practice to trade-waiting, people can DVR their favorite TV shows. Now if ratings on a particular show are slightly or more slightly going down, is this due to a lack of viewership or the fact that people are just recording these shows to watch them at a later time, thus negatively affecting the ratings. It doesn't mean people aren't watching, just that they're DVR'ing the shows to watching them when they have the time. But is this practice even being considered come ratings time?
Like-wise this most also happen when a small number of comic readers simply skip buying single issues in favor of buying a trade that collects the whole story. I'm not saying theirs nothing anything wrong with this; the style of writing by today's writers seem to favor being collected altogether in one viewing for the TPB. It's what helps sell these things right? Hasn't rising sales of these TPB's proven that?
My complaint is when this practice is done too much. This gives companies like DC and Marvel the wrong impression. They see falling sales on a certain title and assume that's due to a growing lack of readers, when the truth is that title is still being read, just in TPB form. This has to hurt comic book sales overall.
How can this look to Marvel or DC, when single issues don't sell as well a they used to, but the sales in trades are growing. It presents an illusion of growth, when it all just looks like a ponzi scheme; take from one source to give to another creating the illusion of prosperity.
I'm not saying you shouldn't buy trades; they serve a vital purpose in the comic book industry. Just make sure your not just buying trades, and leaving out the single issues. If stuff like that keeps happening, there may not be a trade of favorite title to come out later. Think about that for awhile.
Alright enough of the soapbox stuff, next week, fun, funny, and just plain wrong humor!
2 comments:
I actually worry about this quite a bit, since I buy a lot of books used or marked-down. I bought Avengers Prime for under a buck an issue: cool Alan Davis art, but I wouldn't pay full price for a Bendis story anymore. I liked it OK, but I know I liked it more than if I'd paid full price for it. So, not only am I messing with the sale numbers, my opinion is now suspect.
Usually, though, when I tradewait, I end up forgetting about it entirely.
Hey, nothing wrong with catching bargains when and where you find them. 'Tis the American why right?
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