Rich Johnston who writes a gossip column on comics wrote a comic book - orders were made, etc and then later (recently) Johnston manages to whip up a good deal of mainstream publicity for the book and demand appears to surge past the direct market availablity of the paper comic book. So Speakeasy decided to sell pdf versions of the book online. At the same price as the paper comic book. Not sure if this means anything b/c the writer has a unique ability to self-promote but since this is essentially an effort to sell a single issue online book for 4.95 (that does seem a lot compared to what one can get for their money online) I guess it'll be a measure of something after we see how it does. I do find Speakeasy's reasons for the high price unconvincing -
The money will cover the not inconsiderable fee for setting this online system up, and will be split between the creative team and Todd Allen, who made this possible.
Given that Bitpass or paypal or countless ecommerce solutions out there cost almost nothing to use the high price is essentially a sop by Speakeasy not to piss off the direct market retailers.
This is kinda interesting, in that if the press release is accurate (as ALL press releases are...) then perhaps the price gouging is also trying to take advantage of the sell out and the GOTTA HAVE IT NOW part of the consumer brain.
Could work in theory, but I tend to agree with you though XX, the price tag is clearly meant to keep retailers happy and due to the steepness seems to make the idea prohibitive.
Well, considering paper costs, the distributor's cut of the cover price, the retailers (massive) cut of the cover price, and even the cost of shipping the books from the printer to the distributor, the cost of "eating" and/or storing the copies they printed that no retailer ordered, etc., etc., etc., (it all adds up), they have to sell a LOT fewer of these than they would with their other system (pamphlets distributed to comic book stores via Diamond) in order to break even. You gotta figure they're making, what, forty or fifty cents a copy, if that, on the paper versions (and that's just the publisher's cut -- the creators are probably making pennies per copy on the paper version). So, yeah, this won't shake up the world, or prove to be all that terribly successful -- but it's got a better chance of some sort of success than what they were doing before. Which, unfortunately, says more bad things about the chances of success through the Direct Market than it says good things about the chances of success through the web.
[quote:996bbf78fe="TWG"]So, what do you guys give their chances?
Low. What Joey's saying is true. Creator margin on printed comics is low. You make your money, or lack thereof, on volume. Now, if what the release says is true, and people really are climbing the walls for this comic, and if this PDF download were, say, a dollar or something, they might do gangbusters. The people after the comic that can't get it, may pony up that dollar, even if reading comics on screen is not their preferred route because it is the only available option, presently, and it's not an unreasonable cost. And because all those nasty costs that Joey mentioned are now out of the equation, the margin would likely go up, even though the product would be selling for $1.95 less. McCloud 101.
Thing is, in this instance, that short term gain is bad business for Speakeasy because all the people that buy the comic as a PDF, are FAR less likely to buy the reprint and then the printer, Diamond, and the retailer all lose their piece of that sale and that does not make them happy campers, and as much as I'd like to see a company like Speakeasy make better use of the web, it would be suicide under their current model to piss off those middle men with the way things are right now. Hence, what xerexes said, the price is jacked WAY up so they can kinda be "look how innovative we are" without pissing off the retailers, because, really, how many people are are going to pony up 5 bucks when you can get the reprint 2 bucks cheaper.
At least that's what I think.
Hi guys. Speakeasy is not doing this. I'm doing this, with Todd Allen. Speakeasy have not objected.
The reason for the price is to not cannibilise print sales. There are shops who gambled heavily on Flying Friar, I have no desire to screw them over. The site lists comic shops selling the print comics.
It is there for people who can't get to a comic shop that sells The Flying Friar. Uptake has mostly been from non-US readers so far.
No suits involved on this one. Nothing about innovation. Just trying a middle ground.
Heh, I guess I'm just a cynic.
Regardless, thanks Rich, good luck with it. Please stop back and let us know how it goes, I'd love to hear it.
As the tech side of this equation, let me just say I've been pleasantly surprised with the conversion rate on this. I was afraid it might be 0.1% of the traffic buying something and its been a _lot_ better than that, enough so that I don't think the cover price could be too much of an issue. Or if it is, there's a truly scary demand for the book.
The pricing is really just a channel conflict issue. Its my suspicion that print is for collecting and digital is for reading. If you just want to read it, it doesn't make that much difference which one you get. If you want to collect it, you aren't going to want a digital version.
Now if you want to laugh, consider that we covered channel conflict today in the E-Business class I teach. I used the Flying Friar as a class example and we looked at the retailer posts in the Newsarama forum as demonstration about how seriously retailers take Internet channels as threats. They were taken aback by the fellow from Silver Bullet almost begging people to buy print copies instead of digital. Show that post to a room heavily populated with music business majors who like their iTunes and you get a very different interpretation than you do on that board.
This is still early and I don't think the word about the download has travelled too far out of the comics community, so we'll have to see how it goes in the next few weeks. This isn't necessarily a Long Tail product, but I don't see being a "only sold on Wednesday" item either.
These explainations all make sense.
Since you stopped by here, Rich. This week's swipe file: C'mon now....
I'm curious as to how the pdfs are being handled, regarding copy protection. I do IT work for a company that sells a helluva lot of copy-protected PDFs online, and I know that document security can be a real pain in the ass sometimes (whether it's even an issue in this case, I don't know).
Honestly, when I saw the price for the online copies, my initial thought was that the price was set to offset the inevitable loss of revenue from pirated copies...
Of course, the thought that the price was set so as to not screw over the retail shops occurred to me, as well.
[quote:f3a84e1167="RichJohnston"]Hi guys. Speakeasy is not doing this. I'm doing this, with Todd Allen. Speakeasy have not objected.
Thanks for the clarification on that.
[quote:8ca5303d95="xerexes"][quote:8ca5303d95="RichJohnston"]Hi guys. Speakeasy is not doing this. I'm doing this, with Todd Allen. Speakeasy have not objected.
Thanks for the clarification on that.
Speakeasy is going the web release route with creators whose books don't meet their minimum pre-order level. So that makes this extra interesting to watch because you know Speakeasy will be watching too.
It's been said before, but I don't think the PDF will hurt the paper book sales, or visa versa. I think the two audiences are largely separate.
It would be nice if this strategy pays off for Johnston, and those who try the same, because PDF sales have a great profit margin.
Even if this works well for Rich Johnston, will it work for those who don't have a pupular column? I am less inclined to think so.
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Presumably when you pay your $4.95, they mail you the ink and paper needed to print it out.
(Playing the cynical devil's advocate, the pricing almost seems like it's a move designed to convince some unsuspecting suit that the market for online comics is smaller than it really is: "We barely sold any on-line versions, while the print version sold out everywhere!")
Official Press Release for Online Sales of Flying Friar
I just got a copy of the official "press release" for this story: