Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 02:16:51 -0800
From: [t--mp--n] at [coldcut.com] (Mark Thompson)
Subject: Re: paper and cover price

>Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 16:30:59 -0400 (EDT)
>From: "L. J'amal Walton" <[l j w 3] at [acpub.duke.edu]>
>[...]
>i miss the days of walking into a store and buying a comic for $.75, and
>would love to see a high quality comic sell for near a dollar.
>(no matter what type of paper it uses)
>
>has anyone on this list thought about attempting to do this.
>
>the only way i could see dropping the cover price would be if one could
>sell enough ad space to sufficiently cover the printing and distributing
>cost.  sells for the book would probably be more than average because of
>the lower cover price.  could this be a possible solution?

Well, one other way is to make the book cheap enough to print so that
you *can* sell it around a buck.  This is the approach Slave Labor
Graphics took with two of their new Amaze Ink titles last year:
Skeleton Key and Scarlet Thunder.

Skeleton Key premiered at only $1.25 cover price for a 16-page monthly
comic.  Dan Vado (publisher) thought that the low cover price would
be a key to sales.

I'm not certain he believes that any longer.  For a while there, they
were considering dropping the whole concept and going back to 2.95 and
bimonthly 32-pages, because sales simply weren't there to support
the $1.50 (had to go up by a quarter when the paper prices soared)
cover price.  Lately, sales have picked up enough for them to continue it
at $1.50 monthly 16-pages.

But if you asked him now if he thought the low cover price made a difference,
I'd suspect he'd say "well, maybe some... but by far what has made the
difference on Skeleton Key, the reason why our sales are now climbing,
is that the book is MONTHLY.  Not bi-monthly, not quarterly, and heaven
knows it's not "when I get around to it" - it's each and every month,
and readers really LIKE that."

I think if you ask retailers by and large across the country, you'll
hear general complaints that "comics are too expensive", but that doesn't
mean they want a $1.00 self-published title -- that means they want
Superman selling for $1.00.  If you ask them if independents are too
expensive, you'll get notably fewer of them saying so.  And of those who
think even indies are too expensive, nobody is talking about having
them less than $2.00.  They just think that having indies "more expensive"
than the mainstream books hurts their sales (which, to some degree,
they probably do).

Realistically, there's a major price point at $2.95 (do NOT price your book
at more than that, or you will take a MAJOR sales hit), a minor one
at $2.50, and another one at $2.00.  In common terms, that means retailers
tend to see comics in eight price categories:

 $1.99 or less
 $2.00 to $2.49
 $2.50 to $2.94
 $2.95 to $3.00
 $3.01 to $3.49
 $3.50 to $4.94
 $4.95 to $9.94
 $9.95 and up

To a retailer, a $2.75 book is about the same as a $2.50 book; they don't
notice the difference.  It's a "less-than-2.95-but-more-than-2.00" type of
thing.  And once you go above $3.00, you get put in the "expensive"
ghetto, where many retailers will do special-ordering of your book
ONLY, with none (or maybe one) for the shelf.

And I don't think to a retailer a $1.00 book is that much different
than a $1.25 or $1.50 book.  Do you think it'll matter to a reader?

Well, examine your target audience.  Are you expecting your book to
sell mainly to:

1. under 12
2. 13-15
3. 16-18
4. 19-21
5. 22-over

If you're aiming at group 1, a VERY cheap cover price might indeed
make a difference.  Under-12-year-olds tend not to have lots of
disposable cash, and having your price be only around $1.00 makes
your comic purchasable where even mainstream books are not.

For target audience in groups 2-3, the only way a $1.00 cover price
will make a difference is as a "novelty" item (aww, it's only a buck,
maybe I'll try it).

By the time you hit group 4, the readers have notable amounts of
spending cash and tend to be fairly price-ignorant (at least,
those who would consider your book at all).  They will buy something
that looks interesting to them as long as it's reasonably priced,
which to them is probably in the 2.50-2.95 range.  The fact that a book
is a dollar is not really that much of an incentive; they look at
do they *want* it first, then the price second.

And group 5 is almost immune to price - although it is a factor, it
is much less important to most of them.  $2.95 or $1.50 doesn't
matter at all - what matters is the story/art/content.  Do they
*want* the comic?  If so, they'll buy it.  Again, with the caveat
that many will not even consider a new, untried comic if it's over
$2.95.  There really is a wall of impenetrability there for many
readers.  If a comic they *like* goes up above it, they'll follow
it (Maison Ikkoku, for example), but new comics in that range stand
a much slimmer chance of being purchased.

I guess what this is boiling down to is that I'd recommend against
trying a low cover price.  Even publishers who tried to do a $2.00
book (Teri Wood, Matthew Kelleigh) found it difficult-to-impossible
to maintain cash flow at that price level.  Don't count on a lower
price increasing your sales at all, because its effect will be
negligible.

Mark
Cold Cut