Posted in: Comics | Tagged: 9.99, Comics, entertainment, facebook, image, Justin Jordan

Justin Jordan On Problems With The $9.99 Price Point For Trade Paperbacks

Published Thu, 17 Sep 2015 11:30:45 -0500

Justin Jordan posted the following to Facebook. It is reproduced here with permission.

Sausage Making: The 9.99 Trade

Before I say this: yes, I like the price as a consumer. I'd be insane not to. And this is another how the sausage is made post.

As a creator, I'm not so sure.

I think there's a definitely a level where that price point for the first trade is a definitely a good idea. If you're Sex Criminals or WicDiv, I think it's a winning idea.

If you're below that level, I'm less convinced.

Trades priced there are essentially serving as loss leaders. You're not actually taking a loss, but you ARE making a lot less money per trade*.

The theory and often practice is that you sell enough trades and/or subsequent issues to come out ahead of where you would have been with a higher priced trade.

But I think this is mostly only true if you have a certain amount of buzz for the book, where people who wouldn't otherwise try the book are willing to drop a ten spot for it.

That's not most books, though. For most books, people that are aware of your book are interested enough to spend the fifteen or not. The ten bucks doesn't sway enough people to make up for the lost profit per trade.

(Which, incidentally, is also the math retailers use for a lot of stuff. A 9.99 trade takes up the same space as a 14.99 trade, and physical space on the shelves is a concern. So those things need to move for them, too)

Now, profit isn't everything, but a book does need to continue to be viable. Let's say you can produce nine issues a year of comics (fairly typical) and your artist is making 3,000 an issue.

(I'm ignoring the writer here. And the colorist. And everyone else)

That's 27,000 a year for, likely, the only thing the artist can do. That's not a tremendous amount of income. It's actually worse than you maybe think, because taxes and insurance eat up a larger percentage of freelancer income**.

They may have art sales and commissions to bridge the gap, but still, not huge wages. But here's the thing – that level of profit from singles? That's a very successful book.

I mean, most Image titles won't hit those levels. The A list books make waaaaaay more than that per issue, but most books won't. So it's still fairly rare air.

So there's that aspect of it. There's also opportunity cost, potentially, for the artist. Do you make 27,000 for those nine issues, or do you make 45,000 doing the same nine as WFH for DC/Marvel?

Well, that's where trades come in. But trade money is, by and large, a long term game. My actual page rate for Strange Talent of Luther Strode is very, very high, because that book has sold consistently in trade for three and a half years.

But Legacy, right now, is not paying any of us a remotely living wage, if it were the only money we had. It will, I'm pretty confident, eventually.

And eventually is the rub. In order for the 9.99 price point to work, you either need to be making a living from the singles, OR you need to sell an astronomical amount of trades.

Because trades take a while. Spread V1 came out in April. We were, fortunately, in the black the first month it came out. We'll get paid for those sales this month. Accruals happen twice a year, in March and September, covering July – Dec, and Jan – Jun, respectively.

But if the book weren't priced at 14.99, it would have taken longer to get in the black. Possibly long enough that we'd get zero in this accruals. Which would mean profit, if it happened, for the trade, would be pushed back to March, eleven months after the trade was released.

Now in the case of Spread (and Strode, for that matter) we're doing fine. But it's really easy to see a situation where you create a 9.99 trade as a loss leader but can't sustain the book long enough to get to that second trade.

In the particular case of Spread, I looked at how the single issues were selling and how my trades tend to sell, as well as the issue to issue attrition, and judged that 14.99 was a better price point for us. I didn't and don't think we'd have seen enough benefit from the 9.99 trade to justify the price point.

The other thing to consider the marketing value of a 9.99 trade – not the impulse buy thing, but the actual value of being able to say "Get on board now! 9.99!" as something unique to that book. A few years ago, it was a rare thing and had instrinsic marketing value. Now, it's pretty much assumed all Image books, at least, will have a 9.99 trade, so there's not as much value to be found.

I'm not against the price point, but I do wonder if other creators are really doing the calculations. Because I see it being put on books that I feel is a bad idea. But I could easy be wrong.

Note: This is all assuming backend for the creators. You get an advance, a lot of these assumptions change, But I've not gotten any advances from Image Central.

*In a way that's not necessarily obvious. There are fixed costs and variable costs.

** For one thing, if you're American, that part of your taxes that goes to social security? That's double for freelancers. On the flipside, more stuff is tax deductible as a business expense. On the flipside flipside, you probably need to spend extra money on an accountant.

On Facebook, a few creators and retailers chimed in:

Steve Horton On the flipside, I like more expensive trades and single issues as a creator, because I make more money with them at shows.

David Swallow We used the $9.99 Walking Dead trades as a selling point, where if someone seemed interested, but wasn't making the jump, we could just give them a copy of the trade since it only cost us about $5 and change, and it was usually followed by them coming back in the next day and buying 3 or 4 more volumes.

This is obviously the exception. We stopped doing it when they jumped the price up to $14.99, but by then the show had come out, and it hasn't effected our ability to move the product one bit. We just don't give away the first volume (instead we'll do a deal if they buy the first 3)

Jamie McKelvie I do anecdotally see people willing to take the chance when it's only 10 bucks for a first trade.

Justin Jordan Oh, I know they are. My question is always – is it 33% more? And I absolutely also know the answer is often yes.

I'm looking to pitch The Comic Formerly Known As The Crawl, and that book may actually lend itself to the price point for various reasons, should it get greenlit.

Tini Howard Also anecdotally – I see a lot of people at my store pick up Spread – it's a cool cover and a cool concept and I like talking about it. "And Image trades are $9.99!" they always say. "That one isn't," I point out.

The $5 difference doesn't cause them to put it down once they're interested, however. So Justin, you're benefitting from that Image 9.99 idea, even without the actual price point!

Justin Jordan's trade paperbacks can be found here – only at $9.99 or under after Amazon discounting…

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