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Serious Collector
 
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This is actually a great discussion and we have some terrific points here on all sides. Other then our boards resident spammer who always adds ten words yet never says anything original, we have some major contributions going on!
I will throw my towel in the ring here, not attempting to be the last word or really any word, just kinda my rambling thoughts.
Lets start with a title I first wanted to pick up. Grimms and then Return to Oz. And then I found out about the approximate 6 variants per issue, the UK variants, the OMG 1 in a million reverse negative variants... and after the first couple of issues, I dropped the title. For me, the fun would have been picking up not only the issues but all of the variants. However, as a completist and since I couldn't pick up all of them, I picked up none of them. Who loses? Everyone actually in this case. The Publisher/comic Shop neither sells to me nor do I buy. The story was not that compelling.
OF course then there was IDW's Angel after the Fall. Being a fan of Joss Whedon, I had to pick up the title but realized I could not be a completist. In this case, the material far outweighed me wanting to own all variants so I simply picked up the regular copy. Do I miss the variants? Actually and surprisingly no.
Clearly a case where variants don't necessarily hurt when the collector has discipline and the buyer still wants just one copy...or is that really true?
Lets move on to Earl's comments which are valid. And this requires an understanding of who buys comics and why. Also understand that Publishers completely understand the economics of this business(notice I did not say hobby as to them it is a business).
After all that, it really becomes a numbers game and a matter of economics. Some facts:
* There are only so many dollars that are going to be spent in a given month.
* Every publisher wants you to spend every one of your dollars on their books.
* When print runs falls below certain levels, they become unprofitable to print and
hence are dropped from the lineup.
* Variants require additional spend from the comic shop(1:50/1:100) which
prohibits them from buying other titles. They too have only so much cash.
* If I spend money on a variant, I will not have money to buy something else. A
decision has to be made on what "gives" that month. Again, I am assuming
that there is not infinite dollars to be spent.
* Completists exists and publishers know that. As such, they know they can offer
variants for key titles like Avengers, Batman, Superman, or any title that has
longevity. They know the psychology of these spenders. By definition of being
a completist, these collectors WILL buy these variants. By definition of buying
these variants, they cannot buy something else.
So, is that what killed us in the 90s? Actually no. Yes, there were variants up the behind. But what drove dealers to every corner in your neighborhood were the flock of investors who had just realized that Beanie Babies were not going to send their kids to college and were looking for the next thing. Comics and sports cards were it. That of course fueled the glut and with it the craziness of the variants. Once the speculators left, all of that product was left in comic box after box with no one to buy it. Dealers who had no clue about comics collapsed like a (fill in your favorite expression here)
So where does that leave us today?
The variant cover or covers is sadly what is keeping many titles going. Amazing Spiderman with its many variants, even 50/50 variants is akin to printing 5-6 issues per month. However, even with these variants, print runs are incredibly low. In some cases, the variants are keeping many issues going. Even more unfortunate, it is in many cases the same collector buying multiple copies.
So while it is completely true that one can ignore variants, we have a given population with finite dollars who are not ignoring variants. That means those collectors who are buying variants have to choose what not to buy that month. With less books being purchased, there will be less product on the shelves, less chance for new product exposure, and greater and greater dependency on existing collectors to support these publishers.
For those of you who get Previews Magazine, the proof is there. Given these tough economic times and the realities above, the magazine offers half of what it used to. There are less and less small press publishers in the market today.
No this is not doom and gloom. It is simply a reality that variants are good for the Publisher but overall bad for industry growth. And I believe it is only when an industry grows that it can prosper and bring in new customers. As books continue to increase in price and variants continue, I believe we will be seeing less and less product and limited opportunity for new Publishers unless they too offer multiple variants.
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Collector
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Earl Davis (11/6/2009)
oxbladder (11/5/2009)
Earl Davis (11/4/2009)
I do think this is hurting the hobby.
I am a completionist. I used to think variants were cool until they flooded the market. I am a completionist on UXM, Action Comics, Detective, Adventure, Superman and Batman so it's not like I am trying to collect all variants for all titles. But everytime they bring out a variant that costs me $10 or $20 (and I do get pleasure from owing them as part of my complete sets of those titles) that's comic funds that I am not spending on the publishers other output. For me that's means I am buying a lot less marginalvertigo sellers than I used to get because I am spending that money on variants instead. As some of the vertigo titles only sellbetween 5,000 and 15,000 copies it does not take many people like me spending too much on variants to threaten the viability of other titles we might be buying instead. I am not proud of this.
Part of me wants to stop buying the variants and buy those vertigo titles again but the other part of me want to matain that 30+ year complete set that I started puttingtogether 30+ years ago.
Earl.Well to me that's not their problem it's yours. Your the completionist  It is your choice buy in or not. If people are buying in the variant publishing will continue. I don't agree. I think it's their problem and a problem for readers of marginal titles. When publishers have titles that only sell 10,000 it only takes a few hundred people like me spending money on variants rather than on marginal titles and those titles could get cancelled. That's bad news for readers of those titles. As an example I am interested in DC's forthcoming Pulp universe titles and need to decide if I should get those or my usual variants. It would be a shame if the pulp universe (if well done) failed because some people who might have supported it were buying variants instead. I get your point about hurting the readers of marginal titles, but I don't know if I agree that it hurts the publishers. Some of it is probably hard to quantify because we need to know how many additional copies of the books with variants are being ordered just to obtain the variants. On some of the larger titles, the increase in copies ordered may end up being more than the print run for some of the marginal titles, particularily those that run 5,000 copies. Beyond that, the profit margin on an additional 5,000 copies of UXM for instance, is going to be greater than the 5,000 copies of a marginal title, because the cost of production will be spread out considerably on the larger run of UXM, whereas the marginal title is only spreading it's production cost across 5,000 copies (I'm referring to artistic production cost (staff), not physical production cost (paper)). In the short term, at least, the publisher may be better off catering to the variant crowd and canceling the marginal titles. I dont' have a crystal ball, so all we can do is assume the long term implications of losing a set of readers from your marginal titles, but using yourself as an example, you're still a customer of the publisher anyway. No disrespect intended, but I also don't think that we can assume that you are a typical collector. Just like I won't assume that I am, because I am probably your polar opposite. I buy some variants, but I don't feel any great desire to buy them all. In fact, I don't even know if I would agree that completists are the primary target. I think collectors seeking a rarity are more drawn to a variant than a completist. I know many people that only buy the variants and could care less about the normal or common covers. All that being said, I'm not a huge fan of variants either. I would also rather spend money on comics that I don't actually have instead of just covers, but some of those covers are just to nice to pass up 
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Collector
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Aphelion (11/5/2009)
Type in the phrase "dead universes" + "Comics" into a search engine. You'll find countless collectors collecting them. Sift through the results and look for anything mentioning "Harris comics" Harris was one of the worst offenders at publishing variants. I've yet to find one collector looking for a set of the stuff Harris published. Harris made as many as 15 different covers for each issue. It was not uncommon for a 4 issue mini-series to have over 40 covers for four issues. Harris seems to be a dead company now. I think that might be a good hint at where the practice leads. If the publishers run off the completists that want one of everything, they run off their most loyal customers.I appreciate what you're saying, but I can't agree with this. Completists have not kept any publisher in business. They are not the majority of the audience and never have been. Comics are in the same downward spiral that all print media find themselves in. I very much doubt it has anything to do with variants or quality of what is being published and everything to do with the advances of technology and where people now turn for entertainment.
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Serious Collector
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Completionists are the equivalent of the marketing department for collectors. Without them, most titles eventually fade away.
The whole direct market spawned because of the collector and completionists. Marvel and DC targeted them, grew their sales, and made comics tremendously huge in the 80's. Completionists are the only ones making their store owners order thresholds to get the variants. If comic shops had their way they'd sell out on every issue. Don't overestimate the role of the reader. It isn't the content that sells a book. Buying a book is not a vote that it is worthy. What sells the book is the preconceived notion of what that content will be. Completionists are the people who have already deemed it's worthy in every way shape and form. They are not the customer that a publisher should ever want to discourage. Casual readers on the other hand are unreliable and fickle. They follow their favorite writer or artists. They let titles plummet in sales if they don't get that one creator they wanted.
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Serious Collector
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mark (11/6/2009)
This is actually a great discussion and we have some terrific points here on all sides. Other then our boards resident spammer who always adds ten words yet never says anything original, we have some major contributions going on!
I will throw my towel in the ring here, not attempting to be the last word or really any word, just kinda my rambling thoughts.
Lets start with a title I first wanted to pick up. Grimms and then Return to Oz. And then I found out about the approximate 6 variants per issue, the UK variants, the OMG 1 in a million reverse negative variants... and after the first couple of issues, I dropped the title. For me, the fun would have been picking up not only the issues but all of the variants. However, as a completist and since I couldn't pick up all of them, I picked up none of them. Who loses? Everyone actually in this case. The Publisher/comic Shop neither sells to me nor do I buy. The story was not that compelling.
OF course then there was IDW's Angel after the Fall. Being a fan of Joss Whedon, I had to pick up the title but realized I could not be a completist. In this case, the material far outweighed me wanting to own all variants so I simply picked up the regular copy. Do I miss the variants? Actually and surprisingly no.
Clearly a case where variants don't necessarily hurt when the collector has discipline and the buyer still wants just one copy...or is that really true?
Lets move on to Earl's comments which are valid. And this requires an understanding of who buys comics and why. Also understand that Publishers completely understand the economics of this business(notice I did not say hobby as to them it is a business).
After all that, it really becomes a numbers game and a matter of economics. Some facts:
* There are only so many dollars that are going to be spent in a given month.
* Every publisher wants you to spend every one of your dollars on their books.
* When print runs falls below certain levels, they become unprofitable to print and
hence are dropped from the lineup.
* Variants require additional spend from the comic shop(1:50/1:100) which
prohibits them from buying other titles. They too have only so much cash.
* If I spend money on a variant, I will not have money to buy something else. A
decision has to be made on what "gives" that month. Again, I am assuming
that there is not infinite dollars to be spent.
* Completists exists and publishers know that. As such, they know they can offer
variants for key titles like Avengers, Batman, Superman, or any title that has
longevity. They know the psychology of these spenders. By definition of being
a completist, these collectors WILL buy these variants. By definition of buying
these variants, they cannot buy something else.
So, is that what killed us in the 90s? Actually no. Yes, there were variants up the behind. But what drove dealers to every corner in your neighborhood were the flock of investors who had just realized that Beanie Babies were not going to send their kids to college and were looking for the next thing. Comics and sports cards were it. That of course fueled the glut and with it the craziness of the variants. Once the speculators left, all of that product was left in comic box after box with no one to buy it. Dealers who had no clue about comics collapsed like a (fill in your favorite expression here)
So where does that leave us today?
The variant cover or covers is sadly what is keeping many titles going. Amazing Spiderman with its many variants, even 50/50 variants is akin to printing 5-6 issues per month. However, even with these variants, print runs are incredibly low. In some cases, the variants are keeping many issues going. Even more unfortunate, it is in many cases the same collector buying multiple copies.
So while it is completely true that one can ignore variants, we have a given population with finite dollars who are not ignoring variants. That means those collectors who are buying variants have to choose what not to buy that month. With less books being purchased, there will be less product on the shelves, less chance for new product exposure, and greater and greater dependency on existing collectors to support these publishers.
For those of you who get Previews Magazine, the proof is there. Given these tough economic times and the realities above, the magazine offers half of what it used to. There are less and less small press publishers in the market today.
No this is not doom and gloom. It is simply a reality that variants are good for the Publisher but overall bad for industry growth. And I believe it is only when an industry grows that it can prosper and bring in new customers. As books continue to increase in price and variants continue, I believe we will be seeing less and less product and limited opportunity for new Publishers unless they too offer multiple variants.
You are far more patient to explain the principles than I would be. Not all variants are a bad thing. An occasional one tossed in the mix can coax someone to spend a little more than they normally would. If a retailer has to order 200 books to get one variant for that one collector that demands it, he has to either eat the cost of all the excess inventory or pass that cost along to the customer who ultimately resents it. Why would any publisher force a store to buy comics that are going to hurt their cash flow for future purchases? That is flat out ignorant. Why would a publisher not realize that a comic store charging $20 for a new variant negatively affects perception of their product? Countless messageboard threads accuse comic shops of overpricing variants and cheating the customers. I saw the look on a collector's face the other day when he accidentally picked up a variant and was wondering why the price was so high. It was not one of excitement. It was a look of "rolling the eyes" and discouragement.
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Collector
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Last Login: Today @ 12:48:59 AM
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Aphelion (11/7/2009)
Completionists are the equivalent of the marketing department for collectors. Without them, most titles eventually fade away.
The whole direct market spawned because of the collector and completionists. Marvel and DC targeted them, grew their sales, and made comics tremendously huge in the 80's. Completionists are the only ones making their store owners order thresholds to get the variants. If comic shops had their way they'd sell out on every issue. Don't overestimate the role of the reader. It isn't the content that sells a book. Buying a book is not a vote that it is worthy. What sells the book is the preconceived notion of what that content will be. Completionists are the people who have already deemed it's worthy in every way shape and form. They are not the customer that a publisher should ever want to discourage. Casual readers on the other hand are unreliable and fickle. They follow their favorite writer or artists. They let titles plummet in sales if they don't get that one creator they wanted.Don't underestimate the role of the reader either. There are many examples of publisher success that involves not targeting the collector or completionist. I don't think that some modern titles, such as Walking Dead, are successful because of completionist, but instead because of readers and fans of zombie fare that frequent Hot Topic. Comics are part of a larger marketing machine and draw in many readers based off of brand recognition. I'm sure that there are many, many readers of Batman and Spiderman that are not even collectors, let alone completionists (my kids included). I agree, readers are unreliable and fickle, it's a good thing that many of the larger brands have recurring films, animated adventures and toy lines to keep them interested. That being said, the role of the reader is certainly much less today than at probably any other time in history. The reader played a much larger role pre-80-90's than now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally disagreeing with you, I think we simply don't agree on the importance of completionists. I agree that a title can not survive without collectors, but not completionists. A completionist, to me, is going to want every variant and issue, a collector is just fine owning one copy and doesn't need every variant. A title can survive without the completionists, I don't think that it can survive without the general collector or reader. It's hard to know, without some kind of census information to determine just how many completionists there are that make up the customer based compared to the rest.
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Collector
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Aphelion (11/7/2009)
Why would any publisher force a store to buy comics that are going to hurt their cash flow for future purchases? That is flat out ignorant. Why would a publisher not realize that a comic store charging $20 for a new variant negatively affects perception of their product? Countless messageboard threads accuse comic shops of overpricing variants and cheating the customers. I saw the look on a collector's face the other day when he accidentally picked up a variant and was wondering why the price was so high. It was not one of excitement. It was a look of "rolling the eyes" and discouragement.
The publisher is not forcing the store to buy comics that are going to hurt their cash flow. The store is making a business decision based on whether or not they can turn a profit by ordering enough copies to reach a threshold. If the store is unable to turn a profit, they should not be ordering that many more copies just to obtain a variant. It's an incentive to the store, not a requirement. If, as a result, they need to price the variant that high to get a decent return, the market will correct itself. People will not buy the high priced variant and the store will stop ordering in volumes high enough to get them. Message board complaints don't dictate to a publisher what they should or should not be doing, sales do. A comic store charging $20 for a variant doesn't negatively affect the perception of their product, except to maybe a handful of completionists that have to have them. The demand and success of variants would indicate the opposite. Are some people put off by them? Sure they are, but lots of people are put off by the high price of the ipod too, and buy cheaper alternatives. Does that create a negative perception for Apple's product?
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Serious Collector
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You are wrong.
It is the expectation of the customer that their local store get them the new comics they want. It is the store's responsibility to meet the wants and expectations of their customers. If Joe Dealer on Ebay is supplying the customer with the variants he wants, the customer is eventually going to get fed up with his local retailer and resent having to pay shipping charges online for something his retailer is supposed to be able to get. A retailer is screwed. He's forced to either annoy his customer, or over order product to meet what the customer wants. That's a shitty position to place a retailer. The publishers don't give a damn because their customer is not the guy on the street. Their only customer is comic shop. The publishers only care about their order numbers. If publishers were smarter, they'd be helping a store push back sales. Every dollar a store makes on back issues puts money in that retailers bank account for buying new comics.
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Collector
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Aphelion (11/7/2009)
You are wrong.
It is the expectation of the customer that their local store get them the new comics they want. It is the store's responsibility to meet the wants and expectations of their customers. If Joe Dealer on Ebay is supplying the customer with the variants he wants, the customer is eventually going to get fed up with his local retailer and resent having to pay shipping charges online for something his retailer is supposed to be able to get. A retailer is screwed. He's forced to either annoy his customer, or over order product to meet what the customer wants. That's a shitty position to place a retailer. The publishers don't give a damn because their customer is not the guy on the street. Their only customer is comic shop. The publishers only care about their order numbers. If publishers were smarter, they'd be helping a store push back sales. Every dollar a store makes on back issues puts money in that retailers bank account for buying new comics.No, you are wrong. A retailer is better off losing the one customer that is going to demand their 1:200 variant if they're that demanding and fickle and catering to the larger customer base that is not that demanding. The retailer is probably lucky to break even on that kind of customer to begin with if they have to over order in such quantities to satisfy them. Not every customer is worth keeping. Best Buy would refer to them as a 'devil' and they're right. If completionists were such a driving force, based on your examples the larger retailers like Lonestar or Mailordercomics, Westfield, etc wouldn't be in business. They move enough product to qualify for many, many incentive books, all of which go for sale on their website (or ebay) later and certainly do not immediately sell out. My point being, they have plenty of customers that are not demanding the variant issues and are doing just fine without catering the to completionist. If a smaller retailer has to over order in such quanity to satisfy a single customer or handful of customers that they cannot survive without said customers, they shouldn't and probably won't be in business very long. Their business model is terribly flawed. I don't think that it will matter in the end anyway. Gimmicks and speculation didn't kill the market and neither will variants. The completionist do not support the industry all by themselves, they are a marginal part of it. What is going to kill the comic industry as we know it is the same thing that has killed many industries, and that is progress. It's not a question of if, but a question of when. That's not to say that comics will be killed, but certainly the format that we all love. Digital distrubition will someday be how you get your comics. It's happened to music, movies, video games and is going to eventually take over printed media. I don't like it, but then I'm not as young and accepting of change as I once was. It's to bad that the current and upcoming generations have no problem accepting it because it's what they are used to.
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Serious Collector
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| I love your mentality. You'd run off the lawyer or engineer who can afford 50 books a month and keep the collector that struggles to buy two books a month. Quite often the completists are people who allocate large amounts of money to the hobby already and they can afford comics. I think it's flat out stupid to take the attitude that the hobby doesn't need a collector who insists that he have product that a publisher made available. If people weren't insisting on the variants, no one would order the thresholds to get them nd they wouldn't exist anyway. The publisher can solve the problem by simply not offering them and creating the frustration for everyone.
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