IDW Raises Prices, Escalation #1 $3.99

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:00 am

Reported over here. Oh, and check out the troll we've found. He's amazing, particularly when he threatens to rearrange my face

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:08 am

MVM? His posts are too long for me to read.

We had an awesome troll at the Archive this week. He started a thread with the sole purpose of quoting a piece of Denyer sarcasm out of context from a months-old thread, and demanding an explanation for his horribly racist comments.

It was genius.

But, yeah, $1 price hike = not the end of the world, really.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:26 am

Obviously if Infiltration sales had been higher there wouldn't be a price hike, but you've got to be realistic.

I'd be interested how much copies their non-TF titles sell though.

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:39 am

Brendocon wrote:MVM? His posts are too long for me to read.

His finest hour is on page 9:

MVM wrote:
Ryall wrote:
MVM wrote:And watch your language in the future, especially when you`re not online but in front of people, for text like this you can have your face rearranged in very poor fashion.
You can disagree with our decisions all you want, but threats of violence here will result in a quick banning, so be cordial, or be gone, sir.
Ryall, you should ban all intelligent guys here leaving only those who clap like monkeys whenever you show up, then this MB will be perfect.
And keep your dogs on the leash, I`m not calling you idiot or retarded in any other way and you`re not doing this to me. If you would, than you would deserve a good manner lesson as well.
But that`s mainly problem with kids around 12-14 years of age here, those whose opinions you love most it seems.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:41 am

Wow... you'd wouldn't think that there was, like, an entirely different etiquette for talking to people face to face than over plain text, from the way he's going on.

I love the fools!

Scraplet · Post by **Scraplet** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:22 pm

spiderfrommars wrote:I'd be interested how much copies their non-TF titles sell though.

Same price, I believe. They are just bringing the TF comics in line with their normal prices.

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:23 pm

hes a total cock - tho MV, your comic shop simpsons retort was tre brillant!

I dont understand him, he think by insulting everyone and threaterning to beat them up he will get his point across.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:22 pm

Scraplet wrote:
spiderfrommars wrote:I'd be interested how much copies their non-TF titles sell though.
Same price, I believe. They are just bringing the TF comics in line with their normal prices.

I meant total sales figures.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 3:12 pm

spiderfrommars wrote:
Scraplet wrote:
spiderfrommars wrote:I'd be interested how much copies their non-TF titles sell though.
Same price, I believe. They are just bringing the TF comics in line with their normal prices.
I meant total sales figures.

Far, far less than Transformers.

But that's not the problem. The problem is that the Transformers license cost a ****load of money, so even though sales are greater for TF, so are the expenses.

Scraplet · Post by **Scraplet** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 3:44 pm

spiderfrommars wrote:
Scraplet wrote:
spiderfrommars wrote:I'd be interested how much copies their non-TF titles sell though.
Same price, I believe. They are just bringing the TF comics in line with their normal prices.
I meant total sales figures.

Doh! Scraplet grasps the wrong end of the stick again! I'll get me coat

inflatable dalek · Post by **inflatable dalek** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:07 pm

Just as long as they're not puting the price up to start saving for a nice new Porsche...

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:21 pm

or some hookers!

veritech · Post by **veritech** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:48 pm

I wouldn't mind paying $3.99 for a single comic if it contained more than a minute fraction of a story. Yeah, the art in Marvel sucked, but you at least got a whole story.

Predabot · Post by **Predabot** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:39 am

Wow... 4 dollars...

That's... well it doesn't seem quite right for such a thin comic. I guess a raise in price was justified, but did it really need to be almost 30% increase? Couldn't they just have raised it with say, 55 cents?

inflatable dalek · Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:57 pm

Legion wrote:or some hookers!

I see no problem with them spending the cash on good quality hookers.

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:08 pm

Found this at a message board run by our old friend Senior's Covenant:

Actually, it's funny, I just got through emailing a bit with Ryall. The price per issue went up a bit to the same pricing on their other non-TF issues (I think that was the deal) due to reasons including but not limited to a counter to the multiple cover reduction, a declining readership, an increase in production costs, licensing fees, a calculated move to maximize revenue on IDW's most prolific line of books, etc.

At IDW's board, Chris said the following...

Quote:
The bottom line is, we want to keep doing TF comics, and we can only do so on a long-term basis--in order to satisfy the terms of our agreement and keep costs where we need them to be--by going with our normal pricing. We tried it at a reduced price (for us--we're not "the big four") and if we'd put up sales similar to those publishers, we could have kept on as we were. But this is a superhero-driven industry, and for smaller publishers selling 20K copies of books with high licensing fees to make it in this world, it necessitates different strategies.

So as much as I wish these books were selling 100,000 copies and allowing us to keep things as they were, that's just not realistic for an indie publisher. So these books fall in line with all of our others now. I've tried to give more content for the bucks, in the form of letters pages and previews and other things that aren't just print ads, so hopefully the people who like what we're doing appreciate the fact that this is simple comic book industry economics, and not anything else.

When I shot him an email suggesting reducing the five page to one, selling off the other four pages for adverts to gain income, then merely displaying the first page of the preview with a corner marker stating the remainder of the five-page-preview can be seen for a limited time on the IDW Website. Not only would this allow commercial space to assist in costs, it promotes their website, which is where the wealth of IDW's works can be found for consideration.

His reply was that while he liked the idea, Hasbro takes a lot of that space (at no cost to them) and won't allow ads from many other companies there. So they're a bit tied. He also noted while he & IDW love doing TF comics, he could definitely see how past publishers had a tough time without having different plans in place to adapt to such restrictions.

Post by **Best First** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:20 pm

good suggestion nonetheless.

Hasbro's restrictions seem pretty ill though out - i.e more or less designed to make the licence a financial burden rather than a boon.

Post by **Denyer** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 10:58 am

What's the ad situation with the DD Joes books? (Q for anyone who reads 'em.)

Predabot · Post by **Predabot** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 12:28 pm

Denyer wrote:What's the ad situation with the DD Joes books? (Q for anyone who reads 'em.)

That's a very valid Q there, any takers?

Also, does anyone know the cover-price of the G.I Joe mags? I think TF sells a wee bit more copies?

BB Shockwave · Post by **BB Shockwave** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:55 pm

You are all really lucky you can buy TF comics at the local comic shop...

Me, I haver to buy them off Ebay or pay horrible fees for the ONLY guy in Hungary who runs a comic shop that sells foreign comics...

I can live with the 1$ raise, it's the postal cost that's killing me...

(and why I stick to TPBs).

Ozz · Post by **Ozz** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 6:36 pm

BB Shockwave wrote:Me, I haver to buy them off Ebay or pay horrible fees for the ONLY guy in Hungary who runs a comic shop that sells foreign comics...

We have at least two of them. I wouldn't piss on one of them if he was on fire (he's Polish answer to Ishin), but I deal with the other guy and have individual issues brought to my home by the postman with total cost equal to that the Americans pay for their comics in their local shops. And if I build my order right, TPBs turn in for 75% of their cover price. It's like having our own branch of Amazon.

As for increased price for Escalation, I don't really mind that. I also buy X-Factor and Nextwave and I prefer +$1 in exchange for harder cover and 22 story pages not interrupted by ads.

BB Shockwave · Post by **BB Shockwave** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:24 pm

Ozz wrote:
We have at least two of them. I wouldn't piss on one of them if he was on fire (he's Polish answer to Ishin)

Brrr...

Ishin...

You had to remind me!

I know, totally off-topic, but I was in Poland two weeks ago - in Olsztyn and Gdansk and around the Mazury lakes. Really nice places, especially Gdansk. Found no TFs though (I hoped I would, generally things in Poland are much cheaper then here in Hungary), though I saw some funn RM Optimus knockoffs-retools.