Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Big Hollywood Studios Buying Anime Distributors?
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Trade paperbacks--is that the sort of thing I've been getting? I don't really buy single-issue comic books unless it's on the secondhand market (and even then, I get most of them from a vendor who sells them in grab bags--I managed to get Marvel Villain Origins #1 from it, which is pretty cool), as I want to read the whole story, and getting them in graphic novel format is much easier and less expensive. If they're not graphic novels, then what are trade paperbacks, and how do they differ from floppies? (I've been getting more into American comic books lately, as I found out about a bunch of stories that sound interesting to me. I've gotten some of them, but Irredeemable in particular has proven to be more of a hassle than I had hoped.) |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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What is your source? Every sales data I see suggests the bulk of comic sales come from the physical floppies. Like you said, bookstores never release actual numbers, but we can look at sales revenue from the sources and make some guesses. In 2017 the comic industry made just over 1 billion dollars. Of that, 90 million was from digital sales. That's roughly 9% of the market. Likewise, floppies still bring in more revenue than TPB sales at book stores by a large margin. It's fine if Barnes and Nobles is a good place to sell Dav Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier's children's comics, but those aren't exactly the kind of narrative fiction comics the adult fans are talking about. The sad thing is maybe half of the sales from bookstores are manga, not American works, so they actually bring in even less if we're talking about the American industry. TPBs and digital can supplement sales, but they can't carry them, which is why fans and industry people are so noncommittal with them. As far as IDW goes, their 2017 profit was only 24.5 million dollars, down 12% from the previous year. They're literally an indie company, which is why people freaked out. It sends a sign of how little value Marvel respects the characters these days. It'd be like Nintendo letting Phillips use the Mario and Zelda franchises again. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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leafy sea dragon wrote:
Short answer: Yes. In terms of comic books, a trade paperback is a reprint of several (five or six usually) floppies without the ads and possibly some extra material. A graphic novel is supposed to be all original material published in a similar format without previously being in floppy form. In actual practice, publishers use the terms interchangeably. With regard to manga, I looked through a recent copy of Diamond's Previews. Yen advertises "TP" (for trade paperback), Viz states "Paperback" and most of the others use "SC" (for soft cover). I didn't see any listed as graphic novels, though I have in the past. Because they usually contain advertisements, floppies are considered periodicals (basically magazines). Technically they don't qualify for shipment at the post office "media rate" for that reason. Back in the day, you could actually subscribe to specific comic book titles and they had to contain the same circulation notices that magazines did. In terms of regular text publications, a "trade paperback" is one that is substantially larger than a "Mass Market Paperback". These are often the same size as the original hardback, just with a soft cover. Since they usually have slightly larger type, they have become more popular as the baby boomers get older. 
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lumclaw
 Posts: 47 |
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We're also neglecting that rural availability of any relevant quantity or quality of comics in any form, can be terribly lacking. I couldn't even tell you if there's a comic shop within 15 miles.
[EDIT: Locked for reasons unrelated to this post, to avoid off-topic drift and soapboxing.] |
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