Thought for the day: digital sales
In the comments thread for the previous post, somebody asked whether DC’s new “day and date” policy would make the sales chart meaningless.
A fair question – we won’t have access to the digital sales figures, and like any other distribution channel, they could make a big difference to the overall picture.
But (via Bleeding Cool) we do know roughly how many digital comics DC are selling right now – because Dan DiDio has been telling retailers at their promotional roadshows.
As of now, DC’s print comics outsell digital by a factor of …
…630 to one.
Now obviously things will change when the entire line goes day and date. At the moment, DC’s digital store is mainly a back catalogue operation. Books they added to the store on 22 June 2011 include: the Amazons Attack miniseries from 2007, the first arc of Secret Six, some old Gotham Central and the first two issues of Camelot 3000. There’s some more recent stuff too like Batman and Robin #19, but even that came out in January.
(And there’s no easy way of filtering out the “new” new comics from the archive, by the way – they’ll have to change that before September.)
So I’ve no doubt that digital sales will shoot up in September when the product range improves. But it’s going to be a long while before it overturns a 630:1 print to digital ratio. You’re not going to get that many new customers buying four dollar comics on an iPad, and you’re not going to get a sudden flood of print customers deserting for digital. Not in the short term, anyway.
630:1 seems ridiculously low. That would mean that for every 100,000 print copies sold, DC sell 159 digital copies.
But consider the material they’re selling. It’s a glorified discount bin. Who on earth is waiting six months to buy individual issues of Batman and Robin? When you look at what they actually offer for sale, it’s all too believable.
630:1? For some of their lower selling books that’s about 3 copies, isn’t it?
Yeah, but it’s a different product that they’re selling online. It’s apples and oranges, really. By the time any issue becomes available on the digital service, it’s archive.
Didn’t they sell Brightest Day and Generation Lost digitally on release date? Wonder what the sales on those are like.
Thanks for the info Paul. I guess I am a little bit of a trend-breaker here. More of a Marvel guy, but tend to read DC’s big events in TPB. I recently received an Android tablet through my work, and plan to try most (if not all) of the relaunch on digital to see what there is to see. My driving factor…..running out of storage space for all the physical comics and trades!
I’ve recently been rereading New Avengers from the start (inclusive of civial war and it’s tie ins) and am currently up to Secret Invasion (of which I’m reading the core mini, mighty and new).
Up to Secret invasion I was buying trades, from secret invasion to siege I was buying individual issues. In an attempt to read things in some what chronological order I’ve generally had a few tpbs sitting on my bedside table, and now that I’m up to the single issues its getting even worse. I’d definately get things in a digital format after this!
1) I did buy the JL: Gen Lost, day and date, even read it on my tiny ipod touch, just wanted to support day and date a little bit.
2) has anyone online addressed the price of day & date compared to the typical discount given by comic shops, or DCBS? My local shop gives me 20% off, that brings a $2.99 book down to $2.39, compared to $2.99 for digital day & date, and not much more than waiting a month for $1.99 digital. and if you use DCBS, digital is that much more overpriced.
True – my discount would make it ridiculous for me to buy any of these comics digitally.
I do remember hearing that 2(?) weeks after the release of each issue (selling both digitally and in print for $2.99), the digital version will be discounted to $1.99. That’s a significant savings for me, even with the discount I get from my LCBS. I’d be trying a lot of these books only after positive reviews anyway, so waiting two weeks for the digital isn’t that big of a deal.
I believe it’s a month, not two weeks. That said, it’s still arguably a reasonably attractive alternative to trade-waiting.
Is it still true that when you buy a comic online you don’t actually get it (pdf or cbr files)? I’m wondering why I would spend money on something I won’t actually get. And if I wait a bit longer I can get a digital copy that I actually own for free.
I feel that the same day digital initiative from DC was in fact quite wise and in fact necessary, myself.
For one thing, it allows for far greater risks to be taken with new series. Instead of pulling out all stops in order to artificially raise sales of #1 issues, so that retailers order it in the first place and the new book has a chance to breathe before being cancelled due to low sales, same day digital allows people to have ready access to back issues legally and means, essentially, that low sellers can be kept indefinitely and actually gain new readers even if the comics stores never much believed in them. That is a very, very significant benefit in these days where half the DC line are Superman, Batman and GL books and half the Marvel books are Wolverine, X-Men and NuAvengers books. Variety is a sore need for both publishers, not so much due to sales in the short terms as for creative survival. You can only launch so many Batman books before they begin to cut into each other sales, after all.
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