timewarpagainandagain
asked:
Hi Tom, A follow-up to my question about pricing. I've heard your response before, but wouldn't lower prices & increases sales also make your books more attractive to advertisers who have virtually abandoned you. It wasn't that many years ago, that Marvel comics had ads for cars, video games etc. Readership is getting old and slowly thinning out. Something has to be done to make comics more attractive to new readers. Even if it means putting out a Spider-Man or Avengers title as a loss leader.JL
Advertisers aren’t abandoning comics because of the prices and sales, they’re abandoning comics because they’re abandoning print in general. Again, the state of magazine publishing at the moment is in free-fall as the rise of digital media changes the game entirely. All making Spider-Man or Avengers a loss-leader would do would be to get those books cancelled, and to cause us to have to lose staff and turn off the lights. We’re a company, so we need to remain profitable. he moves you’re talking about would not make us more profitable, they would make us less profitable–catastrophically so when you start talking about Spider-Man and Avengers.