I Might Just Believe This Time
Sep. 17th, 2004 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doronjosamaWorking continues. Today, I compiled data on people who have ordered through the online store but who either haven't mailed in payment yet, used the wrong kind of credit card or just had their cards declined. It's a ridiculous sum of money, and if we can't get responses out of them, we'll have to delete their orders from the system. Sadly, we can't wait around forever, holding comics for people if they're not going to actually pay. At least two out of the twenty-four pending orders finally cleared, though we got charged the processing fee twice, since we had to run their cards twice. You'd think more orders for $4.00 would clear on peoples' credit cards.
Yesterday, I uploaded new stuff to the store. We've been organizing boxes, and found some really old Antarctic Press comics we'd worked on, old contributor copies that belong to me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
willworks and PD, and old convention stock from when I used to be a con dealer (which would be around 1994-95). Anything we had deep enough quantities on, I just uploaded to the store in the Web Exclusives section, because, really, trying to sell that stuff one piece at a time on eBay or FurBid takes forever. Not to mention the few cons a year we can get the stock out to. Now, people can actually buy it if they are so inclined. Yay. Marvel at the ancient-ness of Battle Binder Plus and Velvet Touch. There's more of that stuff lurking in boxes, so there will be more of it uploaded as I can get it organized and counted.
There's other stuff going on, mostly along the line of changes in how we do things at Radio, but it's all still in the planning stages. Basically, the writing is on the wall in the comic industry, and the traditional 24-32 page three-or-four-issue miniseries is starting to go the way of the dodo. Unless you want to print that kind of comic as a loss leader that you lose money on each issue of, sales to the direct market are pretty crappy, and only getting crappier. (A new #1 of a new miniseries used to be able to debut between 1300-2000 copies sold, now you're lucky if you can get anywhere near 1000 copies. Most debut between 400-800 copies, which doesn't even cover the printing bill.)matthigh has talked about this industry trend pretty frequently in his journal, and we've been discussing it for quite a while now. We're leaning towards eventually going towards original graphic novel one-shots or series, as then there's at least the possibility of getting those into bookstores- and also the potential to eventually make the printing cost back. With the exception of our steady anthologies, which are still doing all right, and the occasional porn one-shot (as those are fairly immune to industry trends...), we hope that by the end of 2005 we'll be completely shifted to the new format. We knew this was coming, but just didn't expect it to happen so quickly. It's going to mean some wiggling around and some extra hard work, but I'm fairly confident that it will all work out for the best. It can't be helped that the rules of the game have changed- fortunately, I think we're small enough that we can adapt. I'm actually pretty excited at what we have planned for Dangerous, as the new proposed ideas would make it look more like a doujinshi, thus making it more appealing to the yaoi girlies. So, it's a bit of a "scary news/cool news" kind of situation.
Today, we are going to take a break and go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. That's not for a while yet, though. I also have to set the VCR for The Tribe since ep. 3 & 4 are scheduled for tonight. A break will be nice, since it's been a most stressful week already.
Yesterday, I uploaded new stuff to the store. We've been organizing boxes, and found some really old Antarctic Press comics we'd worked on, old contributor copies that belong to me,
willworks and PD, and old convention stock from when I used to be a con dealer (which would be around 1994-95). Anything we had deep enough quantities on, I just uploaded to the store in the Web Exclusives section, because, really, trying to sell that stuff one piece at a time on eBay or FurBid takes forever. Not to mention the few cons a year we can get the stock out to. Now, people can actually buy it if they are so inclined. Yay. Marvel at the ancient-ness of Battle Binder Plus and Velvet Touch. There's more of that stuff lurking in boxes, so there will be more of it uploaded as I can get it organized and counted.There's other stuff going on, mostly along the line of changes in how we do things at Radio, but it's all still in the planning stages. Basically, the writing is on the wall in the comic industry, and the traditional 24-32 page three-or-four-issue miniseries is starting to go the way of the dodo. Unless you want to print that kind of comic as a loss leader that you lose money on each issue of, sales to the direct market are pretty crappy, and only getting crappier. (A new #1 of a new miniseries used to be able to debut between 1300-2000 copies sold, now you're lucky if you can get anywhere near 1000 copies. Most debut between 400-800 copies, which doesn't even cover the printing bill.)
matthigh has talked about this industry trend pretty frequently in his journal, and we've been discussing it for quite a while now. We're leaning towards eventually going towards original graphic novel one-shots or series, as then there's at least the possibility of getting those into bookstores- and also the potential to eventually make the printing cost back. With the exception of our steady anthologies, which are still doing all right, and the occasional porn one-shot (as those are fairly immune to industry trends...), we hope that by the end of 2005 we'll be completely shifted to the new format. We knew this was coming, but just didn't expect it to happen so quickly. It's going to mean some wiggling around and some extra hard work, but I'm fairly confident that it will all work out for the best. It can't be helped that the rules of the game have changed- fortunately, I think we're small enough that we can adapt. I'm actually pretty excited at what we have planned for Dangerous, as the new proposed ideas would make it look more like a doujinshi, thus making it more appealing to the yaoi girlies. So, it's a bit of a "scary news/cool news" kind of situation.Today, we are going to take a break and go see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. That's not for a while yet, though. I also have to set the VCR for The Tribe since ep. 3 & 4 are scheduled for tonight. A break will be nice, since it's been a most stressful week already.
