Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

Yeah, but the last couple years were really crappy sales. That reminds me of the cell service commercial. Does that mean it is 5 times better than crap? 18,000 is still not good at all and if that is the standard ACP wants to live by that to me is pretty low standards..

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:09:25 AM

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 08, 2016, 09:52:42 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 01:02:02 AM

The new artist replacing Erica Henderson is Derek Charm. At least it's a definite improvement.

He made Betty and Veronica pretty again. Hooray! I still can't forgive Erica for making them ugly

I agree Erica Henderson was a disaster and Derek Charm seems like with the images above will do the comic justice.

As long as they don't ask Derek to try to draw like Erica.

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 01:44:50 PM

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

OK, sorry, I could swear I remember issues that were reported selling 3500.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Either way, I won't be surprised if the reboots run their course quickly.  Going back to the classic style probably won't work though.  There's a reason they tried the reboot in the first place. 

Quote from: spazaru on April 09, 2016, 09:18:03 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 01:44:50 PM

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

OK, sorry, I could swear I remember issues that were reported selling 3500.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Either way, I won't be surprised if the reboots run their course quickly.  Going back to the classic style probably won't work though.  There's a reason they tried the reboot in the first place.

I don't think they will go back to the Classic Style either. As you have seen with the numbers on the other chart over the decades when they were doing the Classic style the numbers have drastically dropped. I have no idea what they will try next.

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 09, 2016, 09:51:24 AM

Quote from: spazaru on April 09, 2016, 09:18:03 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 01:44:50 PM

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

OK, sorry, I could swear I remember issues that were reported selling 3500.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Either way, I won't be surprised if the reboots run their course quickly.  Going back to the classic style probably won't work though.  There's a reason they tried the reboot in the first place.

I don't think they will go back to the Classic Style either. As you have seen with the numbers on the other chart over the decades when they were doing the Classic style the numbers have drastically dropped. I have no idea what they will try next.

Here's the basic problem. There are enough "people out there" who like Classic Style Archie... and when I say "people out there" I don't mean 'people in there' -- i.e. the people 'inside the comic book hobby' who read the kind of comic books that comic book shop customers prefer to read. The intersection of those two sets is marginally small (...and when I say "people" I'm talking about a large percentage of them being kids). Probably a large enough chunk of the adult comic hobbyists are already here on this board, or blogging about Archie on various websites.

So the problem is to get classic Archie out where it's within arm's reach of the average potential customers (who aren't going to make a trip to the comic book store), AND to make it available at price point and in a format that's palatable to those consumers (and what I'm strongly hinting here is that to those consumers, $3-4 for a 20-page floppy comic is NOT palatable, even could you put those kind of comics within their reach... and you can't even do that, really). So, something like a digest, that has more pages and is more substantial than a floppy, but also more new material as well, to keep a contemporary connection to the world inhabited by kids.

Those adult comic hobbyists (like myself) need to be marketed to, also... if the material is choice, the toll will be paid for upscale formats.

In-between those two extremes are the digital people, both younger and older. If you had every Archie story from the last 60 years digitized, indexed and archived with full credits and original sources cited, you could sell individual stories (a typical 5 or 6-pager) for as little as 50 cents each, or let people pick stories ala carte for a set price (cheaper the more stories you buy), and then just track what's selling, looking for trends and categories to group them into. Then start publishing collections according to which characters, artists, eras, or themes are proving popular. Let every digital customer preview the first two pages of story (except for those that are that short to begin with), then decide to buy it, pass, or add to their basket for a bundle rate after they're done picking. The problem with digital now is there's too much duplication of stories in different collections, and most of those collections don't have contents listed, writers and artists or dates of original publication listed. Everything should be linked so you could find stories according to characters, writers, or artists. Since ACP is not, for the most part, selling graphic novels composed of a lot of longer, continued stories that make up some natural collection, they need to get it all sorted and indexed, so they can see what is actually attractive to customers and what isn't.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 09, 2016, 11:16:14 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 09, 2016, 09:51:24 AM

Quote from: spazaru on April 09, 2016, 09:18:03 AM

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 08, 2016, 01:44:50 PM

Quote from: spazaru on April 08, 2016, 11:34:12 AM

Quote from: Great Gazoo on April 08, 2016, 10:15:58 AM
The #'s listed above for the two reboots have to be a real disappointment for ACP. That is a huge decline from the first issue of Archie, but I imagine they were expecting that. I don't know if they would have expected it to be down to just over 18,000 just after issue #6 though. The Jughead reboot didn't even really start off that great and is also on a huge decline just after 3 issues. If these fail or even just the Jughead reboot fails what impact will this have on the Betty and Veronica Reboot?

18,000?  that's still 5 times what the old title was selling the last couple of years

2 things: It's TWICE, not 5 times what the average issue sold in 2014. Sales fell from the first issue to the second more than 70%, and from the 2nd issue to the 6th another 40%. That's only in the space of 7 months! So how many copies will it be selling a year from now? Two years from now? Because that's about as long as you can expect it to last.

OK, sorry, I could swear I remember issues that were reported selling 3500.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Either way, I won't be surprised if the reboots run their course quickly.  Going back to the classic style probably won't work though.  There's a reason they tried the reboot in the first place.

I don't think they will go back to the Classic Style either. As you have seen with the numbers on the other chart over the decades when they were doing the Classic style the numbers have drastically dropped. I have no idea what they will try next.

Here's the basic problem. There are enough "people out there" who like Classic Style Archie... and when I say "people out there" I don't mean 'people in there' -- i.e. the people 'inside the comic book hobby' who read the kind of comic books that comic book shop customers prefer to read. The intersection of those two sets is marginally small (...and when I say "people" I'm talking about a large percentage of them being kids). Probably a large enough chunk of the adult comic hobbyists are already here on this board, or blogging about Archie on various websites.

So the problem is to get classic Archie out where it's within arm's reach of the average potential customers (who aren't going to make a trip to the comic book store), AND to make it available at price point and in a format that's palatable to those consumers (and what I'm strongly hinting here is that to those consumers, $3-4 for a 20-page floppy comic is NOT palatable, even could you put those kind of comics within their reach... and you can't even do that, really). So, something like a digest, that has more pages and is more substantial than a floppy, but also more new material as well, to keep a contemporary connection to the world inhabited by kids.

Those adult comic hobbyists (like myself) need to be marketed to, also... if the material is choice, the toll will be paid for upscale formats.

In-between those two extremes are the digital people, both younger and older. If you had every Archie story from the last 60 years digitized, indexed and archived with full credits and original sources cited, you could sell individual stories (a typical 5 or 6-pager) for as little as 50 cents each, or let people pick stories ala carte for a set price (cheaper the more stories you buy), and then just track what's selling, looking for trends and categories to group them into. Then start publishing collections according to which characters, artists, eras, or themes are proving popular. Let every digital customer preview the first two pages of story (except for those that are that short to begin with), then decide to buy it, pass, or add to their basket for a bundle rate after they're done picking. The problem with digital now is there's too much duplication of stories in different collections, and most of those collections don't have contents listed, writers and artists or dates of original publication listed. Everything should be linked so you could find stories according to characters, writers, or artists. Since ACP is not, for the most part, selling graphic novels composed of a lot of longer, continued stories that make up some natural collection, they need to get it all sorted and indexed, so they can see what is actually attractive to customers and what isn't.

The funny thing is that fans are doing the indexing for ACP for free on comics.org.

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 08, 2016, 09:58:35 AM

Another thing which is interesting, if 75% of Archie fans prefer the old Archie why aren't sales reflecting that? Were these fans only buying digests and not the floppies? Why wasn't this enough to keep the old Archie alive even though they were probably making more money paying the artists less?

As I've said, the company's bread & butter is those digests. Sales have dipped on those but they remain Archie's financial rock. The problem with the 32 page books is distribution, which admittedly is NOT an easy problem to overcome they way things stand today! The 32's don't do well in comic shops and newsstand outlets don't want to carry them either. Unfortunately rather than look for alternatives to their distribution, Archie has utterly convinced themselves that the direct market is the only way to go!

A few years ago, one of the higher-up said to me "The five page story is dead" because they can't "promote it." I thought this was insanely incorrect. Their leading product, then as now, was the digests which was PACKED with five page stories. They needed MORE five-pagers! Not less! Ironically, today (at least as of the last time I was up at Archie) the ONLY new classic Archie stories being produced are only five pages long. Sadly, this is more because that's all they want to spring for than anything else.

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 08, 2016, 09:58:35 AM

Also I'm not sure why they bother with the trade paperbacks when sales of those are less than the individual issues.

I don't think they are much anymore. They really have cooled off on those. I think they were disappointed in the sales of everything except those Best Of books.

Wonder how many copies the digital collections are selling.

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 09, 2016, 05:16:23 PM
Wonder how many copies the digital collections are selling.

Do you think most people who are reading digital are purchasing them individually or do you feel they choose the Unlimited monthly method?

Quote from: The Bee on April 09, 2016, 05:21:52 PM

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 09, 2016, 05:16:23 PM
Wonder how many copies the digital collections are selling.

Do you think most people who are reading digital are purchasing them individually or do you feel they choose the Unlimited monthly method?

Most probably use unlimited as it's way cheaper.

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 09, 2016, 05:26:57 PM

Quote from: The Bee on April 09, 2016, 05:21:52 PM

Quote from: irishmoxie on April 09, 2016, 05:16:23 PM
Wonder how many copies the digital collections are selling.

Do you think most people who are reading digital are purchasing them individually or do you feel they choose the Unlimited monthly method?

Most probably use unlimited as it's way cheaper.

I am all new to the digital experience and I did just recently purchase the Unlimited monthly option. I am enjoying so far especially reading the digital exclusive releases..

I like both, I love the zaniness of Classic (60s-70s) Archie, and I really liked Dan Parent's recent stuff but while reading the last of classic Archie I really yearned for the titles to be like other comic books with continuity, story arcs, and character growth. In that vein, I really enjoy the new Archie, though I really want Betty and Veronica standalone books, Reggie too.

Quote from: kassandralove on April 10, 2016, 02:27:10 AM
Archie Reboot + Riverdale series = suicide.

Someone should make a change petition and slap Archie owners across the face with it.
Let's band together and fix this before they ruin everything !

It's kind of hard to argue with the fact that they managed to fool a couple thousand comic shop retailers into ordering over 100,000 copies of ARCHIE #1, so that's got to count for something (many of those comics are probably still sitting in retailers' back rooms in unopened boxes). Still, make enough variant covers of a comic and hype it enough, and you can trick them into buying almost anything. You have to wonder if that doesn't sour a lot of retailers on the company going forward, though.

I guess if the company could survive the To Riverdale and Back Again TV-movie in 1990, they can live through another awful TV pilot. It's not as if they're tying up their own money in it.

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on April 10, 2016, 04:17:58 AM

Quote from: kassandralove on April 10, 2016, 02:27:10 AM
Archie Reboot + Riverdale series = suicide.

Someone should make a change petition and slap Archie owners across the face with it.
Let's band together and fix this before they ruin everything !

It's kind of hard to argue with the fact that they managed to fool a couple thousand comic shop retailers into ordering over 100,000 copies of ARCHIE #1, so that's got to count for something (many of those comics are probably still sitting in retailers' back rooms in unopened boxes). Still, make enough variant covers of a comic and hype it enough, and you can trick them into buying almost anything. You have to wonder if that doesn't sour a lot of retailers on the company going forward, though.

I guess if the company could survive the To Riverdale and Back Again TV-movie in 1990, they can live through another awful TV pilot. It's not as if they're tying up their own money in it.

I wouldn't be surprised if they actually sold most of those Archie 1s.  My friend until recently owned a comic shop.  His shop didn't even carry Archie until the reboot but he ordered 100 of #1.  He regretted not ordering more and he sold out of all 100 in a day.  His store was NOT big and he didn't sell it because it was really successful LOL.  There are just so many people who are #1 geeks, convincing themselves that any #1 will be valuable down the line.  I doubt this one will, but apparently a lot of people think so.