But David that is exactly what Showcase does, it make little profit and sell in larger quantities because of the low price tag and that is my point,
Archives as a high price item are not selling as they used to while lower cost items like Showcase and Chronicles and TPBs do,
so what if DC has to spend money to color material from Showcase? They do it all the time with all kinds of TPB.


I think you may be confusing your own argument here. I could go in and quote many of your previous posts in full (I certainly wouldn't want to take anything you wrote out of context!), but that would just be a pain, and anyway if I remember correctly, you were suggesting that DC might put new, previously unreptrinted material into the Chronicles series, and add color to the Showcase format (or something like that), because these low-priced books sell like crazy, or better than Archives, at least.

But in both cases, as David and I have pointed out, that would all but eliminate the very aspects that make these books profitable. I mean, yeah, you could do that, but both formats would just end up being more expensive and would most likely see a corresponding drop in sales (and not make as much money).

If you're suggesting that DC may shift more toward lower-priced formats with it's reprint material? That I'm not so sure about. See, the thing about serving such a small audience is you need to find ways to make more money in an era of declining sales, and if you can do that with more expensive, high-margin items -- provided they sell well enough -- that's a good direction to go in. (In some cases, with some material, this might be the only way such a small audience can be served.) The Archives may never return with the strength they once had (they may have finally been overwhelmed by the weaknesses of the format), but there will still be other hardcover collections.


If you think about it there is no reason why a Jimmy Olsen transformations has to sell more then (for example) Lois Lane in 1954
at the same same price point and page count, the readership is the same.


It wouldn't have to sell more, but it very probably would! (But I still don't understand the point you were making here.)

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Last Edited By: Fin Fang Foom Aug 12 09 9:33 AM. Edited 2 times.