As our wallets get squeezed tighter and tighter, What will ComiXology’s price hike mean for our comic buying habits?
11th March 2020
Comics are a luxury. Get that in your head right now, especially if you're a new reader. I say this with no hostility. Comics aren't like food, clothing, shelter, or warmth. You will not die if you don't read comics this week. Your temperament may be affected. You may feel like you're living half a life. But you won’t expire. Of course, to quote Robert McKee, stories are equipment for living. But they're not equipment to live. You don't need comics the way you need the roof over your head, the food in your belly and the love of an understanding partner. But damn if we don't love that Wednesday feeling! Getting up, going to your LCS or switching on your tablet and spending your hard-earned cash on 22 pages of escapism. I know I love it.
Which makes the recent price rise over at digital comic store ComiXology a bitter pill to swallow. However you get your comics (some of us prefer print), you want to pay the most competitive price possible. Many stores offer a reduced rate for customers with pull-lists over a set amount of comics per month. But comics, in general, have risen sharply in the last few years thanks largely to Brexit, with Diamond imposing not one but two price hikes since the vote in 2016. And then there's the matter of tax. VAT, to be precise. You don't pay the 20% tax on books and comics the way you do on other goods. For digital sales, though no such breaks are given. Up until last week, ComiXology, the Amazon-owned company that sells digital comics from the majority of publishers, ate that 20% making comics in the UK pretty much cheaper than anywhere else. This was good news for comics. It meant more people could probably afford a comic, with page-turning and covers. It's worth noting that of course, more people probably turned away from comic stores as a result. The combination of cheaper books plus the freedom of almost unlimited space (depending on your drive) meant that those pesky white boxes we all store our comics in could become a thing of the past.
Didn't quite happen that way though. Luckily for me at least, because I started working in a comic store after the digital revolution and it was still a viable business. Sure people made the leap, but it turns out that like the trades/singles debate, some were happy to do both. But how long would ComiXology keep its prices low? We got the answer last week as prices shot up to dollar/pound parity, meaning that a $3.99 comic would now cost you... £3.99. This was a shocking move by Amazon, a site that prides itself on low, affordable prices and in turn, knocking bricks and mortar retailers out of the market in a lot of cases. It seemed to be an incredibly backwards move. The hike meant that in some cases, prices of individual comics would jump an astonishing 70%. With roles now reversed, would this drive customers back to print comics? Not likely. With a vast chunk of the digital buying public making that swap for space reasons, It's doubtful they'll want to go back to using up all that space for comics again. You know how us comic collectors are. It's never going to be just one box, is it?
But I think they'll be a cull of titles on people's lists. And that's bad. Think about it. Most comics are a punt. Guesswork. Yeah, you may be familiar with a creative teams’ work. But that team on this subject? Who knows? And previews help. But they're not the whole book and nor should they be. Price hikes mean less experimentation. People will be unwilling to take a chance on books that aren't known quantities and the indie fans will be less likely to start picking up a run of superhero comics regardless of who is writing or drawing even if that team is one of their indie favourites. So what do we do? Well, there's been a lot of talk about boycotting ComiXology and I don't blame people. I will point out, just for full disclosure, that I provide links to ComiXology products for every book possible and will continue to do. I do this so that people visiting the site have the choice to purchase the book in the manner they wish. But the company didn't provide any clear warning that the prices were about to go up and that incited customers to anger faster than anything. I genuinely feel that people would have weathered the price rise as they did – twice – with the print versions providing there was a little warning. And as seriously as I take the idea of people boycotting comics, I don't think it will stick. Because as terrible as the price-hike is on new comics, ComiXology still provides some great value for money when it comes to sales, offering whole trades for essentially pennies. And prices will always tempt people back. Plus there is a ray of sunshine. As of today's budget, the chancellor has abolished that 20% digital sales tax. This won't kick in until December of 2020, but it's something that could once again make digital comics cheaper than print. We'll see. Me? I'm off to start sorting out those goddamned white boxes.