Maybe if they released thebrestvof the UK Transformers comics...

 

Really? A 30 page thread about the one shot disagrees with you.

 

Actually it’s pretty clear this decline has been going on for some time. It was happening before the reboot as well.

The stated “goal to be profitable by 2021” combined with everything else tells me they’re looking for a hopefully buyout, otherwise I’ll be surprised if the company makes it to 2022.

I would say that’s highly questionable, but I’m open - what criticism do you think IDW could have heeded that would have prevented the gradual decline they’ve been showing for a long time?

Thank you for adding some facts to this conversation.  

 

Can't go under sooner.

 

I can say that their writing quality is the main culprit. A bunch of retcons and narrative choices straight up didn’t gel with the populous. People can claim subjectivity of liking or hating comics all they want, the fact remains that people don’t want them.

And that’s not getting into idw’s attempt to be like marvel or dc.

 

  Clearly that's not true from the response that I've seen from other users and fans, furthermore you can't speak for everyone and you're boldly proclaiming what the fanbase as a whole wanted and thinks, claiming no one wanted '84. That's a laughable assertion.

Look, I loved Animated too, but this constant us vs. them behavior and putting down anything that isn't Animated or Beast Wars or the Unicron Trilogy or whatever is very childish and frankly, super obnoxious.

Yes we remember the dreaded Regeneration One, and it wasn't as bad as some have claimed it to be. The idea wasn't the issue, its execution wasn't that great, yet it was still better than the overwhelming majority of IDW's main continuity stuff.

No one is forcing you to read it, but to say that no one wanted it when that's obviously not the case is ridiculous.

 

Amen brother.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I may be), but isn't there also an issue where the system is set up to count only physical comic shop sales (I think pre-sales, even) as their judgement of success regarding any given issue? That's why they're always pushing -go out and pre-order this at your local comic book shop now! Basically, as I understand, all those years I thought I was supporting IDW with my Comixology purchases didn't actually count in their sales model. Which is kinda nuts... a lot of us do not have a local comic book shop, so we buy online digital stuff. That's how I read these comics. And I seem to recall times MTMTE and some other TF comics were on the top-selling lists of Comixology comic sales for a week (can't remember if it was mostly UK or the US, too) but whatever the case, the online sales for IDW TF comics, looking at that, seemed to be very high compared to most at the time actually... and yet, again, they apparently don't count in how the company judges its success.
...Which just gives me a headache.
They need to figure out a better/more accurate way to sell digitally, imo, where those online sales count. It ought to be fairly profitable if done right, given they can sell the product without the costs of printing on paper. I think others' suggestions about getting out of the Diamond restrictions and selling in more mainstream places would be good too- again, many of us don't even have a local comic shop. I'd like to support my favorite comics but I'm not sure I even can.

 

IDWs level of financial losses would indicate that even if their writing quality was universally praised as stellar, they’d still be in this position, I’m afraid. See @AcademyofDrX ’s stellar post explaining the situation.

See above. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t (this seems like a bit of a specious contention point) but it certainly looks to have incredibly little (or nothing at all) to do with IDWs current situation.

 

Short answer: yes and no. You're conflating two things that are actually different: publicly reported sales figures and the revenue a publisher earns from a book. The sales figures are "pre-sales" as you say. All comics stores use the same distributor, Diamond, due to industry consolidation that happened decades ago. Every single comics issue sold in the US (and most US comics globally) are shipped to comics stores from Diamond. The publicly available sales figures are based on these numbers since it's a single point that counts everything*.

As you noted, these are actually pre-sales. The counts are the number of issues sold to comic book stores, not to readers. If a store orders hundreds of copies but never sells them, this still gets reported on the official sales numbers. These numbers are inherently unreliable, but they're the best numbers the public has.

But publishers don't just care about issues sold to stores, though that's the core of their revenue. Publishers also make money from digital sales. The digital distributor (for Comixology, Amazon) take a cut, but the publisher does still get money from the sale. There are different costs for digital and physical media - no manufacturing and shipping, for example - so I assume that the revenue from individual issues at full price is higher than in print. However, digital issues are only sold to consumers, and digital is still a small piece of the overall equation. Based on what I've read from a handful of creators, print sales and pre-orders are still more important in deciding whether a book should be cancelled.

However, and I think this is the most important part for you, it's not our problem as readers. I guarantee if you ask Brian Ruckley or any comics creator, or any publisher for that matter, they would tell you to buy the book the way you want to. I'm like you, I love reading digital comics, so almost all of my purchases are through Comixology. And most of those are on sale, although I do subscribe to my favorite books. If I really like a title, I might also buy hardcover or omnibus editions in print. At any rate, publishers know readers like us exist, and it's more important to them that we keep buying comics the way we like than that we switch to some other method. The other thing is that while digital sales are still a small part of the overall market, it's growing, and will continue to be a relevant revenue stream. I assume that in the future digital sales will become a more important consideration for publishing decisions.

*Diamond's numbers aren't actually everything. They're basically all single issue sales, but there are other comics products like magazines and trade paperbacks that have other distribution channels. In fact, the fact that Diamond's monopoly does not extend to those products and channels is the main reason that they were not deemed a monopoly when the government investigated them back in the late '90s. The sales of collected editions also matter to publishers and influence their decision making, and the majority of those sales are not captured in Diamond's numbers, so the public doesn't really know how it matters. If Ruckley's hardcover was selling really well, IDW could be really happy with the book and we would never know it. (I doubt that's what happening, but wanted to use it as an example.)

 

Willing to bet not a single person in the entire world stopped buying the comics because of a bad experience on the forums. As other posters have said, overall performance is the result of macro issues - quality of comics will have had minimal, if any, impact. Besides which, everyone who was ever called an -ist or a -phobe (which is probably, oh, about three people in total) had already decided they hated the books.

 

Ok, thanks for the info. I think the sentence above is what I'd heard before, which made me wish I'd bought more physical copies of my favorite series... not that one person is probably gonna make a difference there, but still....

 

Overall I think the comic book art over the past couple of decades has only improved, for many reasons. Super Heroes came out of the "geek" and "for children" stigmas and became more accepted culturally across the board, of course the many TV shows and Hollywood movies helped to that end. With the greater appeal in the genre and acceptance, I suspect opened more doors to a greater pool of talent, who have the advantage of showing the world what they can do through internet and social media. I've browsed through a great deal of the art in IDW Transformers line, and one of the problems for me personally is the inconsistency of the art, however most of it, even the not so great art just kills the bad art in the 80's Marvel Transformers comic book series. However most of the IDW TF art falls short of my expectations which are higher these days because of the art I have seen from other non-IDW publishers. On another note, about piracy, it's hardly all about hate, just the opposite really. One problem for many, well actually a couple, physical space to collect everything they want to collect, and simple economics of not being able to afford everything they would like to buy, sacrifices and compromises have to made for a maximized situation taking into account all the variables. Another note on piracy, many people already bought physical copies of many of the books they download from places offering free digital versions. I could also note the advantages of digital, and the overall high pricing of digital copies (especially compared to the licensed GIT Corp Comic Book software collections from years ago, long OOP) but these sub topics within themselves and not directly related to the OP, so meh.

 

I respectfully disagree. I dropped the main line, and the inability to criticize on this very board torpedoed any enthusiasm for an already lackluster book.

Secondly; it's very well known, especially in conservative America, how liberally the "ist" and "phobe" label is brandished about. The backlash is in full swing culturally. Take current Dave Chappelle or Rick Gervias, or Bill Maher for instance. The "ist," labels are so commonly heard now they're becoming meaningless and people are catching on.

 

"The IDW books are bad and the company will fail because someone called me out for my bigotry" is a heck of a take, bro.

 

You’re intentionally mischaracterizing other people’s points of view. Grow up.

 

I could do a long, serious analysis of how right-wing culture war talking points have infiltrated all internet fan communities and made them toxic, but this thread is ostensibly about the financial performance of the parent company of a comics publisher.

So instead I'm going to give the "get woke, go broke" crowd all the consideration they deserve. Which is none.

 

This board was full of criticisms for those books, every week, of much colour and variety. There was no "inability to criticise"; it's just that the criticisms you wanted to make were ones which others felt were unfair. But as you say, you'd already decided the book was "lacklustre". I'm deeply skeptical of your claim that you would have kept on buying it if you'd been able to slag it off without any riposte.

The problem here is - and has been for a long time - that people think these labels are insulting rather than merely descriptive, are a punishment being meted out rather than an attempt to openly discuss an aspect of lived reality. It's beyond doubt that our culture is soaked to the bone in examples of gendered and racial prejudice, and that this splurts out in all kinds of expressions of distaste - for example, in objections to books that deal in emotional complexity on the basis that they've been 'feminised', and the accompanying association of feminity with weakness and irrelevance.

I've been on these boards for years now. Generally speaking, people do not say "You are a homophobe" - they say a particular view someone might have expressed comes across as homophobic or reactionary, usually because it displays a frustration or intolerance with aspects of fiction that are designed to be more inclusive.

-Isms and -phobias aren't definitive accounts of who you are. It's not as if your soul is damned if you don't like girly stuff. It's just that these are deeply ingrained patterns of thought that are not nice or healthy, and we are trying to collectively move away from them.

 

Seriously, I have the money to spend IDW. Finish what you started, along the the GI Joe Marvel HCs.....

 

It's pretty hard to misread the subtleties of "everyone I disagree with is a Nazi," especially when it typically comes from someone who doesn't even know what fascism actually is.