The claim from NextPlanetOver and an ancillary media research firm that they're poised to tap into a huge new market of potential readers seems interesting...but it seems like a loada hype to me. Average $43 purchase...well, fine, but while I'm hopeful that they might reinvigorate comics sales in this country, I'm frankly unencouraged.

Comic books still cost too much for the average reader whether online or in store. Online reality won't change that. The 'virtual reading rooms' allowing one to read the first five pages of a comic is a nice touch, but nothing that couldn't be done in a comic book store as it stands.

We'll see!

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Chris Juricich

I know Dave lurks on these boards, so he'll probobly explain this better than myself, but I think the quoted $19 billion figure included all the t-shirts, videos, cd's etc that the business guys expect comic fans to buy. Not the market for comics themselves.

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Rick Veitch
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and Wizard represents that market segment...ugh!!

Do we need to speed up the entropy? At least selectively?

Not really kidding here. Besides ignoring some things, promoting others, checking out new mediums, and getting new readers - WHAT?

Where's the guerrilla mode with some substance thrown in? Who will we be championing seven years from now as being the early"unsung" zeitgiesters? Are we talking about making a new VERSION of existing "Rock and Roll", or a new MUSIC derived FROM it?
Who will be Bo Diddley? Who will travel across the desert to be at the Faro bar in Puerto Vallarta on the 12th of April, greeting the first ever CBLDF fund cruisers with a beer and a donation, posing for a digital daguerrotype to go down in infamy?

[This message has been edited by Greg (edited 12-15-1999).]

The 19 Billion is ALL internet sales. The comics are being used to gain web-front (vs. store-front) space to allow them to branch into other realms such as gaming, vids, etc. Amazon has done exactly the same thing.

Phil Boyle
Coliseum of Comics

The $19 billion market NPO is targeting is, as a few people above have pointed out, not just comic books. It's an aggregate of products including comic books, role-playing and CCGs, TV and movie licensed merchandise, action figures, anime and manga, genre-based books and videos, and a few other product types which have been demonstrated to appeal to the customer which purchases comics. In the same way that we expect to sell comics to people who don't generally look for comics today but buy in other product categories, we expect to sell other product categories to comic readers as well.

That's the short answer.

The 19m is difficult to understand. Having looked at the site, well... 4-5 mo's. worth of back issued items wasn't very impressive.

Wonder why the stores are diversifying? Keep sucking more money from them with the web sites run by the Corp's and when the stores are gone, where will the visibility come from of product? How will they then pre judge sales withouth the retailers to gauge print runs on?