Dragon Mag Comics

[T.H. Everything]

Will the comics that were published in Dragon Magazine ever be collected? Or are legal issues preventing that from happening?

[Yana]

This is from a previous topic:


Two reasons.

The first is financial. As you point out, I couldn't charge more than about $5 for a 22-page book, because that's what people expect to pay for such a booklet. However, those sort of prices are set by the comic book industry, and they print hundreds of thousands of copies of their books. Since cost-per-unit drops dramatically as the number of units increases, they can afford to price their books far below what I could for the same number of pages. It comes down to the fact that in order for me to print the books at the same quality as the existing products (which my readers would expect), I would lose money even if I sold out. And I might not sell out; the Dragon comics are both completely non-essential to the ongoing plot AND have seen print before, so a compilation of them could sell far less than I would expect.

(Also, the fact that you would not order it right away is itself a problem. I need to make the printing money back fairly soon in order to pay for the next new book. If everyone in Europe waited on buying it like you suggested, I would be stuck with a pile of a low price tag product and no capital with which to order the next product. Hypothetical future sales do not matter as much as actual current sales, not in an economy where small business loans have pretty much dried up. I can't risk putting out any product that doesn't make its printing cost back in the first two months or so.)

The second reason is physical. A 32-page booklet will be flimsy and easily damaged. It won't be able to stand on the shelf the same as my other books, nor will it be small enough to fit in a comic bag. This will result in a lot of spoilage when shipping to my distributors and a lot of disappointed fans when the books get bent. I'm not about to do that.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff of Moddingham: The linked post above comes from a recent, active thread on the issue. One active thread per topic please.