Comics Royalties/Pygmy Indians/Euro

[Rob Klein]

For Kai Saarto: The vast majority of the Artists and writers that work for 
Egmont, Hachette, Sanoma, Sanoma/VNU, Disney Italia and the other Disney Comics 
publishers are and were free-lance, not in-house employees. Therefore, most (if 
not all) of us would really have no access to official figures that could tell 
us whether or not the cost of royalties should require an increase in the price 
of the comics.  David Gerstein, Gary Leach and Bob Foster, on this list (plus 
one or two others, worked in-house, as employees. They may be able to answer 
your question with some authority.  We free lancers can only guess. I am afraid 
tht Gary was probably correct when he stated that the publishers, if required 
by law and court order to pay such royalties, would claim that that would raise 
their costs, significantly.  At first, they would use that as an excuse to 
overturn such a decision.  Then, if that failed, they would use it as an excuse 
to raise prices.  Remember, however, that they can only charge what the market 
will bear.  There are some people that would pay double or triple the price for 
weekly, monthly and special Disney comics and books; but, there are vast 
numbers who would choose not to and/or could not afford to. They would have to 
be careful to not raise them too high.  We might have experienced this 
phenomenon with Gladstone (hypothetical), if they had had enough sales at a 
given price, but then had to increase prices 10-fold after their paper costs 
skyrocketed, to make their sales high enough for a small profit margin over 
costs. Of course, in actuality, they may have had too small a sales base to 
stay in business even at the lower cost. My own personal feeling is that the 
publishers could probably pay royalties and yet stay in business, selling the 
weeklies and monthlies at current prices, or only slightly higher prices per 
unit. They would then only reprint stories in "luxury" formats, so enough could 
be charged to make their desired profit (or at least a "reasonable" profit).  
This might mean that the readers of the weeklies would only see a few Barks 
reprints and almost no others.  I'm guessing that if readers wanted to obtain 
older stories, they would have to find them second hand, - or pay much money 
for the "fancy" re-issues.  I am interested to hear what David Gerstein, Bob 
Foster, Gary Leach, and some of our other members who have connections with the 
publishers and more knowledge of the industry think about this subject.

For Sigvald: The area north of Lake Superior is, indeed, the far west of 
Ontario. It is the land of the Ojibway Tribe. If Minnesota is "The Land of 
10,000 Lakes", then, the area in question would be "The Land of 100,000 Lakes".
They definately have giant sturgeon there, and the forests there are so very 
thick, that pygmy Indians MIGHT go unnoticed.  Barks did a good job of 
portraying the area.

For Cord Wiljes: I'm quite surprised that a German is announcing we have 
unlimited time to exchange our Deutschmark und pfenning for Euro.  I was sure 
my business partners warned me that we only had a certain number of months to 
turn the money in to receive Euro in exchange.  I can't remember if it was less 
than one year, or slightly more. If I remember correctly, they were warning us 
of this months BEFORE the switch was to be made. Perhaps such a deadline was 
proposed but then later dropped?  Also, I thought I remember hearing the same 
in The Netherlands (a number of months or one year and a few months? I don't 
have any more old currency, but I'd still like to know. Perhaps some other 
members can clarify this for us.

Rob Klein


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