Please Gladstone/Gemstone, not again...

[Kriton Kyrimis]

ETA BETA:

> And no, I'm not exaggerating, I really have up to TEN reprints
> of some Barks' stories, and I bet I'm not the only one...

You're not, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of us are on the "wrong" side 
of the pond. My guess is that Gemstone are trying to get American kids hooked 
into Barks, and the best way to do it is to print his best stories, which, of 
course, are those that have been re-re-...-re-printed oh so many times.

> It is fair to say that a european point of view is probably
> not very important in Gemstone's plans at the moment,

I would even go as far as saying that Gemstone would rather get rid of their 
European subscribers: next time you get a subscription issue in one of those 
thick carboard envelopes, check the amount of postage on it, then check how 
much you paid for that issue. The only one who's making money out of European 
subscriptions is the Post Office!

> I'm sure the "atmosphere" of an american-produced
> story would be somehow different from what the same authors would
> do for a european publisher...

I wonder if this is the case. Perhaps, just *knowing* that their stories will 
be printed in the US is enough.

> For the moment being I've only cut the digest DDA, it's about
> one third of a "Topolino" at five times the price, and it really
> doesn't make economical sense

The cost of producing a comic book is probably something like X+Y+Z, where X 
is the cost of preparing the contents, Y is the cost of setting up the 
printing press, and Z is the cost of the paper and ink used to print the comic 
book. To sell at a profit, you need to set the price of each issue to more 
than (x+Y+Z)/N, where N is the amount of copies you expect to sell. X and Y 
are more or less constants, and I suspect that Z is rather small compared to X 
and Y and can therefore be ignored. Thus, the more readers (N) you have, the 
lower you can make the cover price and still sell at a profit. Given the low 
numbers of issues sold that we see in the list, Gemstone's prices may actually 
make a lot of financial sense!

Any comics publishers or economics professors in this list can feel free to 
correct me. ;-)

> (must be admitted that a good half
> of a "Topolino" is ads, though... and I don't buy that either :-)

If this is the case, then the Topolino publishers might make a profit even if 
they gave Topolino away. The only ads that Gemstone have at the moment, 
however, are their own ads, which do not bring a single cent of revenue.

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
-----
"There is an art to flying, or rather a knack.  The knack lies in learning how
  to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-----