#there's a reason scholastic absolutely dominates the western comic industry and it's not because they're selling inherently better products

[fantastic-nonsense]

comic sales are down because the industry is inaccessible and expensive, not because piracy exists

Higher piracy rates are what happens when you make buying comics expensive, difficult, platform-dependent, and inherently exclusionary while pretending trades and digital don't count as sales.

if any single comic book company decided to be a competent publishing company for even a year comic piracy rates would plummet

[fantastic-nonsense]

instead of constantly complaining about piracy comic companies could lower prices, prioritize selling trades over floppies, expand digital purchasing/reading ability, actually market things that aren't Top 10 sellers, reprint older runs, collect runs that have never been collected, put their stuff in bookstores where people can actually find it, use their very successful multimedia franchises to leverage sales by explicitly noting the comics that media is based on in their promo material…the list goes on

it's honestly baffling that they're so desperately committed to a publishing and distribution model that assumes the majority of their audience are a) Americans who b) live near a dedicated comic shop and c) are willing to buy 1/6th of a limited selection of stories at d) 3x the price of any kind of collected version of that same story.

there's a reason Scholastic and the big manga companies absolutely dominate the traditional Western comic industry and it's not because they're selling inherently better products. They're just moderately more competent at marketing and selling the stories they publish

comic sales are down because the industry is inaccessible and expensive, not because piracy exists

Higher piracy rates are what happens when you make buying comics expensive, difficult, platform-dependent, and inherently exclusionary while pretending trades and digital don't count as sales.

if any single comic book company decided to be a competent publishing company for even a year comic piracy rates would plummet