Good Points All Around

[rynling]

Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel is a free downloadable Twine essay about why the American comics system is broken, as well as why what the industry's marketing people say on Twitter is garbage. This seems to be the heart of the matter:

Let's talk a little more about the economics of the direct market pre-order system, and how it all shakes out in a way that doesn't help anybody at all in the chain. It's not great for the reader, it's not great for the retailer, and ultimately, it also deeply hurts the publisher's ability to make and sell comics themselves. Top to bottom, the system sucks shit.
 

I've been hearing artists complain about the preorder system for years now, but to my (limited) knowledge no one has ever really put everything together in a cogent explanation like this. The author also factors in manga (and webcomics like Homestuck) as a competing market, which I very much appreciate.

I really like the format of the essay. Maybe one of these days I should consider doing something like this myself.