I resubscribed to 2000 AD and the Meg today. It just happened, because I'm on a rolling sub, but I just wanted to publicly note how well Rebellion deals with this. Three months ago, I got an email reminder about the costs involved, and when the subscription would happen. Then two more over the next two months. Loads of advanced notice. This is vanishingly rare these days with such things – mostly, it seems publishers hope you forget you're subscribing to something, so they can take your money. (And with some comics I subscribe to, the subscriptions portal no longer provides any indication of how long the current sub has to run – it now just says 'ongoing', which is useless.)
So anyway: hurrah, Rebellion! Good job!
Weirdly enough I just sub'd today for the first time ever. The prog has vanished from shops in a 25 km radius of me so finally I've moved over to paying Tharg directly.
Without the prog on shelves it's hard to see 2000ad growing. There is a tescos near me that must stock 600-800 titles, a shame 2000ad isn't there.
Agreed, they are very clear about things and give you loads of head up as the time to renew approaches. Always appreciated.
Quote from: BPP on 02 June, 2018, 05:14:25 PM
Without the prog on shelves it's hard to see 2000ad growing. There is a tescos near me that must stock 600-800 titles, a shame 2000ad isn't there.
Newsstand/high street sales are shrinking* but subs are growing at a pace that more than compensates for this (per a MOLCH-R FB comment I posted here but can't be arsed grappling with the forum's search feature to find and link). Given the insane chunk of the cover price a high street distributor (basically a WHS monopoly these days) will want,
plus the 'retail display' charges** (which is basically WHS charging rent for your place on their shelves) I can understand the title consolidating to higher selling locations with the odd promotional splurge for a jumping-on issue.
*Although at a lower rate than a great many high street distributed titles, per the same Molchinator post.
**When I worked for a high street distributed title, we actually used to employ people to go into retail outlets simply to check that WHS had racked up our title in the slot we were paying a
lot of money for. At least 25% of the time, we weren't.
Also: digital. And seeing as Rebellion have been non-dicks for a long time now on this, it wouldn't surprise me if they're doing well in that area. (Marvel and DC, of course, remain dicks.)
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 02 June, 2018, 07:01:29 PM
And seeing as Rebellion have been non-dicks for a long time now on this, it wouldn't surprise me if they're doing well in that area. (Marvel and DC, of course, remain dicks.)
The truest words ever spoken on this, when I saw them quoted in relation to the iTunes store and digital music (although I can't find a firm attribution), were: "your customers aren't pirates, and pirates aren't your customers."
Treating the former as the latter is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've given up on buying blu-rays because on three separate occasions the DRM has caused the movie to stall/freeze completely somewhere in the final quarter of the film. On every occasion, I've just gone to BitTorrent and downloaded the movie in less than 10 minutes simply so I could finish watching the film I'd purchased 100% legally. (Note: I still buy my movies, I just get them on DVD now, because the Blu-ray format has proved so problematic.)
You're absolutely right: Rebellion's policy on digital formats deserves far more credit than it gets.