Not sure if this is related to difficulties selling at eBay, but it seems like the eBay site has had more technical difficulties of late than usual. A couple of the filters in the left sidebar aren’t working at all, and when I use the Advanced Search, the results I get (for sold items) don’t resemble the results I used to get using the filters. And there have been other issues not related to this search problem, so maybe the cumulative effect is to dampen sales.
eBay stopped giving out $15 and 20% off coupons, while their ebay bucks rarely offer more than 10% back.
Then add sales tax on top of it…really hit my wallet…both buying and selling.
But I think there really hasn’t been a good spec streak in a while since the MCU and DCU have cooked off a bit at the box office.
I hope so. Back in 2006 or so, villains could be announced for movies and the comic would stay cover price.
Now Donny Cates tweets something, and an old issue that relates to nothing other than the current comics is $30. It’s toxic. That said, I don’t think anyone in the real world actually cares (or buys), so this will be what kills the hobby I fear when we literally cannibalize each other by doing this.
Like The Chicken Man said, it’s pointless to buy every book to not miss out; spend that money on the one thing that becomes a hit. eBay charging tax also was a nail in the coffin.
Many reasons for the current lull. The market is cyclical. We are in a valley. Burnout after con season. New internet taxes. Many reasons why the market is cool atm.
Overall sales in the industry are up. The sky is not falling.
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It’s funny though, because there seems to be a hot new book every week, not just new stuff but I’ll stop as well it goes up in price. It’s just a matter of staying in tune with the market
Meh…I honestly feel like it has become a bit of a goat rodeo in the last few months with regards to announcements. It has always been a bit like this, but the constant stream of “this has been optioned for a TV show” has gotten to the point of absurdity.
Take today for instance…The Marked? Just came out…blah, blah, blah, alert, posts, news, etc. So certainly there is the buy low, sell high thing and we all get it, but it has become so routine that it just is same ole same ole.
Spec is certainly a bit of fun when it comes to the finding books and making a bit of return, but there is also something to be said for the thrill of the hunt as well. Anymore, every single book is apparently “optioned”. The creators, publishers, promoters have caught on and expect that release of this info will pump up their books. Let’s be honest, any soul with a phone is watching for “alerts” and “tweets” and “Instagram” posts by creators and “collector apps”.
Just has gotten a bit too routine imo. Think of all the books over the last couple of years that have resulted in a feeding frenzy and yet absolutely nothing has been mentioned since (Body Bags and Animosity come immediately to mind for some reason, but there have been so many others–too many to even list).
I also think “TV/HULU/Amazon/Netflix series” spec is poor anyway. Again, after the very initial hype, nobody really cares about any of those shows that much. There are a few exceptions of course, but event they quickly die down.
Sometimes I think to myself, wonder if the creators who do the announcing are just doing a bit of white lying (I say that cause to them, maybe just being approached by a studio is what they consider becoming a tv show or movie) to boost their own sales? One must keep their skeptic hats on when it’s the creator who makes the claim while not claiming what studio picked up the option.
Scout Comics fits that description, Agentpoyo.
At times yes but they usually name a studio with it, not always though. At least if a creator or publisher claims a book has been optioned, naming a studio we can at least inquire with the studio or production company if the said option is true.
I’m sure at times though there might be NDA type stuff that the studios do not want to be publicly named as well.
We are starting a list of optioned books. When we flush it out more we will post.
That sounds interesting…and like a lot of work…especially keeping up with it as it seems announcements are daily,if not hourly these days.
On that note, what book was optioned today? 
Yeah, so far we got a lot of latest entrants. But need to scour past articles and such to populate as much as we can.
I think now that the spec info is readily available to everyone with all the apps coming out highlight these spec, the selling windows have shortened up. The info used to be much slower to get around and the selling windows would be open longer. Now everyone is getting alerts as soon as any word comes out for any possible speculation and you have to be early to the market in order to hit that initial wave of people looking. But… it’s also been con season for the last 2-3 months and that ALWAYS equals less spec sales, with exception to the mad dash to grab whatever books are related to the show announcements.
To many rumors to know for sure. Theres Chatter about : Man-Thing and The Marked.
All rumors and nothing verified or even announced. Probably people looking to get rid of copys.