Living Between Wednesdays: Dear Marvel

Monday, September 24, 2007

Dear Marvel

The Canadian dollar is now par with the U.S. dollar.

Kindly check yo' selves.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...: I guess now is the time to do some cross-border trade shoppin'!; 7:19 p.m.
Anonymous said...: Actually, a comic shop in my city sells all their comics and current trades at U.S. cover price (I'm elsewhere in Canada, somewhere to the west of you, which should narrow it down...). The owner said it works out fine for him in terms of what he makes from it, as well as being a convenient predetermined "sale" price to attract customers. He's been doing this for over a year, so it's not just with the bucks at par.; 7:52 p.m.
Skeleton Munroe said...: Urg. I've been told that even if the dollar stays where it is it could take up to two years for stuff like this to equalize.

And I'm sure that Marvel won't be leaping to lower their Canadian income...; 8:47 p.m.
Shawn said...: I've sent emails to Marvel's business folk about this before, and unsurprisingly, they didn't answer.; 12:52 a.m.
Jon said...: Could be worse. You could be in New Zealand and pay triple the US cover price on monthlies, when our dollar's only 30 cents weaker (yeah I know, shipping blah blah). I paid $45 for that Iron Fist trade. Cost of living comparisons and stuff not withstanding ;)

That does suck for you all though.; 4:49 a.m.
Siskoid said...: Apparently, we shouldn't be seeing repriced books until 2008 at the snail's pace these things take, and then there's the whole backlog. What if you buy an older book, trades are in print for a while after all.

I was happy to see my usual store knock off prices at the cash register this week though. (I know nothing about finances, but if they bought a book last year, do they take a loss by selling it par today?); 8:06 a.m.
Nate said...: I may not be able to get in to see a doctor without spending a million dollars, but at least my trades are cheap!; 9:46 a.m.
BradyDale said...: It's how we make sure you lot can't afford to invade us and insure strong trade in Buffalo. Duh.; 10:43 a.m.
Gloria said...: Yeah, I try to patronize stores that will sell you books at the US cover price but in Canadian dollars. Nice of them to do it.; 11:15 a.m.
SallyP said...: That's REALLY outrageous.

On another note, I can't BELIEVE that more people want to have a beer with Skeets than with Guy Gardner.

*sob*; 12:30 p.m.
David page said...: Come to bonnay scotland where prices are higher than the americans!

Of course the scenary is nicer here though the food is slightly questionable...; 1:53 p.m.
rachelle said...: I think more and more book/comic stores up here are starting to charge the US price, or at least a lower-than-sticker Canadian price. But, yeah, if the book has been in the store for awhile, the owner probably loses money by doing that. Or at least makes less money.

sallyp - i was kinda surprised by that too. I mean, Skeets can't even drink a beer.; 5:09 p.m.
theBigSmoke said...: The problem with CDN / US cover prices is that they aren't really about currency exchange rates... that's part of it, but not the lions share.

It comes back to how book distribution works. When a bookstore buys a book in Canada, they have to buy it from a Canadian distributor - not an American distributor. Canadian distribution companies don't sell nearly the same number of units (fewer people), so they need to make more profit per unit to keep from going bankrupt.

Once that became common practice the book industry, magazines and comics decided that it sounded like a good idea. After all they sell fewer units in Canada, and it costs more to ship stuff up here (even though most majors are printed in Montreal) and we're already used to paying split prices on books so why not?

My beef with that is that when we pay more for traditional novels, music, or the like it's going to Canadian distributors who are required by the government to spend a certain amount of their income on supporting and developing Canadian writers, singers, musicians, artists and the like.

When we pay a premium on our funny books it's going to Diamond or Warners or whomever.

The one slight argument you could make is that since the Canadian comic market is smaller it would be harder for specialty stores to make a living and the higher cover price gives them more profit margin to work with... however I call shannanigans on that as I frequent a half-dozen stores in provinces across this great nation and not one of them charges CDN cover for new books or trades.; 5:18 p.m.
John Patten said...: Because of ridiculous prices in Australia I don't buy nearly as much new stuff any more. At least I'm enjoying more silver age and long forgotten Aussie classics now though.

Btw, I voted for Guy too. Although I would consider having a beer with Skeets if I could use it to short him out.

Having a beer with a drunk and emotional robot might be a bad idea, considering he probably would know when and how you're going to die.; 1:21 a.m.
Anonymous said...: When I lived in Japan, it tripled the price of trades, so I looked into it. There's also the issue of tariffs on imported printed materials.

Yay for countries trying to import their local authors and industries by keeping citizens from reading materials printed by people in other countries who might have different ways of thinking. Dirty, evil, different ways of thinking.; 10:14 a.m.
Anonymous said...: Skeets can't steal your Beer, and probably gets you more free stuff.; 12:17 a.m.