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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7745417" data-attributes="member: 19857">The comparison to comics isn't quite so apt.  A big part of the problem in the comics market is the aging demographic of comics readers - the structure of the retail market has tuned itself to old guys who have been reading books for decades and it's actually hard for younger people to get the material.  And when they do it's just not cost effective - $5 for one 22 page installment of a story that will come out monthly for 6 months is a ridiculous ask for kids these days which is why graphic novels sell so much better to that audience and why Scholastic's graphic novel program is doing better than most of the established comics companies at this point as far as sales go - there's nothing like the audience at school book fairs to sell those Amulet and Bone graphic novels.  (This is also part of DC and Marvel's recent problems, as their retail partners had told them to "reach out to new audiences" but neither the retail partners nor DC/Marvel wanted to put any money into actually reaching out to new audiences, so all they did was drive away old guys who weren't interested in material that wasn't really designed to appeal to them.  I won't be surprised at all to see the traditional comic book store basically dead within the next two decades if someone can't crack the code to get new readers into the door).Gaming was in this trap, but Actual Play casts seems to have brought in a much younger demographic.  Games are an easier "ask" than comics - you'll play a board game or a card game many times where you might read a comic once - and so even though they're more expensive per unit, as a measure of "dollars per unit of entertainment" games have a high perceived value.  And games are widely available on Amazon in non-digital formats, so people will buy them - especially if they have components (so board and card games are going to be fine).  As for RPGs - I don't think there will be problems until Amazon starts selling Kindle editions of games.  Right now you have to go to a relatively niche website like drivethrurpg to find digital RPGs.  When Amazon starts to sell Kindle editions, that's when I suspect we'll start seeing the "death spiral" hit the RPG market when it comes to the move to digital.</blockquote>

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