The Best Thing About Comic Business Networking
June 30th, 2011
When it comes to comic books and graphic novels, Diamond remains virtually the only full-service wholesale distributor to the comic-book, pop culture, gaming, specialty, and collectors’ markets. The conglomerate enjoys exclusive handling arrangements with a number of publishers and provides the only sales network for all others. If Diamond doesn’t carry a comic book, i.e., if Bill Schanes doesn’t opt to purchase it, it has almost no chance of reaching the marketplace. Any marketplace. Since absorbing Capital City and wheeling and dealing other rivals out of the comic business in the ’90s, Diamond has become a monopoly similar in many ways to the union network that enjoyed exclusivity to newsstands in the ’60s and ’70s. Pretty clearly, this is the market that is driving the Comics business business. That is the source of the revenue growth. The periodical business is a classic “Cash Cow” for the so called Big Two publishers, who have a combined 75% market share . A smart business person would not invest resources into a Cash Cow, beyond what is necessary to maintain it.Audience Dialogue has evaluated websites for some a variety of organizations, and we’ve found that many of them have not developed a clear set of objectives for their website – and are thus unable to assess its effectiveness. So we searched the web, as well as books and academic journal articles, looking for a method of putting together a business model. To our surprise, we didn’t find anything usable – so we ended up developing our own concept for a business model. To summarize the writings on business models, most of the above papers and books focus on producing taxonomies or categorizations, or on stating what business models include or exclude. There was broad agreement between the various definitions in only two areas: that a business model (i) focuses on the mechanisms for generation of revenue in the value chain, in terms of (ii) broad principles (rather than the detail to be found in a full business plan). There was no consistent agreement on the other aspects of a business model. If there is anything I have learned about successful startups it’s that it’s important to have a founder or someone senior in management that has the passion to lead the rest of the team. I don’t see that at Twitter. I’m worried that in its bid to find a lucrative business model it will do some dumb things and mess up an excellent service.
Entry Filed under: Arts and Entertainment