What can comic book companies do to increase sales?

how about putting out decent comic books, instead of books with 8 sentences and the rest artwork, stories that are full of plotholes and just beating a dead horse with rebranding already told stories.

So first thing, hire somebody who can actually come up with something new. I hated the doc ock becomes spider man story, but it was original.

Long term, even medium term I expect that they can not. All print media is doomed or is heading towards niche sectors, if I was a comic publisher I would be looking at two things, first what other mediums can I occupy (so film ala Marvel) and secondly what could I do so that I could perhaps charge more or in some other gain a lot more money per issue, by offering a premium product.

Short term there are things that can be tried to boost sales, but I wouldn't invest heavily in them, the returns will not last long.

Generally; more pages of content, better stories, less reboots and #1's, and cut down on the variant covers. (One or two are fine, but I think any more is just OTT.) The more story per issue is a big one, as the watering down of a story to fill six or ten single comics means you can read a comic in five minutes and yet have got nowhere in the actual story.

And yes kids, the old days really were better when it comes to comics!

I think perhaps new generations of compelling superheroes with a good range of age appeal are called for, along with letting go of some of the old ones instead of continuously rebooting them to cover up how old they'd really be in stories set in the modern day (figure if Bruce Wayne was all of 20 in 1938 or thereabouts when he was first introduced, he'd actually be just about a centenarian now). Of course letting go of a trademark like Batman and moving on probably is not going to happen, so periodically a lot of what you think you learned as a loyal fan wants to get tossed out the window for the sake of a reboot.

Perhaps this is related to the reasons I've been able to revisit my affection for The Doctor and for my favorite vampire from Dark Shadows, but not comic heroes? These characters happened to have been written so they could enjoy lifespans that don't have to run into the geriatric superhero problem. Also, both of them have been know to jump about in time instead of necessarily having to either have their adventures stuck in the time frame they originally occupied for consistency, or have their fans of longer standing disappointed by reinventing parts of canon.