Philadelphia's comic stores are also suffering low sales

The Billy Penn news site reports that even in the USA, and in my native metropolis, there's at least one comics store closing, and a few others whose sales aren't doing well:

After five and a half years in business, South Philly Comics is throwing its own funeral on Sunday, a decision that co-owner Johnny Foster puts down to nothing in particular. “I just know. I have a very intimate relationship with my store. I feel it. I don’t have a lot of business savvy, just a lot of common sense. It’s time to go.” [...]

Foster said that after South Philly Comics’ initial months of operation, the shop’s sales plateaued, and other long-running comics shops in the area report similar difficulties in boosting sales. Bill Fink, the owner and manager of Ontario Street Comics in Port Richmond since 1989, said, “sales have been pretty stable over the last five to 10 years. Nothing dramatic. The water and gas companies had our street blocked for a couple months, and that hurt.”

At Fat Jack’s Comicrypt in Center City, manager Eric Partridge said, “business has been very static the last few years. Our regulars aren’t being replaced. We still have folks coming in who have been with us since ’94, but there’s attrition.”

Sluggish sales trends are in spite of consistent efforts by these shops to get comics into the hands of the public. [...]

It's sad, but evident that the medium is collapsing, no matter how successful the movies are, and filmgoers are by no means flocking to buy the pamphlets, many which hover around 4 dollars now. Even paperback trades, I've noticed, are slowly beginning to rise in price, having recently spotted some from DC that could cost as much as 30 dollars or more, just like Marvel's. Even if some of these trades are larger volumes with more content inside, the prices are concerning.

That these outreach attempts haven’t driven significant new business is worrisome, especially because of the challenges unique to selling comics in a brick-and-mortar location. “Comic books are non-returnable,” said Rob LeFevre, the manager of Brave New Worlds in Old City. “That’s one of the hardest parts of being a comic retailer. You can’t be swamped in merchandise you can’t sell.”

I'd once read that Marvel was willing to take back unsold material, but I guess that was short-lived. If paperbacks and hardcovers are returnable, that's another reason why it'd be better to stock up on those instead. In fact, according to the following, it looks like they are:

Ariell Johnson, owner of Amalgam Comics in East Kensington, echoed those concerns. “We’re trying to cut down on our single issues. We order for our subscribers, and only a couple of additional copies for the shelves.”

One of the main reasons anybody could be discouraged from the single issues is because the stories aren't the same: so many 6-part arcs or more, and it becomes awfully expensive to buy as singles. The Big Two are particularly notorious for this, mandating that, in contrast to the days when self-contained stories could be told in just an issue or two, now they have to be padded out to the max. And Diamond Distribution, as they note, is another serious obstacle to success:

Ordering is especially challenging because most of any comics shop’s stock comes from a single distributor. Diamond Comic Distributors has exclusive distribution agreements with publishers including Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Image — conventional heavy hitters that produce some of the most popular comics in the world. “You can never be rid of Diamond,” Johnson warned. “They’re a monopoly. Even if we’re not getting the best terms, there’s nothing we can do. If you want single-issue books [from those publishers], there’s no other option.”

Diamond’s exclusive agreements strip bargaining power from comics shops all over the country, not just here in Philadelphia. Fink described his most recent ordering headache: a set of special Marvel lenticular covers coveted by his subscribers that he couldn’t get unless he agreed to order a mass of other Marvel comics he didn’t think he could sell. These terms were set by Marvel, but with Diamond as the only distributor, there’s no competition that might challenge such a punishing deal from the publisher. At the shops mentioned in this piece, stock ranged from 75 percent Diamond titles at the low end to 99 percent Diamond titles at the high end.

Maybe they should consider the Seattle-based Emerald, which presented itself as an alternative to Diamond's monopoly. If they're still operating, that is. Because there's doubtless plenty of independents that could use some recognition, maybe even writings and illustrations of conservative scribes. Yet Diamond's monopoly on pamphlets, for now, is just why it doesn't pay to use that kind of business model anymore.

At the same time, it's saddening as usual to learn there's customers out there who only care about variant covers for the speculator market, and stuff that could cost more than a typical pamphlet copy normally would, because of the alleged collector's value. If they're not buying for the story value, they shouldn't even be bothering to attend the store.

As disappointing as this is, it's also a shame these store managers are catering to SJW notions of diversity:

Johnson and LeFevre are also committed to reaching out to groups typically underrepresented in a comic shop setting. “We hosted our first ladies’ night a couple of years ago and only let women in to shop,” LeFevre said, “and we try to stock so that anyone from an 18-year-old art student to a 55-year-old single mom can come in and find something.”

Johnson’s shop has received national press for making people of color and LGBTQ customers a priority. “I had a lady in here from Guam who’d heard about the shop, and wanted to come visit us,” said Johnson. To bolster her business, Johnson received a $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation in July 2017 to build out classroom space at Amalgam. The writing, art and development classes she has in mind will offer professional tips and polish for underrepresented groups looking to break into comics creation. “It sometimes feels like the shop has run past me, and I’m trying to keep up.”

Oh for pete's sake. If that's what concerns them, it may not be a surprise if they're pushing the kind of SJW propaganda Marvel and DC have been pushing for several years now. Setting up a women's only shopping day at the store sounds reminiscent of Alamo Drafthouse's women's only screenings for the Wonder Woman movie. If that so matters to them, are they also interested in assisting right-wingers? Philly's been largely Democrat for many years, and that may not have changed much of recent either. If diversity's what they're selling on, and not story quality from a critical perspective, that's bound to be another reason why the specialty stores aren't finding much success now.

Certainly the Diamond monopoly and Marvel's terms are a problem. But so too is SJW-pandering and lack of talented writing/drawing (not to mention the continuing speculator market), and if they can't offer the same honesty as the store managers in Canada could, they're not solving any problems.