The Four Color Media Monitor

The Santa Fe Reporter interviewed a specialty store manager from New Mexico, and there might be some encouraging news in this particular item:

What led you to becoming the owner and operator of Big Adventure Comics, and how has the comic market changed since you became the owner?

I’ll tell you the truth. I was getting laid off from another gig. I had been doing corporate IT for 18 years, and I was ready for a change, and I had been kind of helping the previous owners with their computer stuff, inputting data into their point-of-sale system. I didn’t really intend to, but I kind of ended up taking over all the technological parts of running the store, and I found it very interesting. So when I found out I was going to get laid off from my corporate job, I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to see if I can make them an offer to buy the business.’

Why did I want to do it? I mean, it’s partly because I’ve always loved comics. I was into comics as soon as my dad would let me buy them at the grocery store, but, like, I’ve always loved reading novels, too. It was a chance to own a bookstore. It wasn’t like I was dying to sell Captain America to people, I was just really dying to own a bookstore. I liked the idea that I could leverage all my technology skills to do it right, because increasingly it was becoming point-of-sale- and database-focused to run a retail store, and I was good at that.

Over the last 10 years, the comics specialty business in the US has been moving more and more to a bookstore model—more graphic novels, more manga, more things that aren’t magazines. And I love that, so we’ve been pulling that string. We’re selling a ton more manga. We’re selling a ton more graphic novels, because comics, like the monthly serialized magazines, they’re very flat right now. We have them, and we have a big customer base for it, but it’s fairly flat with some bumps. Stuff still happens there, but you know, we become more and more of a bookstore each year.

Here's a promising sign somebody in the retail business is willing to tell it like it is. And it wouldn't be surprising if, no matter what amount of a pamphlet is printed up, much of it gathers dust on the shelves and isn't sold in the huge sum of customer-based sales the mainstream publishers and press want everybody to believe it is. If comics sell better today as paperbacks/hardcovers, and customers consider it a tidier way of storing it all at home, then that's the example even publishers need to go by, both major and minor. I recall that Zenescope was moving away from the pamphlet format some time ago, and if they did, then others obviously should too, including Alterna, who've employed cheaper paper quality, and several years back, gave their comics a price of 1 or 2 dollars. Certainly, that's less than the 5-plus dollars charged for pamphlets today, but even so, it can benefit everyone a lot better if the same comic story were to just be published in one or two specific formats, and save money by jettisoning the one that's not working out well.

The best way a retail store can influence the situation for the better, of course, is if they're willing to stop selling the pamphlet format - especially if publishers won't accept returns of unsold supplies - and just order paperback/hardcovers. If they can do this, they'll be setting a better example. Let's hope other store managers will follow suit for as long as specialty stores are still around.

Labels: history, manga and anime, sales