I find a very interesting web page..\”kissing Walt\”, take a look….

The industry needs more great men like John Byrne.

God I love that man!

I love that! I have an image of a store owner boldly claiming “Ok, We’re going to have to start branching out into this manga stuff!” Then buys just one copy of Naruto, which never sells, then declares “Well, that didn’t work out.”

Probably not what happened, but that’s my image.

No?

Then please stop using that phrase.

I pointed out in the Beat’s original blog post that I carry a bunch of indy stuff. There are 3 other comics stores in town, and as much as I don’t agree with many of their operating practices, they all carry SOME level of indy comics. That’s 4 different stores, with 4 different business models, 4 different approaches to merchandising, 4 different clientèles, all carrying at least some indy stuff.

I can say most comics stores *in my area* are indy-friendly. I can’t speak for the rest of the country.

Neither should you.

If by “$10-$20 art comics” you mean a LOVE & ROCKETS trade paperback, then yes, any college with an art department will have at least a dozen or more students who will regularly spend money in your store.

That’s why a disproportionate number of “diversified” stores are found in places like Athens, GA (Wuxtry’s), Nashville (The Great Escape) and Berkeley (Comic Relief).

I would never open a shop in a non-college, non-metropolitan area and go whole hog with the independents. That would be suicide.
But I’d certainly maintain a small section of “the other stuff,” no matter where my shop was.

Otherwise, I may as well be opening a video store that rents only action flicks.
It might succeed, but it wouldn’t be a full-fledged movie store.

With that in mind, it’s apparent that a lot of comic book retailers aren’t ordering books published by Fantagraphics. Why then pick on this specific retailer? Because his shop is in the same state as Fantagraphics? Because his shop is in a college town? Do college kids attending a state college have money each month for $10 – $20 art comics?

IIRC Diamond offers 45% off, minus 3% reorder penalty (which makes it a little less than 42%) then charges shipping on the books, which can bring it down to 40% or less.

B&T is a flat 40% with free shipping and returnability.

Plus there is the feel good factor of giving Diamond some competition. Which is a plus for those who much enjoyed the times of multiple distributors competing for their money by offering better discounts and services. Some folks really want to encourge that to happen again.

Stores probably should be using a bookstore distributor anyhow. Last time I checked, Diamond doesn’t carry Tin Tin or Asterix books. Nor do they carry a lot of comic strip collections like Calvin & Hobbes, Farside, etc.. And some Manga books (if they sell them) come from bookstore distributors quicker than the DM. Not to mention prose books by a number of popular comic writers.

Not really, because the buying public is aware. We sell a pretty disproportionate share of books outside the direct market: probably between 60/40 and 70/30 these days.

I don’t think so. What retailers want most is deeper discounts. Returnability means A) smaller discounts and B) More work – in having to remember which books came out 3 months ago and physically package them up and mail them (which costs time and money they’d rather not spend).

Returnability is great if it doesn’t cost them anything (or very little) and especially something like a new weekly comic series where they have to order 12 of them before they know how it’s going to sell. It would probably also be good on the first few issues of a new series, just so they can order lots and find it’s upper most sales level. But after that, the series numbers aren’t likely to go up unless a new popular creative team jumps on and they typically have previous sales numbers to guess with in those situations.