9. Five Years

Almost five years ago to the day (I'm three days late in posting), I wrote this: The Secret Project

In that post, I revealed that I had bought a comic book shop, that it would be changing names in 2008 to Rogues Gallery Comics & Games, and talked a bit about what buying a comic shop meant to me.

Since that time, I don't think I've really had much cause to regret the decision. We had a tough go with the recession in 2009, I won't lie, and there were months there where I was really worried, but thanks to a supportive customer base, an amazing staff and family stepping in to help with a bank that could not have been less interested in helping us out, we made it through.

Not only did we survive, we thrived. 2010 was pretty good. 2011 was great. 2012 is on track to be even better. Not bad for an industry that the Internet has been saying was dying for, well, as long as I've been reading the Internet.

A few days ago, my wife (and bookkeeper) told me we'd paid off the loan to the bank. That was the brass ring I've been reaching for for the last five years. We still have plenty of overhead, including rent, power, payroll, inventory, but in terms of debt? We're clean. This is ours now. And that feels pretty great. It feels even better knowing how many people were betting against us. Not maliciously, really, but for every jaded pundit who declared that comics retail was dying, for every creator who complained that retailers were ruining their industry, for every banker who thought "comics? not worth our time" I can now offer a nice, friendly, middle finger. We made it. Other than maybe a few months in 2009, I never really doubted we would, but man is it nice to be able to say it.

What I wrote then:
"I'm not as in love with comics as I was when I began working at the store, but my love for selling them has only grown. I love the business problems and marketing challenges presented in comics. Yes, I'd be happier with a healthier, bigger market and several distributors operating at the top of their game, but I've been dealing with Diamond for six years now (plus two years during college), and for all the shit that they get, they actually provide a pretty solid service 90% of the time. And I love selling comics to people who are getting back in or looking for something new. Even if I'm not into Civil War, I get a certain joy at seeing someone get just totally hooked on a comic series like that. And when I get to sell someone on, say, Queen & Country or Bone, or when a kid picks up Owly, that's a good feeling that's hard to beat."

What I say now:

Actually, I still believe most of this. I'd be happier with a healthier market, but DC did us a huge favor with the New 52, reinvigorating the sales of single issues. Image is doing us a huge favor with new books like Chew and Strange Talent of Luther Strode and Thief of Thieves and Witch Doctor, etc. etc., not to mention Walking Dead. IDW is doing us a huge favor with spectacular licensed books, reinvigorated favorites like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and new hits like Locke & Key. Dark Horse continues to impress with Hellboy and the BPRD, licensed hits like Star Wars and Mass Effect, plus plenty of their own new books. Even Marvel, which gets a lot of bad press from the retail corner, are probably going to give us a sales success with the "give the fans what they want" of Avengers vs. X-Men, and if nothing else, they're publishing Waid's Daredevil, for which I'll be eternally thankful. That's not even mentioning Archaia, Archie, Bongo, Boom!, Oni, Top Shelf, Red 5, and the dozens of smaller publishers whose work we sell week-in and week-out.

Diamond has screwed us over during the last five years. There were the weeks when other shops in town got their books a day earlier than us. There are the weeks where they miss an entire run of an issue and we have to wait a few extra days for it. There are near-constant screw-ups in our reorders, damages to our books, missed books, etc. However... if you really step back and look at it, I maintain that these guys have an immense job to do, and 90% of the time, they get it right. I'd prefer 100% of the time, of course, but I'll take 90%.

And I've seen an increase in selling people on books I like. Sixth Gun, Chew, American Vampire, Amulet... these are a few of the top sellers in my store, books I love and hand-sell and get great response to.

I've also grown to know and love more of our games section. I've always been a gamer, but I've started to really appreciate the depth and breadth of board and card games available for groups from hardcore Euro-gamers to more casual families. In the past five years, I've fallen in love with games like Pandemic, Dominion, Ticket to Ride and Small World, to name but a few that have supplemented favorites like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. Perhaps more importantly, a lot of customers have discovered these games through us, and we've seen steadily increasing sales on boardgames.

Role-playing game wise, I have to admit to being a little disappointed in the direction that the big gun, Dungeons & Dragons, has taken, but I also have to admit that the launch of 4th edition was probably a big factor in our early success. We went all-out with a midnight release and joined up with their Encounters program, and even if I've soured a bit on the current edition, I loved it for a good long time and so did many of my customers. More importantly, Paizo has stepped up to the plate with Pathfinder and provided what many of my customers were looking for from Dungeons & Dragons. Even if D&D's new edition comes out in 2013 and is a huge success, Pathfinder has carved itself a nice niche in the market, and the worst case scenario is that we have two hugely successful fantasy role-playing games.

We've had some staff turnover, but I've had the same two managers, Nick Budd and Dave Farabee, since we started this crazy ride, and I could not have done it without them. I've been incredibly lucky to have two smart, passionate guys to run this place, and I hope that we'll continue to be the team in place for a good long time. And I've been pretty lucky with my staff too... when we had to make changes, it was a little nerve-wracking, as we hadn't done it for a while, but it always worked out for the best, and I would put my staff up against any comic book store in the country in terms of enthusiasm, friendliness, product knowledge and general awesomeness.

Five years down. Lots more to go.

Hold On... It's Gonna Get Bumpier From Here

I took the Disney/Marvel news in stride. It was a shocker, sure, but as a fan of comics, and a retailer of comics, I truly believed (and still do) that we're more likely to see positive ramifications rather than negative in the direct market, and any changes we do see probably won't roll downhill to us for at least two years.

I would have had the same reaction to Warner Brothers restructuring DC Comics. It's all corporate BS, about where the money goes, and I don't have enough money to invest in a decent HDTV, much less a giant conglomerate that makes dog food, missile guidance chips and comic books. So what do I care where the money's going?

But the announcement that gave me pause, that gave me that "oh shit" reaction everybody else had when they decided that a Disney-fied Marvel was gonna end their MAX line tomorrow and put Mickey Mouse in the Avengers, was the announcement that Paul Levitz was stepping down as President of DC Comics.

Others, notably Kurt Busiek and Brian Hibbs, have covered what exactly Paul Levitz has done for comics in the last three decades or so. Some (some might call them judgmental, sanctimonious assholes, but not me, I'm a diplomatic kinda guy) have taken this as a chance to get the knives out and vent anger at Levitz over perceived failures. Never mind that many of them are not even remotely his failures, and most of the failures Levitz had were being over-cautious, something that our always-on-the-brink-of-collapse industry could probably use a little more of, rather than less.

But the point is this: Paul Levitz is the best friend the direct market had at DC, with only Bob Wayne even remotely in the running. (And hopefully Bob will stay where he is, because Lord knows we're gonna need the advocates with the new status quo).

Disney buying Marvel? Eh. Time Warner restructuring DC to maximize movie/videogame/Slurpee synergy with its comics characters? Whatever. Motion comics? Seriously, have you seen those? They're about as much of a threat to comics as pogs were. The Kindle? Online comics shops? iTunes for comics? All manageable, worth keeping an eye on, but nothing that seems likely to utterly shake the direct market and the way comics are currently delivered.

Paul Levitz no longer at the head of DC?

Well honestly, that just scares the shit out of me.

A Little Something for the "Direct Market is Dying" Folks

So I've been updating my Goodreads page as I read stuff, which generally includes some of the new graphic novels I've bought at the shop as well as novels, older graphic novels, etc.

And it's brought to my attention something that the "buy online, it's cheaper" crowd might want to consider.

Amazon.com, Buy.com, etc. don't get everything when it releases.

For example: Goodreads has no listing (and nor does Amazon) for the latest Boom! collections of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K, the omnibuses. Which, for the record, even at retail, are cheaper than buying the three trades at Amazon discount, and, more to the point, a great format for the stories.

Atomic Robo Volume 2, which I bought on Wednesday, read on Friday night? Amazon has it listed as "This title has not yet been released." Not even a "Available this Wednesday" kind of thing.

Same thing happened with Scott Pilgrim 5... although, admittedly, thanks to Diamond's warehouse move, it's now available on Amazon, and hasn't quite made it fully back into comic book circulation yet, although hopefully we'll see that resolved next Wednesday.

Unrelated to comics, I remember something similar happening with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. We sold a *ton* of that early on anyway, but we started selling more in the first week when folks were canceling their online preorders and buying from us instead, since the online retailers weren't even getting the books for another week or two, much less shipping them out.

New Year's Resolution #1: Freak Out Less

I think I make this one every year. But I'm starting early with this one, because Diamond has, with the help of UPS, managed to turn a Friday comics delivery day (already a recipe for reduced sales) into a following Monday comics delivery day (a recipe for apocalyptically bad sales).

Here's what generally happens. On a late release day, which happens seemingly every couple of months thanks to various holidays, and pushes comics to Thursday, we generally lose about a grand in sales. Where do they go? I don't know. But mostly it seems that folks who are more casual about their comics buying, or who might have picked up a few extra books, don't come in that week at all, opting for a "double helping" on the next Wednesday (which, due to budget realities, usually means more of a "helping and a half", and a bunch of add-on comics that might have sold don't sell) or they come in.

A Friday, when the next comics day is looming closer, is even worse. A Monday, when there's a new comic day two days later? I'm gonna guess that a large majority will go ahead and wait it out, and we've effectively lost a Wednesday. Worse, we get pick-up sales on those books on Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Those are now gone as well. Now it's not like we have nothing to sell... we'll still sell graphic novels, comics that had already come in, games, etc... but as with everything, the new is what drives things, and a bunch of books that would have sold on Friday may not sell at all. Crazy as it is, every day a new comic is late, it's value decreases.

Especially in a town where two other comics shops are chains, and thus get the benefit of early shipping, so they *will* have their books on Friday.

Diamond "regrets the error" but isn't offering anything to make up for this money loss, not even free shipping on the books that are now shipping out three days late.

Diamond and UPS are two of the most important parts of my business... I interact with each of them at least twice a week, and one of those times (the weekly comics drop) is literally life-and-death for the business. And if they screw up, as they do on a monthly basis (in small and sometimes big ways), my only recourse is... to get frustrated. Which earns me nothing, and hurts them not at all.

Thus the resolution to freak out less. I'm not going to let the fact that I probably just lost a couple grand in sales kill my enjoyment of my New Year's Eve party, and I'm going to try real hard not to worry about it all weekend.

But if all of you could spare a moment or two over the four-day weekend to mutter "Fucking Diamond" under your breath, you'll probably be syncing up with me at some point. ;)

One Retailer's Perspective on Final Crisis #7

So the solicits for DC are up, and Final Crisis #7 is being done by Doug Mahnke instead of JG Jones. This has apparently caused some kind of uproar, and there's a very self-effacing mea culpa from Jones at CBR.

Jones shows a lot of class in apologizing, although I doubt that's going to assuage the anger of fans who see yet another big tentpole project running late and delivering something other than what was promised at the outset (7 issues of Morrison and Jones on DC's big event). It's also not terribly helpful in terms of the lateness affecting sales, and how that affects retailers.

However... Jones should totally be let off the hook on this one. And you know why?

Because it's not his fault. Hands up, anyone who actually believed that JG Jones would complete this project on the monthly schedule DC promised, based on past performance? OK, everyone who works at DC editorial can put your hands down. Anybody else?

To put it in a less snarky way, this is the fault of an over-enthusiastic or delusional or (more likely) cynical marketing and editorial team, who either fooled themselves into thinking that a Morrison/Jones project involving tons of cross-editorial continuity wouldn't require any kind of extra time to work on, or who realized it would be late, but figured that the industry had grown so accustomed to it that they wouldn't do anything but gripe on message boards and buy it anyway.

If anyone deserves finger-pointing here, it's DC editorial and marketing. But hey, they gave retailers FOC to knock down orders if this actually does affect fan enthusiasm and sales, so I've got no particular gripe. And my interest in the DC Universe as a fan has been an increasingly casual, mostly rubber-necking at a car wreck kind of thing since Identity Crisis, so as a fan, I've got no real issues either.

What Kind Of Day It Has Been

Today is the worst day I can remember in a while. Just really, really shitty and frustrating. And it's my blog, so I'm going to vent.

A little backstory: Our air conditioning at the store, which went out in August, was out for about a month while we tried to negotiate with the management company to get it fixed/replaced. Two different companies told us we needed to replace us, but the management company wanted bids, and they wound up going with a local company that decided to only replace the compressor. So instead of spending $8000, they spent $1500... and I had to pay a $1000 deductible. Which sucked. And we went a super-hot month in Texas with no A/C.

Cut to two weeks ago Friday, and Dave notices that the A/C isn't working. We think maybe we're just being paranoid, but it's definitely warm in the store. Finally, after putting in a call to the management company, we turn it off and back on and it starts working. OK, maybe just a quirk, but I get the number of the A/C repair guys so I can set up our new quarterly maintenance schedule with them anyway. But with everything else I've got going, including setting up for our comic book trivia event at the end of the month, it gets put off.

So cut to last Friday, and the air goes out again, around 3 in the afternoon. This time it doesn't come back. Fortunately, since we were through the bids and everything back in August, I'm able to get ahold of the management company and get something set up with their A/C company... for Monday.

One hot, annoying weekend later, the guys show up on Monday afternoon, find that there are burned-out connectors (no doubt one of the many problems that caused the other guys to suggest we replace the unit rather than just repair the compressor). They fix those, and then find that said connectors have burned out the new compressor. They've put a rush on it, hopefully it'll be in on Tuesday. Which I take to mean that it's probably going to be Wednesday at least.

Background over. Today is Wednesday, new comics day. I get up at 8 AM, as usual, and go to get the comics. No sweat there, the books are ready, they're all in the boxes (a few minor damages, but we let that go). However, it did decide, after months of no rain, to rain yesterday, and so the store, without A/C, is not only hot but humid, and so some of the comics are crinkly, and the general feel in the store is hot and gross.

We are much relieved when the air conditioning guys show up around 1 PM. They don't come in and say anything, they just go up on the roof and start working. That's fine, as long as they get the job done. Then I get a call from my night employee, who is sick. He can't come in, and everybody else is working day shift. I'm the owner, so now I'm working 8 AM - 11 PM. Rough, but hey, at least I'll have A/C.

Or not, as it again begins raining while I'm out picking up our games order. As I unpack the game order and realize that I accidentally doubled a couple of games, resulting in a quarter's supply of a game turning into an eternal-we'll probably never sell this many supply, we notice that the A/C guys are gone. Maybe they just didn't come in to tell us it was fixed? Nope. Flick the air on, nothing happens. They just left. Didn't come in to tell us what happened. Did they leave because they couldn't work in the rain? Did they find they needed some other parts? Are they playing a giant prank? We have no fucking idea, because they didn't bother to come in and tell us. Calls to the company go unanswered, mildly irritated voicemails are left.

Then our Diamond reorder shows up. This is our weekly restock of graphic novels and single issues we've sold out of. On occasion, they mis-pull one or two books, and we're out a book for an extra week or so. On this particular occasion, though the tracking numbers show two boxes, the boxes are marked (of three) and there are 69 items missing. It seems pretty clear that one of our boxes is either sitting at the Diamond warehouse or shipped out to another store. I call in to my Diamond rep, but it's close to 6 in New York, so I'm pretty sure I won't be hearing anything back until tomorrow at the earliest.

So... here I am. A/C doesn't work, we're missing inventory (and resulting sales), we're overstocked on some games we'll probably never sell, and I'm working a 15-hour day on four hours of sleep.

On a relative scale, it's all fairly minor... but it sure felt like a shitstorm of mega proportions to the folks who were here today.

Orson Scott Card: Raving Lunatic

Courtesy of Chris Sims (via Tom the Dog), I see that Orson Scott Card's latest attempt at rationally explaining his completely nutbar ideas about homosexuality in general and gay marriage in particular are crazier than usual.

And here's the thing. As a responsible comic book store owner, I *have* to carry Ender's Game. A lot of my customers are excited about it, and honestly, I've bought stuff by writers who I know to have differing opinions from mine (pretty much anything by Chuck Dixon, at least). But... Card has reached a new level of crazy, a level I like to call Dave Sim crazy, where I feel dirty having even the barest association with him, even by selling his book.

So I think I've got a solution. I'm going to figure out what my profits are on the issues of Ender's Game, and when the miniseries is complete, I'm gonna write out a check to a Gay Rights charity here in Austin, and then I'm going to send a nice note to Mr. Card letting him know how much his work has helped to fund said charity. That seems a nice fuck you message that also happens to put some money in the hands of folks who need it.

Free Comic Book Day thoughts

We had a pretty good Free Comic Book Day at the store this year. Last year was only two months after I bought the store, and we had a huge event, with two writers and two artists in attendance, and we had the best day of sales the store has had since I bought it, not to mention having (I'd estimate) about 600-700 people walk out happy with handfuls of free comics.

This year, with CAPE getting bigger and bigger, both the writers decided to head up to Dallas, and one of the artists had moved, but Scott Kolins was kind enough to come in and sign and sketch for us for more than three hours. We had him set up at a table up front, and there was always a big crowd, as he sketched, signed and showed off super-cool prints of his covers for Rogues Revenge #1-2, upcoming Brave and the Bold issues and other stuff. He sold a few prints, signed several comics and did lots of free sketches, and that was great.

At the back of the store, as always, we had set up two tables and broken up the comics into categories of "All Ages," "Ten and Up" and "Mature Readers." I was kind of pleased that this year, the Mature Readers section was less than a half-dozen books, but the "All Ages" section was near overflowing. We had ordered heavily, as always, but we started off with a three per person comics limit (more on that later in the post). At the store manager's suggestion, we bumped to four later on. And we weren't diehards about it. If someone found four or five they liked, they were welcome to take that many. Nobody got greedy and asked "Can I just have one of everything?"

It was a busy day, finally slowing down at around 5:00 or so, at which point we condensed what was left onto a table up front so that the decreased number of employees (we were down to two, and occasionally one) could make sure everybody heard the deal when they came in.

One of the high points was having a young girl come in who used to shop with us buying Crossgen. She had dropped out because Crossgen went under (a fear we'd always had), but now that she was a back, and a little older, we suggested Mouse Guard and Fables and a few others, and it looks like she might find some comics to like again.

We didn't hit the heights in sales that we did last year, but we still had a very good Saturday. We had also made flyers with "What's Cool in Comics," one all-ages with Iron Man, Mouse Guard and a couple others and another with Fables, Walking Dead, Buffy and Dark Tower, which we gave out to everyone, and I'm hoping that'll lure some new readers back in.

I worked a 15 hour day, from 9 AM to midnight (since we do all our reordering on Saturdays), and although I was tired, I felt like we'd put on a pretty good event. I was pleased with the turnout, pleased with how everyone seemed to be happy.

Then I get online a couple days later and find folks complaining about how they *only* got three comics at their local store (happily, nobody seemed to have that reaction to us, but they easily could have, since three was our general limit). One even went so far as to gripe that he went to Austin Books (one of the best comic book stores I've ever been to) and was unhappy with the treatment there, where he was allowed to pick 10 books. Somebody else posted rather proudly (although he disingenuously claimed not to be proud) that he had stolen 20 books rather than stick to the limit of three at his shop. There's even a well-known blogger and retailer who is griping about how so many stores "fucked up" Free Comic Book Day. I know he's not talking about me in particular, I know that he's not entirely wrong, but seeing it from someone who understands the pitfalls and balancing act was just... draining.

I thought I'd gotten to the point where Internet stupidity and the sense of entitlement that often comes with it doesn't bother me, but the aftermath of Free Comic Book Day online has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I'm still pleased with how it went for us, but it makes me sad and angry to see folks complaining because they didn't feel that a few free comics were enough, and that somehow retailers owed them a free copy of each book, a sale on everything in the store and maybe a free pony too.

On Responsibility

You know, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. And while it's never a pleasant experience, if I've made a mistake, I try to own up to them.

So I'm somewhat puzzled by the last couple of days, where three of my business partners have experienced the same mysterious "You got screwed... but it's nobody's fault" problem. Apparently, there are all kinds of problems out there being caused by mysterious gremlins. Thus, there's no need to apologize for them or in any way make restitution. This is a miracle! Perhaps I need to apply this in my own life more. If I get in a car accident, I won't give my insurance information, I'll just speed away with a friendly wave. "Wasn't my fault, the gremlins did it!"

The minor one is that my payroll company's automated entry system (which has always been a touch squirrelly) didn't work over the weekend, and since they don't have 24-hour customer support, I had to wait until Monday morning to call in payroll. Since I don't think this delayed my payroll, this is a relatively minor issue... it was just the start of the problems that would plague this week.

Diamond Comics (you know, the guys with the monopoly on delivering all comics to everyone in North America?) has what some might call a minor problem with their shipping. That is, on occasion (and by on occasion, I mean every single week), they mis-ship something. Some books don't arrive, some extras do arrive, some are damaged. Most weeks, it's minor. Some weeks, you get something like what happened to me this week, where my entire order of Countdown to Final Crisis #7 was instead Batman Strikes. Which I don't sell a single copy of. In these cases, you can call your rep, as long as you get to them early enough, like before 11 AM, and they are supposed to get a direct ship order sent out so that you have your replacement copies in on Friday. Is that the same as having it on Wednesday? No. But it's a damn sight better than not having them at all.

So I call my rep, who tells me he'll get it taken care of. He's told me this three previous times with this kind of thing, with an issue of Green Arrow: Year One and a couple others that I can't remember. What I do remember is that in only one case did we actually get the books on Friday. On the others, it was Monday or later. So I am skeptical. But there's not much I can do but put my faith in him.

Whoops. Come Friday, no Countdown. I call, I am told "I put the order in, I don't know what happened." No offer to look into it, no "Sorry we screwed up not once but twice," just "Hey, wasn't my fault." Just me saying "So it should be here on Monday?" to which I am told "Yes, it should be." This does not fill me with confidence.

Monday arrives... see where this is going yet? No Countdown. I call again, and ask for a tracking number and an ETA. To his credit, it only takes 45 minutes for me to get a call back with a tracking number, and I am told it will arrive on Tuesday. As of now, I'm still waiting. I also tell him that I would like an explanation for what happened. Because I know this kind of thing will happen again.

Also on Monday, I discover that my other distributor, Baker & Taylor, has mysteriously canceled my large book order for the week. I discover this because I had happened to email my rep on a different matter, and she noticed it. No warning was sent out, if I hadn't lucked into it, I wouldn't have found out until after Friday, when I was wondering where on Earth my Baker & Taylor order was.

So I call in to Customer Service. They're baffled. It was canceled by financial services, they don't have any further information. I call financial services, leave messages on three different voice mails, but since they are on Mountain Time and it was late afternoon when I discovered this, they've gone home for the day.

The next day, they call work (and I'm at home) and I've left instructions to give them my cellphone number. They don't call my cellphone number. I call in to work, get the number for financial services, call them. I am told that they didn't cancel it, and I need to speak with customer service. This is not what you'd call a satisfactory answer, so I explain that customer service told me the exact same thing about financial services. I even tell them that I called my credit card company the day before, and they showed no charge from Baker & Taylor, no attempted charge and certainly nothing that would cause the card to decline. Nobody can figure out why the order was canceled. It's those damned gremlins again! So the gremlins are to blame for me not having books that I needed on Wednesday until Friday at the earliest.

No apologies are offered, and my inquiries about getting expedited shipping in exchange for the screw-up are ignored. As far as they're concerned, there's no need to make up for anything... they didn't do anything wrong! It was just those damned gremlins.

This is comics retail, folks. People on the Internet telling you that your job is obsolete and worthless, your business partners screwing up and not taking any blame, a constant battle with various little fires that need putting out.

And honestly, despite all the problems, I'd still rather be doing this than 99% of the other jobs out there.

But I would love to strangle those gremlins.

Shoplifter Update

They came in on Thursday night, two days after making off with somewhere between three and six volumes of Battle Royale. They had one other girl with them who had not been with them the last time. And the employee who was there walked up, told them "We've been having trouble with stealing, and we think it was you. Get out and don't come back."

The one who hadn't been with them protested, but the others didn't say a word. They knew they were caught, and they knew that my employee had snapped photos of them on his cellphone so that if we have any further trouble, we can quite easily identify them for the cops.

Problem solved. It would have been more satisfying to catch them in the act, and when reordering volumes 1-11 of Battle Royale tonight (aside from 2 and 7, which are frustratingly unavailable at the moment) I gritted my teeth, but it's nice to have it dealt with so quickly.

Retail Woes: Shoplifters

Anyone who has worked retail (or especially owned a shop of any kind) knows that shoplifting is part and parcel of the experience. Generally it's called "shrinkage," like the inventory magically shrunk rather than being carried off by thieves.

It's an annoyance, but it's one I haven't had to deal with too much, because of the nature of our business. While we do get a lot of casual traffic, most of the people who would be interested in having our product enough to steal it also have enough of a fondness for the store to pay for it instead.

Most.

We've had a couple of packages of dice go missing lately. We know because we find the empty boxes stashed somewhere in a display, the dice obviously slipped into a pocket and carried out. Annoying, but relatively minor.

Then today, my manager and one of the employees noticed that some of our Battle Royale was missing. Notably, the first three or four volumes, and our inventory indicated we had one, and in some cases two, of each volume. Later tonight, a group of four teenagers who have been semi-regulars (although they've rarely purchased anything) came in, and while the manager was busy, they stole three more volumes of Battle Royale. He knows this because they were there when the teens came in, gone when they left, and there were no other customers in that time.

So we know who they are. We know what they look like. And the next time they come back, they will either be read off the property or arrested for shoplifting. Which isn't much comfort as I go to buy about eight or ten volumes of Battle Royale that I already bought, but it will be if we catch them in the act.

Adventures in Retailing: Free Comic Book Day 2007

Wow, was that a long (but rewarding) week.

This was my fifth Free Comic Book Day. I've worked every one since the beginning (aside from 2006, when I had a family reunion to attend instead) and they're always a lot of work, but very rewarding. It's even moreso (on both fronts) when you're the store owner.

We had a great Free Comic Book Day. We ordered just enough, for the most part. We even have a few Spider-Man, Bongo and Justice League left over for next year. My fears of running out of the Umbrella Academy sampler or Spider-Man didn't come true. My only regret is that we didn't order more Astounding Wolf-Man, as we ran out of that about mid-day, and I would have liked to have had it into the night. But in general, everybody got the comics they wanted. We started off giving out three to a person, but in the early afternoon moved to five per person, and by the end of the night it was "one of each of what's left" which equated to somewhere between 6-10 per person, depending on how close it was to the end of the night.

From noon until about 3:30, we had comic book creators in the store signing and sketching. Paul Benjamin was clearly in his element, working the crowd, cracking jokes and signing plenty of autographs. We sold quite a few copies of his Pantheon High manga from Tokyopop, and he signed a whole bunch of his copies of Marvel Adventures Two in One Free Comic Book Day offering. Scott Kolins sold several gorgeous prints of pin-ups and covers he had done, as well as doing many a sketch and signing copies of Omega Flight and other works. Billy Tan had two lithographs (one of Hepzibah, one of the X-Men, I bought both for the store) and two sketchbooks (one guys, one girls, I bought both of those as well) and some gorgeous character illustration pieces, and we sold a few of his Uncanny X-Men issues to sign as well. Billy did quite a few sketches as well (including a Corsair for me and a beautiful inked Batman for a customer). Everybody seemed to have a good time, and we were packed to the gills while the creators were there.

Next year, I definitely want to figure out how to get more press coverage. I sent out a press blurb to a ton of folks, including local TV, radio and news and all the comics news sites, and literally nobody picked it up. Many ran press releases for the big Zeus event CAPE (and that's a great event, if I wasn't running my own FCBD I'd be there every year) and a few also ran press for the last-minute mini small press Con being done by Austin Books (again, great store and a good idea for an event.) I was a little frustrated to be ignored when I thought we had a pretty good event put together and I had taken the time to send out press info in advance, but that's the way it goes. Next time, a full fledged press release, even earlier, and more follow-up. Certainly the lack of coverage didn't cost us anything in terms of attendance.

I worked about 14 hours that day, and well over 40 this week getting ready, but it definitely paid off. Tons of kids and adults came in and got free comics. Everybody seemed to have a good time. And I'd do Free Comic Book Day even if it cost us more money, but instead it was our biggest day for the store yet, even counting our five year history. We did about three to four times our usual Saturday business, and even with the expense of free comics, advertising and related costs, it was a very successful day for us.

Already looking forward to next year, and to figuring out what cool event we can run at the store next.

One of my customers, Dave Figueroa, took pictures, so there's a slideshow below.

Adventures in Retailing: I Wanna Be Alex Cox when I grow up

Not only is Rocketship a great name for a shop, not only do they have a kickass store complete with great fixtures, logo, T-Shirts, etc.

But Alex Cox is a very smart man, as evidenced by this thread at The Engine.

Our stores are very different, in no small part thanks to geography and customer base, etc., but in general retail philosophy, Alex Cox is one of my retailing role models.

Adventures in Retailing: Uh... where's the fourth box?

So today I got acquainted with one of those delights of retailing, the unfortunate UPS/Diamond shipping mishap. It's happened a lot, usually with one region getting their books a week ahead of time. Minor when it's something like Madman shipping out of L.A. this week, Plattsburgh next. Major when it's Civil War shipping to everywhere but the West Coast one week, then out to the West Coast the next.

But there are also those that just hit one retailer, and not his local competition. UPS ships a lot of boxes, so does Diamond, mistakes are bound to happen. Unfortunately, we happen to be in a business where product as late as a day late is worth less, because a fanatical customer base will sometimes go to another store in town regardless of loyalty to get their weekly fix. It's the downside of creating such a rabidly devoted fanbase.

So this was a big week. Dark Tower #3, Buffy #2, the last part of Planet Hulk, Avengers: The Initiative #1, the first part of Fallen Son, the first issue of Joss Whedon's Runaways... and out of that list, we only got one of those books. The rest (along with several others) were stuck in Houston. Which doesn't seem insurmountable, given that Houston is only about three hours away and I was willing to drive, but I was pretty much told they weren't going to let me in if I went there, and even if I had gone, I wouldn't have been back until many of my customers had already stopped in.

It couldn't have been the box with the Batman free Heroclix for Free Comic Book Day that went missing. Or the one with about three or four smaller books. No, it had to be the heaviest one, packed with all the big sellers.

It was a frustrating morning. I yelled about every obscenity I knew on the long drive back from the UPS center to the shop, and tried desperately to come up with some great tactic that would make customers coming in pick up something else, then come back for their comics on Thursday. There isn't one, by the way... on Wednesday, folks want what they want, they don't want a substitute. I was frustrated and pissed off and, given that this is the first week we've had to do Wednesday morning pulls, maybe even a little worried.

But here's the upside: We still had a pretty good day. Not just sales-wise, although I have to say that the sales hit was less than I thought, thanks to Dark Tower, 52, the new Omega Flight and a number of other mid-level books that we did get. No, mostly it was in seeing that in such a situation, I can count on the people around me. My staff commiserated with me but didn't let me wallow, nor did they wallow themselves. They buckled down and did their jobs. They told every customer what had gone on with a sense of good humor, they worked their asses off on a busy day... one of my staffers asked if I needed him tomorrow morning and didn't complain for a second about having to get up early the next day when he was supposed to have a mid-day shift. I have the best staff in the world.

And some of the best customers, too. Everyone was sympathetic, nobody got mad at us, everybody made plans to come back tomorrow or just hold off and pick stuff up with next week's pulls. All told, we lost some day's sales, but I don't think that many folks went driving somewhere else to get the copy today. We've always done right by them, they remembered that and they rewarded us for it.

It sucks to have something like this happen, especially on a huge week like this one. And yeah, it was a shitty morning and a hectic day. But in the end, it turned out to be kind of a positive, as I was reminded once again that I'm lucky to have a good store, a great staff and a great bunch of customers.

Not so positive an experience that I want it to ever happen again, mind you. :)

Adventures in Retailing: Bitch, bitch, bitch

Kind of interesting to read the various reactions around the Internet, from the retailing perspective, on Captain America... and find myself agreeing with none of them.

Joe Riley's angry tirade against Marvel seems unfair and a bit pissy that Marvel didn't anticipate the retailers' every move and counter it. Yes, Marvel could have given the info about the overprint a little earlier so that everyone could have gotten onboard with a direct ship delivery next week instead of having to wait another week until March 21st. Yeah, I'm a little annoyed about that turn of events, too. But you know who I'm most annoyed at? Me, for not going with my instinct and trying to put in an order on Wednesday. Instead, reality slapped me in the face at 2 PM on Thursday when I realized that even if they weren't available, I should call in to Diamond and see what future plans would be. Retailing isn't supposed to be easy, it's supposed to be work, and you're supposed to use your head and try to think about what's coming. Frustrating when it doesn't work, and certainly Marvel could have made things easier, but this is not something for which editorial heads should roll.

Customers are coming into your store, excited about a comic book. Many of them are not regular customers, but new people, full of potential to buy comics from your store. If they're leaving frustrated, it's at least partly your fault, because they *can* get their comic, they might just have to wait a week or two for it. If they've ever tried to buy a hot videogame or videogame system on release day (and the odds are good that they have) they're going to understand that. Unless you gripe at them about Marvel's short-sightedness and how they're trying to screw your business, in which case they might just decide you're right and comics aren't worth it.

Of course, Garner Loudermilk's defense of Marvel is arrogant, insulting and factually wrong. First of all, he considers DC's over-printing of Superman a mistake, lamenting that "now the book is barely worth a little over cover." He further spews "If Marvel has learned from DC's mistake then I for one am glad of this. If they over-printed the book then there is no chance of the book rising in value."

Garner, as someone who watched the entire industry nearly collapse thanks to assholes speculating on comics like commodities, allow me to offer a hearty "go fuck yourself." Rising in value? Bullshit. A secondary market where the book rises in value benefits Ebay, and those who view comics as stocks and bonds with four-color covers. It doesn't help Marvel (should they not print a trade, too, just in case?), it doesn't help retailers in the long run, it doesn't help the fanbase, it doesn't help the industry. Your knowledge of the comics industry is about 12 years late, so maybe you ought to clam up and do some research before you go shooting your mouth off.

Garner also offers this gem: "Where it went wrong is store owners failing to capitalize on it. Don't blame the industry, blame yourself. You knew it was selling, you read three months ago in Previews when it said someone was going to die. If you failed to order up on it and are losing out on sales, it's your fault."

In point of fact, no one read three months ago in Previews that someone was going to die. You know what we read? "CIVIL WAR - CLASSIFIED - More information to come." Except it didn't. Again... get your facts straight before you start making accusations. What the hell does a marketing associate for a toy company know about comics retail, anyway? Then he goes on to blame the fans for not pre-ordering:

"But if the customers didn't have it on their subscription list at their local comic shop then again that is their fault, not Marvel's."

Yeah, fanboys, why didn't you know that Captain America was going to die and that CNN and every news organization was going to pick it up and it was going to sell out? Why didn't you plan to buy a comic you don't regularly pick up three months ago because Marvel said it was going to be big? They've never lied about that kind of thing before, and really, shouldn't everyone be buying their comics three months ahead of time instead of coming in to the shop to browse and buy what they're interested in then?

Again, what Garner knows about comics retailing could clearly fill a thimble. But he's got a Grand Canyon sized bowl full of disdain for retailers and comic fans.

But I think I might start calling Chris Butcher before I place any of my comics orders in the future... he has some sort of crystal ball that always allows him to get things exactly right. And if some of us were caught unawares by the level of the demand, we must be idiots. Because anyone who didn't *know* that it was going to be a giant media event and thus quadruple their regular orders so they could sell out the next day rather than the day of is clearly not doing their job properly. As we all know, there are no variables to ordering comics retail, and if you don't guess everything 100% correctly all of the time, you are not doing your job properly.

Adventures in Retailing: Feeding Frenzy

So... anybody reading Captain America lately?

It was an interesting week. We knew something big was coming, because when the writer of the book tells you "Order more copies" you're more inclined to do it than when you hear it from marketing or (especially) from an editor in chief who is given to hype. So we doubled our orders on Captain America #25, a book that already has been selling pretty well for us.

As a result, we sold out by 4 PM instead of by 1 PM. I don't feel like I could have done much better... based on vague promises of "This is going to be big," I really couldn't hit my Civil War numbers. I mean, Marvel promised the same thing with Civil War: The Return, and if I had ordered Civil War numbers on that book, I'd *still* be eating the costs. By the time we get our Cap reorders, we'll be well over Civil War's numbers, though.

This being my first time dealing with Diamond back orders and a book this highly anticipated, I almost missed the boat entirely on putting in back orders, and as it is, I missed the somewhat arbitrary Thursday noon deadline, so that the majority of my books will be arriving a little later. I'm not quite sure why the direct ship deadline is Thursday noon for Captain America and Monday by 5 PM for everything else, but hey, it's an unusual situation, so I'm willing to roll with it and hope my customers can hold out for the extra week it'll take me to restock. I'm not *happy* about it, but I'm not gnashing my teeth and screaming at Diamond or Marvel about it. I've noticed that retailers like to bitch, about everything, and frankly I don't want to be one of those guys. I'd like to reserve my bitching for when I think it's constructive and at least a little bit fair.

Sure, Marvel could have handled it better. They knew enough about how big this was going to be to coordinate with the media, and to have an overprint ready. What would have been nice is if they had made sure the overprint was available the day of, so that when intrepid retailers who use the Diamond website to check stock went to see the availability, they didn't get the rather daunting impression that the book was gone, and there wasn't any point in calling my Diamond rep to ask about it.

But they really couldn't have told retailers what was going to happen. Truth is, someone in the retail community would have blabbed, ruining the story not only for the media and diminishing its attention from a business standpoint, but for the fans. We would have known the story two months ago, rather than having Yahoo! news spoil it the day of. I don't like ordering based on the invisible solicits we've been getting from Marvel, but this was a big secret to keep, and as long as it doesn't become a habit, I'm OK with it this one time.

My bigger worry is the larger scale implications of it. I was working comics retail when the Death of Superman hit. I remember lines out the door, excitement and frustration at the prices. I remember skyrocketing sales, brought down by a near-crash of the industry when people realized they'd essentially been scammed. And I worry that we're watching the whole thing repeat.

But... with any luck, the retailers who are left are smarter. I hope that a lot of the fanbase is too. The people buying Cap should know that Superman came back, and Cap will too. So far, it seems that a lot of people looking for the issue aren't looking to fund their kids' college education, but just to read what sounds like a pretty earth-shattering story. I know I've been doing my best to tell people who are buying it that it's a good story, not a commodity that's going to appreciate with time. In the short term, the comic is going for insane amounts on Ebay (and if you bought Cap #25 for like $50 or more, I'm very sorry because in about two weeks, anyone should be able to walk into a comics shop and get it for less than $5), but in the long-term, it's going to have the price of Spawn #1 or the Death of Superman issues.

This is a huge opportunity to get outsiders into comics. I hope we don't fuck it up this time. For my part, I'm going to be making up bookmarks to give away that point readers to Brubaker's Cap trades, to Criminal, to Sleeper, to Daredevil. I'm going to be doing my best to make sure that folks who come in to see Captain America's death see the breadth of what comics have to offer. And I'm going to do my best to make sure that anyone who walks out with Captain America #25 has bought it with their eyes open, so that in a few months they don't decide that comics made a bunch of false promises and the whole medium isn't worth their time.

Now, might this cost some short-term sales? Might we accidentally turn off a speculator who wants to buy 10 copies and slab them at CGC? Might we make a mint selling a few copies on Ebay for outrageous prices? Sure. But I'm more interested in the long-term, in using this very successful event to gain fans of the medium. I'd love it if in a few years, when I'm telling people "I own a comic shop" they don't say "Oh, yeah, what's my Captain America #25 worth?" but rather "Oh yeah, I started buying comics again after they killed Captain America... there's a lot of good stuff in comics."

It's a pretty good time for a comic book retailer to snag casual customers. I got a big 'ol stack of $30 300 hardcovers today... three of them were presold, it wouldn't surprise me too much if I wind up having to reorder more in the next week. Transformers is right around the corner, and is raising interest in IDW's well-produced Transformers books. Fantastic Four hits this summer, and while I question the timing of replacing the familiar team with Black Panther and Storm, having Dwayne McDuffie on as writer means that fans coming off the movie will have something cool to read. Add in Dark Tower (which sold gangbusters with its second issue this week), Buffy (coming next week), Anita Blake, etc. etc. and comics are doing better than ever at reaching out to new audiences. I feel like this was the right time to buy a shop.

Adventures in Retailing: Civil War

No, not the Marvel event, although, well, sort of.

No, I'm referring to the Civil War within myself, a retailer who cannot stand most of the creative decisions Marvel is making these days... even as I find myself applauding them from a business standpoint.

If you look at the numbers, the current regime at Marvel looks like geniuses. Civil War was a sales monolith, a crossover that boosted numbers on every book it touched (in some cases raising books sinking towards cancellation, like Black Panther, up to become viable entities). And post-Civil War, they're capitalizing better than DC did on Infinite Crisis.

Now the events themselves, Infinite Crisis and Civil War, suffer from much of the same problems. Lackluster plots. Recognizable heroes acting wildly out of character for shock value. Tons of C-lister characters that the average audience doesn't care about and the audience that *does* recognize them probably mostly cringes expecting the writers to off them for shock value. A weak ending, helped not at all by storytelling that seemed to veer off in one direction or another throughout, rather than aiming at one particular story target and hitting it. In the case of Civil War, lateness. In the case of Infinite Crisis, dozens of fill-in artists to avoid lateness.

However, after Infinite Crisis, DC had two big plans to hang onto their sales boost: A weekly title and "One Year Later," an event allowing the creators to shake up the main books. The weekly title was a big hit, but it probably drained some excitement from the main books. And the main books didn't help but being really, really dull in general. As with the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, despite having that very thing as an example, editorial tried to have its cake and eat it to. Rather than biting the bullet, renumbering every book with a new number one and giving the whole thing an across the board shake-up/ground-up relaunch, some books were radically altered, most were given cursory pretend alterations and some just went on with business as usual. The result? Fast sales drops back to pre-OYL levels.

Marvel, on the other hand, seems poised to capitalize. The Spider-Man books had been sinking in sales prior to Civil War, but saw a big boost during Civil War. So how do you keep that audience? Knock off a major supporting character, bring back the popular black costume. Did it work? Anecdotally, the answer seems to be yes in my store. Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man sold twice what it usually does for us, Sensational Spider-Man sold about 50% more, and we haven't seen Amazing Spider-Man yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's back up to healthy numbers as well.

Civil War had a limp ending, but it did offer up a new status quo, and Marvel is poised to jump on that, with a handful of new series and miniseries and new directions for many of its titles. Too soon to tell how it's going to shake out, but Iron Man, Director of SHIELD sold better than any Iron Man issues since the first few of the Ellis/Granov run (before it became so late nobody cared). Folks seem excited about the idea of the Initiative. Captain America #25 has huge buzz as being something big. New Avengers sold out fast and got reordered. Mighty Avengers has some buzz.

Now personally, what's selling is the last thing I want to read. I found New Avengers #27, which sees Doctor Strange, Power Man and other notable heroes fighting ninjas (that fight should take about one page... it's a waste of the characters), ridiculous and annoying. The idea of Iron Man as director of SHIELD isn't awful, but it doesn't hold any particular interest for me. And the notion of all the Marvel heroes forming some sort of nationwide army split into 50 states seems like a bizarre decision to completely uproot the foundation of the Marvel Universe as it has stood since the beginning.

But... as a retailer, I can't help but be happy that Marvel has found a way to reinvigorate interest in these characters. I mean, a Moon Knight series selling the way Charlie Huston's book has is amazing, even if I find the whole thing banal and pointlessly ultra-violent. The Avengers are a complete and utter betrayal of the concept of the team, and yet it's selling better than any version of the book that I've loved. Spider-Man: Reign seems like a viciously nihilistic misunderstanding of the appeal of the character and a weak Dark Knight Returns ripoff, but it's doing pretty solid numbers and selling out.

So what can we learn? One, it's clear that my general guidelines for Marvel and DC superheroes (let them be heroic, make them at least somewhat consistent with the past, don't be embarrassed about superhero conventions) may in fact be diametrically opposed to what the readership at large wants. And two, it is possible to be mostly bored and/or disgusted with what's going on in mainstream superhero comics and at the same time elated by it. Just tie your financial fortunes into the very books you don't very much like. ;)

Adventures in Retailing: Discounts

I've always wondered why so many comic shops only carried Marvel and DC, and maybe a smattering of Image.

There's so much good stuff at Dark Horse, Oni, Boom!, Archaia, and that's just naming some of the bigger small publishers. Were they just not noticing this stuff? Did they not look past the first half of the catalog?

And then I discovered my discount for the initial six months at Diamond for everything except Marvel, DC and Image. The discounts for those three are less than they were at my previous three-store operation, but they're within striking distance of it. A reasonable speedbump.

But my discounts on indy books? On manga? On Dark Horse? Ridiculously low. Much lower than I'd originally thought. And so, when I'm looking at initial orders for these first six months, when cash flow is king and Diamond is giving me C.O.D. terms, guess what the first fat to be cut from my budget is?

I can understand, to some extent, the smaller publishers. But the manga publishers? Tokyopop and Viz can't afford to get better terms with Diamond? Dark Horse, a premier publisher, can't at least offer something equivalent to Image? I don't know if the fault lies with the publishers, with Diamond or (more likely) with both, but I will say that the ridiculously low discount on these publishers makes the previous mystery of why so few stores order outside of Marvel and DC a little less mysterious. After six months of establishing your business on the comics that are actually profitable for you to sell, it's going to be harder to suddenly retrain your customer base to look for the indies you haven't been carrying. And as much as the financial burden of comics is already on the retailers, it's even moreso when the margin on comics is as low as it is with this initial discount.

DC and Marvel offer Final Cut-Off ordering, allowing us to adjust orders within three weeks of publishing instead of two months. Image offers up a big initial stock of trade paperbacks to new accounts. Dark Horse? Nothing. Tokyopop? Nothing. Viz? Nothing.

Guess who I'm feeling more loyalty to as a retailer right now? Now as a reader, I'm all about the small press, and as a retailer, I feel a certain responsibility to give my customers a selection, so I'm going to have to suck it up and take the hit. But I'm certainly not feeling warm fuzzies about it, and it is going to make me more gun shy about books I'm not personally interested in, or that I don't already know a customer or two who might be interested.

I don't understand the logic of it. I know where my sales are going to be, and where my discount for the indies will wind up being. After six months, I'll be right back to a more reasonable level. Why cripple new retailers in this way, when their cash flow and available cash is at its lowest? I understand requiring C.O.D., because Diamond doesn't want to get stuck holding the bag when over-ambitious and under-capitalized hobbyists (or even just good businessmen with bad luck) go out of business... doesn't mean I like it, but I understand it. But I don't understand why you'd go with such a ridiculously low discount, as it seems like sacrificing long-term profits (a successful store ordering every month) for potential short-term gain (more money coming in from new accounts that may not be able to ride out the six month period).

Adventures in Retailing: Sickness

I think I might be a little bit sick.

No, not physical illness, although with both my daughter and wife having some kind of stomach bug, that might come at me at the worst possible time as well.

No, I mean mentally ill. Beyond the obvious indicators (I bought a comics and games shop rather than investing in something sane, like real estate or ferret farming), I worked seven of the last seven days, and when I finally get a day off, what do I do?

1) Sent out emails for a promotion for the store in June
2) Did a profit/loss estimate for the next month on the store
3) Paid bills for the store and for our personal finances
4) Set up an ebay account for the store
5) Emailed another distributor to set up an account on Monday

What's kind of sick is that I enjoyed it. I'm enjoying the hell out of working right now. There's a definite reward to owning your own business, even with the worry and the stress and the sleepless nights and mornings that come from that. I feel like I'm accomplishing something, and that's nice.

Maybe I'll relax a little bit later in the day and write some comic reviews. Which is also rewarding, but also work.

Hmm... might have to watch The Illusionist on DVD or some more of the How I Met Your Mother on Tivo to balance all this out.