Publishers, Distributor, and Retailers

Last Updated on Monday, 15 June 2009 06:45 Written by Brian! Sunday, 14 June 2009 02:50

publishers-distributor-and-retailers

Here’s an interesting article on the responsibility of generating interest and sales from the perspective of a retailer. It’s a reaction to a reaction to Diamond’s new policy.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t know anything about this lady or her shop, I linked to the article because it’s what got me thinking on the topic.

Anyway, it’s a little long, but essentially she’s saying:

“It is the job of the publisher and the creator to promote their comics and graphic novels. Make me want to order them for my store. Get consumers asking for that item or issue.”

I agree with that, but I disagree that it is the sole responsibility of the publisher and creator. Having spoken with readers and retailers over the last couple of years, there appear to be two kinds of comic shops with respect to Atomic Robo: those who promote it where it’s one of their top selling indie books (or top selling books period); and those who do not promote it where it sells to the handful of dedicated Robo fans who order it.

We have both kinds of stores here in Orlando. I worked at one and I don’t mind telling you that Atomic Robo was on as many pull lists as Amazing Spider-Man. There was another shop just down the street where they promote the hell out of Atomic Robo and, what’dya know, it’s one of their top selling titles too. But a third shop (P.S. Orlando is a great place to be a comics fan) staunchly refuses to stock it. When asked for a copy of Atomic Robo and the Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne back when it first came out, one of the clerks actually said, “Oh, we don’t order that kind of book.” He was referring to indie titles.

“Why does everyone want this Atomic Robot comic? I don’t get it, what’s the big deal?” That’s an actual quote from a retailer. He glossed over our debut issue back in Oct 2007, and I don’t blame him for that because statistically he was in the right to ignore it, but here he had old and new customers coming in every day asking for it, and his response was to complain about all the sales we were trying to give him. Last I heard, he never ordered an issue, complained bitterly when people asked for it, lost at least one regular customer, and who knows how many new ones. Think of all those sales he never made, that Diamond never fulfilled, that the publisher never saw.

Yes the publisher and the creators have a responsibility to make the public want to buy their products. No question. But there’s only so many avenues available to indie publishers. Yes, the internet has empowered independent publishers and creators as never before in history. That’s a terrific thing, I would not be able to eat without this fantastic technology. But the signal to noise ratio makes it a little difficult to be heard. Hell, there are people out there right now who love Atomic Robo but don’t know about this website. Now imagine how hard it can be to reach people who don’t yet know about it and to try to get them engaged. I mean, holy shit.

Luckily, there’s a place where many comics fans go; where they seek out recommendations; where they’re predisposed to take a chance and spend a few extra bucks if only someone they trust would point them in the right direction. Spoiler alert: it’s the local comic shop! We don’t have a public address system wired into every comic shop in the U.S., so on some level we rely on retailers themselves to get our message out there.

I think retailers get a little lazy about indie products. Marvel and DC in general sell themselves. They’ve got decades of sales momentum; they’ve got third party businesses built around celebrating and advertising their products — Wizard particularly, but any claim that Diamond doesn’t favor mainstream publishers to a nearly criminal degree is either grossly ignorant or a joke; and they’ve got an endless cycles of BIG EVENTS providing the steam for it all.

It’s easy to sell a title from a mainstream publisher. They’ve got cartoons and movies. They’ve got the fucking mainstream.

But sometimes it’s easy to promote indie books too. Here’s a little story…

Where I worked, we used to have a Book of the Week thing. It was always, always an A-list Marvel or DC title that needed no help whatsoever in getting sales, but it was put in a special display right next to the register anyway. Everyone who would be interested in buying whatever it was, was already buying whatever it was, so customers never paid any attention to it. In all my time working there, the only time the Book of the Week display led to added sales was when Diamond shorted our order that week and I had to sell the copy that was in the display — which the customer hadn’t even noticed because, like I said, no one looked at the damn thing.

Of course, then I had a blank Book of the Week display. So, what did I do? Being a self-interested creator, I put the most recent issue of Atomic Robo in there. I figured, y’know, what the hell, no one pays attention to the display anyway, so no harm done. What happened?

Instant sales.

It’s easy for the indie publisher or creator to point to the distributor’s practices or the retailers’ obsession with mainstream material and say, “That’s why my book didn’t sell, you guys make it impossible!” And it’s easy for the distributor or retailer to point at the publisher and creator and say, “You didn’t tell enough people about your book!” It’s easy to say those things because both are, to some extent, true.

Yeah, Diamond is a business. Yeah, comic shops are businesses. So is publishing! We’re all in business and like it or not our businesses are tied to each other. We can be selfish and only make safe decisions that benefit us and reduce our personal risk to the detriment of the others we’re tied to. Or we can help each other make more money than we would have otherwise.

I’m just sayin’.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under comics, nonsense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • Brand

    Brian, this was a sharp article. But as someone astute in business (I am applying to MBA programs as we speak), I think you’re expecting a lot from the bricks and mortar shops. They lack marketing expertise, as do many distributors. Robo had a great grassroots marketing movement from the beginning. I personally got a chuckle out of the original blog posts in Robo’s voice. But I question how many indie books have launched with such enthusiasm or saavy. It’s also tough for me to blame Diamond, as they are a glorified warehouse operation.

    As you point out, comics are an ecosystem, and all the gears must turn to make money. But you’ve also got some good experience on tricks to boost sales, especially in the all important beginning. My experience is with new SW products, but a startup is a startup. If you could put together a website for your retailers with focused suggestions on how to push Robo, that would immediately set you apart as someone very serious about making money for all parties concerned. New products don’t sell themselves, no matter how great–if nobody else has a marketing plan, then you’re already ahead. It’s the job of the B&M stores to cooperate, but nobody should expect them to take the initiative, for all the reasons you’ve outlined already.

  • Brand

    Brian, this was a sharp article. But as someone astute in business (I am applying to MBA programs as we speak), I think you’re expecting a lot from the bricks and mortar shops. They lack marketing expertise, as do many distributors. Robo had a great grassroots marketing movement from the beginning. I personally got a chuckle out of the original blog posts in Robo’s voice. But I question how many indie books have launched with such enthusiasm or saavy. It’s also tough for me to blame Diamond, as they are a glorified warehouse operation.

    As you point out, comics are an ecosystem, and all the gears must turn to make money. But you’ve also got some good experience on tricks to boost sales, especially in the all important beginning. My experience is with new SW products, but a startup is a startup. If you could put together a website for your retailers with focused suggestions on how to push Robo, that would immediately set you apart as someone very serious about making money for all parties concerned. New products don’t sell themselves, no matter how great–if nobody else has a marketing plan, then you’re already ahead. It’s the job of the B&M stores to cooperate, but nobody should expect them to take the initiative, for all the reasons you’ve outlined already.

  • http://nextbatmanbadguy.blogspot.com/ Mecha-Shiva

    That’s really weird hearing about stores like that, my local shop’s pretty good about plugging some indie stuff, being friendly, etc. Which is good, because I could buy all my books from heavyink or a similar online shop for less. If going to the shop wasn’t a pleasant experience, there’s no way I’d pay their markup.

    And with a cheaper online alternative (and apparently several shops in a relatively small market in Orlando anyway), the store that’s taking its business for granted and making no effort to grow it seems doomed to fail.

  • http://nextbatmanbadguy.blogspot.com/ Mecha-Shiva

    That’s really weird hearing about stores like that, my local shop’s pretty good about plugging some indie stuff, being friendly, etc. Which is good, because I could buy all my books from heavyink or a similar online shop for less. If going to the shop wasn’t a pleasant experience, there’s no way I’d pay their markup.

    And with a cheaper online alternative (and apparently several shops in a relatively small market in Orlando anyway), the store that’s taking its business for granted and making no effort to grow it seems doomed to fail.

  • http://www.greymattersplat.com/ Mike

    So much of this is directly in line with what I’ve spent the past several years of my life saying at the top of my lungs. I’m back doing IT now, and have been for almost a year; but for the 4 years before that I worked for a local store here in Indianapolis…three of which I ran one of the locations. In that first year, I worked at the shop that was in the “artsy” section of town. As a result, our shop stocked more Indie books than I had really been exposed to up until that point. But while they stocked them, they didn’t really push them much. I was actually coming off of a period of not reading anything and took the opportunity to pick up something “different” to read…I won’t deny that some random Comico (GRENDEL, MAGE) and Eclipse (MIRACLEMAN) stuff aside, I was pretty much a Marvel/DC guy. But boy how that’s changed. I started reading more and more Indie stuff; and because it was so good, and because I wanted to share how good comics can be with those who were not only my customers, but also my fellow comic book fans, I started to tell people what I was reading and how awesome it was.

    And people listened, and WANTED to be part of how excited I was with finding whatever book I was talking about that day.

    When I took over a different at about the end of that first year, my love of those Indie books did not go away. When I got there, they sold 3 copies of THE WALKING DEAD a month. That’s it. And they didn’t keep any of the trades in stock. By the time I left that store for greener pastures, they were selling around 20 copies a month, and I would wager that we averaged 2 sales of volume I a week, and one a week of all the others. The pitch for the trade was easy: “We have yet to have anyone buy volume I that did NOT come back for at least volume II. It’s that good.” I’d usually even offer to buy volume I back from them for full price assuming they hadn’t damaged it, if they didn’t like it. I never had a single person take me up on it, and to my knowledge, we really did see everyone who bought volume I back for volume II at least. I stopped checking after that.

    I also started having the staff pick a book that they were going to champion. It was going to be their book to sell, and their job to make sure it sold. It wasn’t a competition per se, but the idea was to get the employees involved with the customers, and it worked really well. From this initiative, for us, came books like MOUSE GUARD and ATOMIC ROBO. Admittedly, if it weren’t for ABYSS, I may not have noticed Robo. I was a big fan of TROOPS, and met Kevin Rubio at Celebration II here in Indy. He left an impression on me, so when I saw his name in the solicit for the book, I blind ordered. Then I saw Robo. I saw it had an Oeming cover. Then I saw it had Scott Wegener on art. I remembered seeing some very cool KILLER OF DEMONS that Scott had done on the Image boards, and so I ordered a bunch. It wasn’t until later that I became familiar with 8-Bit Theater…sorry.

    Wow…went off on a tangent there…sorry.

    Anyway. Once upon a time, comic conventions like SDCC were more for people to sell you on their books than it was for them to sell you on the convention. The owner of the shop I worked for tells a great story about how he was at SDCC one year, and there were these two guys with a tiny booth with a wire-spool table there just talking to anybody who would listen about their new comic book and why people should buy it. He didn’t really “get” the book, but he liked throwing something completely out of left field at his customers every now and again, and these guys were so excited about it that he couldn’t help but get excited too. So he bought 2 dozen copies to take back to his store…even though he thought that TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES was a stupid name for a comic book.

    Maybe what comics needs is a true “trade show”. Video games have one. So do toys. Why shouldn’t comics? A time when the companies pull back the curtain to “industry only” people (and the press) and talk about some of the stuff they’ve got coming up. At the same time, they could be running seminars on marketing and merchandising, and it would give the retailers and the creators a real chance to figure out why they should be working together and not against each other. But maybe that’s a little “pie in the sky”…I guess I’m a “glass half full” kind of guy.

    Wow, if you read all the way through this post, you deserve a cookie. I’m not going to give you one, but you deserve one.

  • http://www.greymattersplat.com Mike

    So much of this is directly in line with what I’ve spent the past several years of my life saying at the top of my lungs. I’m back doing IT now, and have been for almost a year; but for the 4 years before that I worked for a local store here in Indianapolis…three of which I ran one of the locations. In that first year, I worked at the shop that was in the “artsy” section of town. As a result, our shop stocked more Indie books than I had really been exposed to up until that point. But while they stocked them, they didn’t really push them much. I was actually coming off of a period of not reading anything and took the opportunity to pick up something “different” to read…I won’t deny that some random Comico (GRENDEL, MAGE) and Eclipse (MIRACLEMAN) stuff aside, I was pretty much a Marvel/DC guy. But boy how that’s changed. I started reading more and more Indie stuff; and because it was so good, and because I wanted to share how good comics can be with those who were not only my customers, but also my fellow comic book fans, I started to tell people what I was reading and how awesome it was.

    And people listened, and WANTED to be part of how excited I was with finding whatever book I was talking about that day.

    When I took over a different at about the end of that first year, my love of those Indie books did not go away. When I got there, they sold 3 copies of THE WALKING DEAD a month. That’s it. And they didn’t keep any of the trades in stock. By the time I left that store for greener pastures, they were selling around 20 copies a month, and I would wager that we averaged 2 sales of volume I a week, and one a week of all the others. The pitch for the trade was easy: “We have yet to have anyone buy volume I that did NOT come back for at least volume II. It’s that good.” I’d usually even offer to buy volume I back from them for full price assuming they hadn’t damaged it, if they didn’t like it. I never had a single person take me up on it, and to my knowledge, we really did see everyone who bought volume I back for volume II at least. I stopped checking after that.

    I also started having the staff pick a book that they were going to champion. It was going to be their book to sell, and their job to make sure it sold. It wasn’t a competition per se, but the idea was to get the employees involved with the customers, and it worked really well. From this initiative, for us, came books like MOUSE GUARD and ATOMIC ROBO. Admittedly, if it weren’t for ABYSS, I may not have noticed Robo. I was a big fan of TROOPS, and met Kevin Rubio at Celebration II here in Indy. He left an impression on me, so when I saw his name in the solicit for the book, I blind ordered. Then I saw Robo. I saw it had an Oeming cover. Then I saw it had Scott Wegener on art. I remembered seeing some very cool KILLER OF DEMONS that Scott had done on the Image boards, and so I ordered a bunch. It wasn’t until later that I became familiar with 8-Bit Theater…sorry.

    Wow…went off on a tangent there…sorry.

    Anyway. Once upon a time, comic conventions like SDCC were more for people to sell you on their books than it was for them to sell you on the convention. The owner of the shop I worked for tells a great story about how he was at SDCC one year, and there were these two guys with a tiny booth with a wire-spool table there just talking to anybody who would listen about their new comic book and why people should buy it. He didn’t really “get” the book, but he liked throwing something completely out of left field at his customers every now and again, and these guys were so excited about it that he couldn’t help but get excited too. So he bought 2 dozen copies to take back to his store…even though he thought that TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES was a stupid name for a comic book.

    Maybe what comics needs is a true “trade show”. Video games have one. So do toys. Why shouldn’t comics? A time when the companies pull back the curtain to “industry only” people (and the press) and talk about some of the stuff they’ve got coming up. At the same time, they could be running seminars on marketing and merchandising, and it would give the retailers and the creators a real chance to figure out why they should be working together and not against each other. But maybe that’s a little “pie in the sky”…I guess I’m a “glass half full” kind of guy.

    Wow, if you read all the way through this post, you deserve a cookie. I’m not going to give you one, but you deserve one.

  • Scott!

    Damn Mike LOL

    It’s good to hear from people who are that passionate about it. I’m going to go find a cookie now.

    It may be true that it’s not the job of a retailer to push a book. BUt the fact is, when shop owners and their employees get excited about a book the customers buy it. A lot. Atomic Robo doesn’t sell better in New Hampshire & Mass because there are more people here predisposed to liking robots that punch things. It sells so well because I know a lot of the guys in the shops and they seem to like the book, and they put in in their customer’s faces whenever they get a chance.

    PS: there is a Retailers Con every year specifically for meeting the folks on the front lines who will hopefully push your book to customers. Not sure that is what Mike was talking about towards the end of his “rant” or not.

  • Scott!

    Damn Mike LOL

    It’s good to hear from people who are that passionate about it. I’m going to go find a cookie now.

    It may be true that it’s not the job of a retailer to push a book. BUt the fact is, when shop owners and their employees get excited about a book the customers buy it. A lot. Atomic Robo doesn’t sell better in New Hampshire & Mass because there are more people here predisposed to liking robots that punch things. It sells so well because I know a lot of the guys in the shops and they seem to like the book, and they put in in their customer’s faces whenever they get a chance.

    PS: there is a Retailers Con every year specifically for meeting the folks on the front lines who will hopefully push your book to customers. Not sure that is what Mike was talking about towards the end of his “rant” or not.

  • http://www.greymattersplat.com/ Mike

    Heh, yeah…sorry. I get carried away. I actually WAS talking about a retailer con, and it frustrates me that in 4 years of working for a store, this is the first time I’ve heard of one actually existing. I know Diamond does retailer stuff from time to time, and I know that Marvel and DC have the retailers out to places now and again, but that means that the ownership of my old store (reportedly the oldest chain in North America) either doesn’t know or doesn’t care…because I’d have found a way to go.

    By the way, out NH way, Double Midnight is a GREAT comic shop! I stopped in almost a year ago, while I was in town for a friend’s wedding. I was wearing my Robo shirt, and didn’t realize at the time that you lived in the area. Apparently you’d just been in the day before. Started some great conversation with some great guys! (think I dropped over $100 thanks to those guys…including a Hellboy first appearance!)

  • http://www.greymattersplat.com Mike

    Heh, yeah…sorry. I get carried away. I actually WAS talking about a retailer con, and it frustrates me that in 4 years of working for a store, this is the first time I’ve heard of one actually existing. I know Diamond does retailer stuff from time to time, and I know that Marvel and DC have the retailers out to places now and again, but that means that the ownership of my old store (reportedly the oldest chain in North America) either doesn’t know or doesn’t care…because I’d have found a way to go.

    By the way, out NH way, Double Midnight is a GREAT comic shop! I stopped in almost a year ago, while I was in town for a friend’s wedding. I was wearing my Robo shirt, and didn’t realize at the time that you lived in the area. Apparently you’d just been in the day before. Started some great conversation with some great guys! (think I dropped over $100 thanks to those guys…including a Hellboy first appearance!)

  • http://hobocentrism.blogspot.com/ Ranson

    The shop I go to is weird when it comes to indie titles. He stocks a mountain of them, from all sorts of publishers, but if you ask for something he doesn’t already have, it’s a chore to get the order right. It took me three tries to get PS238 ordered regularly. It took two for Robo, and I still had to buy the trade for volume two in order to make up for the books he missed. It finally seems to have taken, though.

    The sad part is, this is the good shop in the area. The other guy balked the last time I asked for a book out of the mainstream — literally told me he couldn’t get it. I go to this new place in the next town (the shop mentioned above), and he orders it. I don’t get it consistently for a while, but I get it. I’d say half the books I get, I’m the only subscriber in the shop. They never promote anything different, unless they have a personal relationship with the creator.

    I can sort of understand it from a retail side; stocking an offbeat book that’s just going to sit on the shelves is a money sink; the mainstream books pay the rent. However, that doesn’t preclude building a following around a title. Push it, then order it once you have some interest. I keep some trades of my favorites sitting around as “evangelical copies” to loan out and build interest in the stuff I like. There’s no reason a shop owner can’t do the same sort of thing. Take some trades, make a “library”, and use it to sell more books to more readers.

  • http://hobocentrism.blogspot.com Ranson

    The shop I go to is weird when it comes to indie titles. He stocks a mountain of them, from all sorts of publishers, but if you ask for something he doesn’t already have, it’s a chore to get the order right. It took me three tries to get PS238 ordered regularly. It took two for Robo, and I still had to buy the trade for volume two in order to make up for the books he missed. It finally seems to have taken, though.

    The sad part is, this is the good shop in the area. The other guy balked the last time I asked for a book out of the mainstream — literally told me he couldn’t get it. I go to this new place in the next town (the shop mentioned above), and he orders it. I don’t get it consistently for a while, but I get it. I’d say half the books I get, I’m the only subscriber in the shop. They never promote anything different, unless they have a personal relationship with the creator.

    I can sort of understand it from a retail side; stocking an offbeat book that’s just going to sit on the shelves is a money sink; the mainstream books pay the rent. However, that doesn’t preclude building a following around a title. Push it, then order it once you have some interest. I keep some trades of my favorites sitting around as “evangelical copies” to loan out and build interest in the stuff I like. There’s no reason a shop owner can’t do the same sort of thing. Take some trades, make a “library”, and use it to sell more books to more readers.

  • http://teknoarcanist.deviantart.com/ Brandon

    Imagine, if you will, that you went to the grocery store. You say ‘Where’s the milk?’ They point you to the milk section. Only…it’s not the brand of milk you want. It’s all this other milk that they know a lot of people buy. Actually it’s not even really milk; it’s iron filings with a milk label that the manager never drinks, and isn’t much interested in drinking.

    “But where’s MY milk?” you ask. “You know, the GOOD milk? That’s drinkable? It’s not really obscure; it’s pretty popular. The store down the street sells it and they make decent money.”

    “Oh.” says the manager. “No. We don’t have that. We can get it, though. You have to go through this milk catalogue and order a carton a month in advance, and then if they don’t delay your milk, and if your milk’s shipment amounts are great enough to warrant distribution over here, and if the stars are in the fourth house and the moon turns red on a cold night in August and you perform a chicken sacrifice before my altar and sell your soul to satan… Yeah. That’s how you can get your milk. Maybe.”

    …and then he is baffled that he does not sell a lot of milk.

  • http://teknoarcanist.deviantart.com Brandon

    Imagine, if you will, that you went to the grocery store. You say ‘Where’s the milk?’ They point you to the milk section. Only…it’s not the brand of milk you want. It’s all this other milk that they know a lot of people buy. Actually it’s not even really milk; it’s iron filings with a milk label that the manager never drinks, and isn’t much interested in drinking.

    “But where’s MY milk?” you ask. “You know, the GOOD milk? That’s drinkable? It’s not really obscure; it’s pretty popular. The store down the street sells it and they make decent money.”

    “Oh.” says the manager. “No. We don’t have that. We can get it, though. You have to go through this milk catalogue and order a carton a month in advance, and then if they don’t delay your milk, and if your milk’s shipment amounts are great enough to warrant distribution over here, and if the stars are in the fourth house and the moon turns red on a cold night in August and you perform a chicken sacrifice before my altar and sell your soul to satan… Yeah. That’s how you can get your milk. Maybe.”

    …and then he is baffled that he does not sell a lot of milk.

  • http://www.nuklearpower.com Brian!

    That’s distressingly accurate.

  • http://www.nuklearpower.com Brian!

    That’s distressingly accurate.

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