by Brian Hibbs
(#161 – September 2007)
One of the funny
things about the internet is how memes and travel in and through
and around it, where very different people come up with similar
ideas and thoughts at about the same time.
Some call this
“Steam Engine Time”, and this line from a Lewis Shiner story
seems to encapsulate the idea well:
"Well, they had all the pieces
of that steam engine lyin' around for
hundreds of years. Wasn't nobody knew what to do with 'em.
Then one day five, six people up and invent a steam engine, all
at the same time. Ain't no explanation for it. It was
just steam engine time."
Some of this can
help explain why Tom Spurgeon wrote
an essay on “Why Comics Stores Still Matter” at about the same
moment that Heidi McDonald was working
on her essay, “The Merchant Class”... and why, at around the
same time, I was working on a letter to a comics creator that I
realized needed to also be put here into a Tilting at Windmills
(with some judicious editing to make it non-individual specific…)
It is my belief
that the general comics field, and the specific portions of it that
we call “the Direct Market” have been changing very substantially
over the last handful of years, but that a significant portion of
these changes have been largely sub-rosa because there isn’t any
significant ability to track, quantify or codify how participants
in the marketplace have been reacting. Some of these things, I believe,
are going to change or mutate over the next few years as computerized
Point-of-Sale (POS) systems become to get much deeper penetration
into the market.
As you probably
know, Diamond is on the cusp of offering an “inexpensive” POS solution,
with a DM-specific front-end. Some of you will recall the impact
on the general level of professionalism that Carol Kalish’s
cash register program (Where Marvel provided, at bulk cost, basic
cash registers to a whole fleet of stores who had previously been
using the “cigar box” method) had on the DM. A lot of it was incremental,
but I think a Right Turn can be measured from that event, and I
think the impact of POS upon the DM will be ten times greater.
While I personally
am unconvinced that Diamond’s platform is the best POS solution
available to the Direct Market (As most of you know, I’m utterly
in love with the MOBY
POS system), it’s fairly clear that Diamond’s program will be a
major spur for many stores to finally make the leap, because Diamond
are the primary, if not sole, source for so many retailers.
POS is going to
make “good” stores that much better, and give “bad” stores much
greater and more powerful tools to be able to potentially become
“good” (or, at least, “better”)
Let me back up
half a step, actually. It is my general belief that there are (at
least) two different “Direct Markets”, and so many of the mistakes
that we make in analyzing the behavior of the market stem from that,
and the failure to recognize what the root causes of retailer behavior
are predicated upon. In fact, there’s probably
(at least) two different axes upon which you need to look at it.
The first bifurcation
is, let’s shorthand it as “comics as product” or “comics as medium”.
Along this axis the “1” might be one of the chain stores who are
more “pop culture” stores than anything else – comics are just one
part of their mix, perhaps even a small part, in terms of linear
shelf space given to display. The other side of the Axis, at “100”,
are the pure Comics specialists, a Lambiek,
or a Beguiling, or a Comic Relief (or or or), where the entire focus of
the store is on the medium of comics.
“Comics as Medium”-weighted
stores will happily support anything as long as it is “good”. When
ordering, aesthetics, as much as anything else are a primary guiding
factor. “Will people, who shop with us because they love comics
in general, enjoy the individual piece of work?” The closer you
are to 100 on the “Product/Medium”-weighting, the more likely “Are
you going to be interested in this attractive, but perhaps not widely
known comic?” is probably to be “Yes, please!” Stores that are focused
on Medium are slightly less concerned about the specific built in
audience for a work.
“Comics as Product”-weighted
stores will happily support anything, as long as it is profitable.
When ordering, market awareness of product and creator (and publisher),
is probably the primary guiding factor. “Will people who shop with
us, because they like comics products, pick up this product?” The closer you are
to a 1 on the “Product/Medium”-weighting, the more it will be “what
has this creator/title/publisher done for me lately?”
There are two
different sales pitches that have to be made there. The first, to
the Medium-weighted is “is this any good? Is it interesting? Will
it create new fans? Will in bring old ones flocking back? What kind
of style is it drawn in? How is the writing?” and so forth. Things
more weighted to content.
On the other side
of the aisle for the Product-weighted it’s “Why will this sell better
than the last similar thing? Why am I giving this shelf space
instead of something else? What’s the hook? Will it get press or
promotion? Does it fit our product mix?” Things more related to
external factors.
The other axis
things break along is “Comics as Hobby” and “Comics as Business”.
Along this axis the “1” are the stores run by people as an adjunct
to their own comics collections or interests. On the other side, the “100”
are people who strictly run their stores based on profitability-driven
concerns.
“Comics as Hobby”
stores are one of the axes where you fill find the strictly-superhero
stores (“…as Product” also has a lot of these, because those are
the naturally the Best Sellers without other, outside, intervention),
because that’s all that the owner/manager is interested in,
and their stocking decisions are driven by whether or not they
think something is cool. The more someone is a 1 on this axis, more
than likely the harder it will be to get them to stock something
outside of their own specific frame-of-reference.
“Comics as Business”
stores can also be a hard crack for a lot of people because these
retailers are looking at the bottom line more than anything else.
For most new publishers, they’re going to come in at an “F”
discount, which is only 45% off for even the largest accounts. That
can’t even come close to comparing to the top discounts we can earn
on Marvel or DC books. That’s just a cold economic reality.
My point is that
although it is really easy to dismiss the stores that focus mainly
on superhero comics as being symptomatic of a sick Direct Market,
I strongly believe there are both internal (preference), and external
(financial incentive) factors that have created that situation,
and that any attempt to break through has to bear all of the variables
in mind.
The “Comics as
Hobby” stores, perhaps, can be written off, because unless
the owner or staff personal believes, it probably won’t be stocked.
If you want to try to catch their attention, you need to get featured
in Wizard, on Newsarama, have something compelling that rises
the blogosphere, and so on. All of that is
a lot of work, and the actual odds of it actually hitting and all
coming together are probably about the same odds of falling over
and lucking into the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Craft
has very little to do with it in this frame of reference – it’s
all about “heat” and the perception of same, and great big piles
of dumb luck are at play here.
“Comics as Business”
stores are focusing more on their bottom line, and that’s where
you have to attract them. For books/creators/publishers without
a track record, I would always recommend some sort of promotional
effort that drives specific sales. Things like “buy 5, get 1 free”
can strongly offset Diamond’s often crappy discounts, while only
doing so to the guys who are actually buying a minimum number of
copies.
I want to sidebar
here and talk a little bit about “Direct Market 2007”. I think in
2007 the situation is a lot more complex than it appears at first
glimpse.
While it is true
that there isn’t any appreciable competition in the distribution
on the periodical side of non-Diamond-Exclusive comics, several
of the more egregious bottlenecks in the system are actually because
Diamond seems pathologically adverse to taking any risk whatsoever
in stocking material, so they really have very little in stock at
any one moment. Stock that isn’t “floored” on Diamond premises is
stock that probably not going to be sold. Sure, I can BACKorder it, and maybe possibly get it some day, but as a
rule of thumb, stuff that isn’t sitting on Diamond’s premises isn’t
being sold at the time there is demand for it.
“Orders” are not
the equal of “Demand” for most titles at Diamond, in my opinion,
unless you’re talking about Initial Orders, in which case you’re
talking about “Our Perception of Initial Demand”, which certainly
isn’t the same thing. There’s plenty of stuff where I take my best
guess, sell out, and can’t buy it again from Diamond, so I just
shrug and move on to the next book. Because there’s
always another book in 2007. But I could have sold more,
had there been stock-on-hand.
On the Book-format
side of things, however, Diamond isn’t the only game in town. I’m
sourcing an increasing number of my book purchases through Baker
& Taylor, a “bookstore” distributor. Why? Because
they have better pricing than Diamond, free shipping, and returnability.
For things published by North American comics-oriented publishers!
I’m getting a minimum 5% better discount on a publisher like
Drawn & Quarterly book from B&T than I am from Diamond.
Heck, there are publishers who are exclusive via Diamond Book Distributors,
that’s it is cheaper to buy from B&T than Diamond. So anyone
who isn’t DC, Marvel, Dark Horse or Image who says “well this is
what the Direct Market’s sales are” should probably looked
at with deep suspicion. And even then, I’d allow for a little variance,
‘cuz shit, y’know,
happens (For instance: I’ve bought copies of Marvel’s HALO HC, or
Dark Horse’s SERENITY TP from B&T on several occasions this
year, because there weren’t any copies in the “DM Channel” to
buy!)
One other thing
to consider is the nature of the climate has changed dramatically
as well. There aren’t just 500 book format comics on the market
right now, there are now thousands upon thousands, with scores of
new books coming every month. There is a certain amount of “presence”
needed to crack through that clutter. It is much more likely
in 2007 than it was in 2002 that I’m racking a book on week #2 or
later as Spine Out, because I have to, I have that many books,
and not enough racks. Without something driving the customer to
the book, be in internal to the store, or external in marketing,
this becomes the on-the-ground reality.
But if I’m trying
to communicate anything cogent, the case just isn’t “superhero stores”
versus everyone else, or anything along those lines – there’s too
much nuance to the motivations that I think you need to take into
consideration when you approach marketing comics.
***
I tend to think
that there really are very few “bad” stores out there (though they
erase the gains any that 20 good stores might make, pretty quickly)
– but rather that stores have been “trained” to do business in particular
ways that don’t make a tremendous amount of sense to those looking
outside-in. Some terrible c-list Marvel book may only sell 3 copies
to the Utterly Faithful… but that’s still 36 copies over the course
of a year, and at max discount to boot. Conversely, a TP that turns
once a year, and wholesales at a discount not that much better than
the retailer might get from Amazon looks a lot less economically
viable in that light. I think that if you can convince retailers
that a book will turn, and will do so at a profitable price,
then you can earn that sale.
Part of the fundamental
problem is that virtually no publisher does anything even resembling
marketing or promotion, and they expect work to sell all on its
own. DC and Marvel are pretty guilty of this too, but at least they
have the built in advantage of the Familiarity of Brand. Virtually
every store will at least try virtually every “universe”
title, because the risk/reward ratio is really pretty favorable,
all things considered. Especially with their “Final Order
Cutoff” system in place, which considerably reduces
the window of risk. With an “unknown” item, from an “unknown”
company and creator, at a short discount, the risk is considerably
greater for very little specific financial return.
The goal really
has to start with the 10% of “good” stores, who are the natural
constituents for “quality” or “independent” work, and try to grow
that to 10.5%, or, if you’re crazy and bold, 11%. Trying to get
it to 15% or 20% is pretty irrational if you don’t have something
else (money, muscle, “heat”) behind you. And, of course, the Road
of Comics is littered with the corpses of people who thought they
could get it up to 50 or 60%, or heck, maybe even 100%!!!
Consider, though,
the 10% of stores that are ordering Ninjette:
The Half-Dressed Warrior Woman are
probably a very different 10% than the ones ordering Love &
Rockets. These aren’t “one-size fits all” circumstances!
What every publisher
needs to consider, I think, is who their audience is, and then find
a way to communicate that information to the retailers so we can
look to those audiences for a clue of what demand for this
project might be. In the most absurd reduction (which almost never
works, because it is so absurd), this is the “If you liked Star
Wars and A League of Their Own, you’ll love [title]!!”
But I think “stores
that ordered A & B, but didn’t order C” is the right level of
questioning to begin a campaign upon, if you’re willing to pay the
distributors to do your marketing for you. Consumer-driven marketing
should be based on similar thoughts.
“How can I soothe
the retailer’s fears that I’m a turd just
like 90% of the ‘back half’ of Previews? How can I show him
I am not?” That’s the central question.
(and let’s not fool ourselves, 90% of the back half of Previews
is, in fact, a turd. That’s Sturgeon’s Law in action.)
But to tie it
in to what I was saying before, there’s not just one Set of Logic
that’s informing purchasing decisions, there are several axes upon
which it travels, and how you talk effectively to different retailers
is going to be different based upon their individual circumstances.
I mean, there
are “3200” DM stores, pretty much run by 3k+ individuals. If you
don’t answer their motivations, even broadly, how are you going
to get anywhere, or stand out from the sheer mass of items in Previews?
“That’s a damn
lot of work,” you might say, “and it is risky, with no firm promise
of return!” You’d be right, too. But, y’know,
welcome to the retailer’s world. That’s what we see when we look
at the catalog: a huge mountain of marginal books with no clear
audience, looking for the standout gems that we can actually sell
to our perception of our individual customer bases.
Sometimes that
perception is wrong, yes, and I think that’s where marketing and
promotion comes in – to change that perception, or at least to bend
it a little.
Regardless, all
of the marketing in the world won’t help you if your product isn’t
in stock and on hand at the time the retailer tries to order it.
In fact, it can backfire a bit by creating a perception that it
is you who is unreliable although the product bottleneck
may or may not be your fault.
Is it difficult?
Yes, but if you can make your 10% of “natural constituents” into
10.5% next year, and 11% the year after, and 12% the year after
that, well that’s how you enact change upon the marketplace. It
is done slowly and surely and over time.
But what happens
is that most participants try one or two ideas, don’t get a “gangbusters!”
reaction, and then just give up on trying. Marketing doesn’t give
you “gangbusters!” reaction like that – if you send out 1000 promotional
packets, and get a response or reaction from 10 of them, that’s
a fabulous return rate!
You have to understand
your markets if you want to sell to them. There’s a real tendency
for people to say or think “The DM is a dead-end market that should
be put out of its misery” because the specific thing that they want
isn’t well represented. But the problem is that sometimes things
that are critically acclaimed are actually commercially marginal;
and sometimes things that there’s interest in actually can’t be
purchased on the market from any source; and sometimes the
market has access to the wrong information about a product, or even
no information at all; and sometimes things may have a market but
no one can figure out how to make money servicing that market; and
yeah, even sometimes, retailers are big doody-head
dumbasses that haven’t figured something
out.
That last state
is the rarest of them, I generally think, because economic Darwinism
tends to pretty quickly weed out the dumbasses.
Without an external source pumping capital back into the operation,
dumbasses tend to run out of money fairly fast.
You may not like specific product mix
that your local comic shop is offering, but the odds actually are
that that LCS is doing at least a decent job of servicing the majority
of their existing customers. Because if they weren’t,
they wouldn’t stay in business.
Further, if you
want to actually change that LCS’ behavior, then you actually need
to do something to change it. Dropping your product on to
the market with no promotion outside of the pages of Previews,
and an interview or two on the internet, simply isn’t enough in
2007. Unless you want a marginal seller.
But even the strongest
books are looking at incremental change, not massive overnight sweeping
change, because there’s two decades of “training to behave a certain
way” that the market has undergone.
Know your market, understand who your customers are, what their motivations
are, and what it will take to get them to change their ingrained
behavior.
For me, as a retailer,
even as a weighted towards “Medium” retailer, you need to tell me
who you expect your book to sell to.
And, “um…people?”
doesn’t cut it.
***
Finally, one last
note: in last
month’s column I was Brian Hibbs:
Super Wonk, and I discussed a number of
database-driven changes that I felt were essential to moving towards
the POS-driven future. What you probably don’t know, unless you
are a retailer, is that at the recent Diamond trade show in Baltimore,
Diamond announced that they were going to enact the majority of
these suggestions, starting nearly immediately. (I’d provide a link,
but it never made it, as far as I can tell, to the consumer-driven
sites, remaining instead behind the closed and pass-worded gates
of retailer.diamondcomics.com.) The places where they’re not
enacting my specific suggestions are places where Men of Good Will
can and do disagree on the best implementation of the ideas behind
the suggestions.
While there’s
absolutely positively no way that I can claim “credit” for the changes
being made, because many many people have
been asking for much the same for many years, I completely believe
that one of the primary reasons this particular faction of “Steam
Engine Time” has emerged was because I took a public stance, and
that there’s been a lot of discussion between the ComicsPRO Board
of Directors individually with members of Diamond’s Upper Management
Team (UMT) about these issues.
I think there
are two takeaways here, both extremely indicative of the cusps we
are upon.
First: ComicsPRO is making a difference in moving the needle on any
number of topics. There are several other things members of the
Board have directly been involved in, both working with Diamond,
and working without them, focusing on the attempt to make things
better for all retailers, everywhere, where what look to be incredibly
positive incremental changes for the DM are going to be enacted.
And those are just what I know about – I’m not paying attention
to every single bit of ComicsPRO business,
because there just isn’t the hours in the
day.
Most of these
Moments of Progress aren’t going to have press releases. Most of
these aren’t going to have someone standing up and saying “we were
involved in that”, because that just isn’t how it is done. I’m reasonably
sure that at least one or two of the ComicsPRO
Board, or Diamond’s UMT are frowning right this second because I’m
saying even this much. This is just how it goes: there’s politics
everywhere.
“Well, sure, but
what is ComicsPRO doing for me?”
is the common refrain when we talk to non-members about joining
up. But what you need to understand is that the intangible things,
the things no one is standing up and crowing about, because that’s
not how things are done politically, well, they’re going on all
over the place, you’re just not going to directly hear about them.
This minute, this
very minute, if you’re a retailer within the sound of my voice,
you need to go join
ComicsPRO. Stuff is going on, and getting done,
and you should be a part of it.
The second takeaway
from the database issue, is that it is,
in fact, possible to work with Diamond for the betterment of the
Direct Market. I publicly give Diamond a lot of shit, maybe even
some of it undeserved. But here’s an issue, when laid out to them
in a logical and focused manner, which the UMT, and Diamond’s staff,
absolutely followed through upon, and did so in a far swifter manner
than I would ever have imagined.
And, so I think
that a public “thank you” to Diamond for recognizing the logic,
and efficiently doing something about it, is absolutely in order.
So: Thank you,
Diamond.
**************************
Brian Hibbs has owned and operated Comix Experience
in San Francisco since
1989, and is a founding member of the Board of Directors of ComicsPRO, the
Comics Professional Retailer Organization. Feel free to e-mail him with any comments. You
can purchase a collection of the first one hundred Tilting at
Windmills (originally serialized in Comics Retailer magazine)
from IDW
Publishing. An index of Tilting at Windmills on Newsarama
can be found right here.
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