Free Comic Book Day

Fysh

For those that don't know, FCBD is this Saturday. Not sure what's going on up Dublin way or in any of the specialist stores around the country, but Other Realms have had posters up for weeks so I imagine it'll be the usual fare - tables set up with information, etc, free comics sorted into goodie bags, and staff practically fighting each other for the chance to talk to you and offer helpful advice.

Anyone heard of anything else going on?

deezoid

Anyone know whats happening in Dublin?

ThenComesDudley

i know forbidden planet are not doing it and i dont think sub city is either, not sure about the third place

Fysh

Yeah, that sounds about right - I'd heard that a lot of stores aren't officially participating due to not reaching certain order numbers with Diamond, regardless of whether they do something for the day itself.

Rich Johnston's column has more info on the reasons why, but it's UK rather than Ireland-based. Still, if anything it's going to be the same situation ten times compounded over here....

projectmayhem

ireland really needs a free comic book day to promote the art over here. i'd say forbidden planet gets by on toy sales rather then comic sales, and sub city/3rd place probably scrape by, if they even make a profit that is

J Hendrick

Well next time your in you might as well ask.

Do you honestly think i'd still be doing this 5 years now if I was scraping by. Let alone pay rents and rates in Temple Bar, Pay staff and pay suppliers literally thousands a week.

I love how random opinions circulate on the web.

Here's the deal regarding Free Comic Book Day.

We don't do it because the comics are not free, we still pay for them, we pay the shipping and will only partake if the books offered are any good and can be used to bring in new readers. Which for the past 2 years they havent.

So instead of giving away crap books and having to pay for that pleasure i'd rather spend the money on decent promotion.

Fysh

Eeeeeeeeeeeeenteresting - I wasn't aware of that, and it explains a lot. I ended up missing Free Comic Book Day this year, but the only thing I heard about that particularly interested me was the Scott Pilgrim comic, which I got off the Newsarama site anyway.

It's a shame that publishers will nix an interesting promotional event by putting out rubbish books for it (at least from a retailer's perspective, as per above), but then again considering how much talk I've seen from publishers about book x/y/z being "a perfect jumping-on point for new readers" I get the feeling that the mainstream publishers either honestly don't know or don't care about the reasons why non-comic-readers don't start reading comics...

Call_Me,Stan

I got into Ultimate X-men a couple of years after a Free Comic Book Day comic.

I

Uncle Spunk

Mr Hendrick spews truth. The selection available was pathethic, Bongo comics seemed to be the only one that was actually a free comic and not just a bunch of crap preview pieces. They should just reprint the year's most popular/best issue and let that do the talking.

Free Comics? The shiggedy Shiznit is Ireland's shining ex-ggedy-ample