How to get new people to your comic shop

Fysh

I saw this article linked somewhere and thought it would be interesting reading for everyone, since it seems to detail the Holy Grail of the Direct Market: a comic shop that regularly gets new customers that aren't already regularly buying monthly titles from the Big Two.

What do ye think? Would this kind of thing work here? Do any of the shops here do similar things, and if not do you reckon they should?

Saruwatari

Wow, some very adventurous ideas there!! I love the sound of Zombie Survival Practice, but there's no way in hell that'd work over here... (well, maybe the Q-Zar part...)
I think it'd amazing if some of the shops here tried their hand at stuff like that, but I imagine it'd be quite expensive. Sub-City already has the occasional signings (though they do be in the Central Hotel, if I'm correct). I can't see FP ever doing anything like that...

Generally, with the Big R we're in an all that, I doubt any of our comic shops can afford to engage in those customer-centric events. Perhaps in a good few years I might set up my own (don't hold me to that though...). Its a thought though, and I'd definetely love to do the things mentioned in that article.

magwea

Some adventurous ideas for sure.

I'm sure it would work for certain clientele, glamour shots in my comic shop of choice though, I'd have to become retarded for it to appeal to me -I'm sure it does to some- but to be honest this is a joke to those who try to make comics as an art form. Who really believes that this is the future of a thriving comic shop and comics in general?

Real life protest about registering superheros and the status of Skrulls your Fcking kidding me!

The Sub-sity signings are great for those in the Dublin area, lets hope there is more of this sort of thing.

I'm sure there are better options but this is nonesense.

Fysh

To be honest the Marvel-centric stuff is always going to sound really stupid because you're talking about a fictional world in which people put their spandex underpants on and "fight crime". With the inverted commas. It still gets attention though, and for an industry that still thinks of itself as "niche" at a point when it should be anything but, that's something that shops desperately need and can't necessarily afford to pass up on.

Ditto the Girls of Comic Shop thing - it makes me cringe, it really does, but apparently it gets some folks' attention and I'll be honest, glamour shots of real women wearing superhero costumes is still one level better than glamour-style artwork of impossibly-proportioned female superheroes complete with sexually subservient subtext. Of course, what I'd really like to see is a world where sexuality, female or otherwise, isn't used to sell or promote comics, but that'll have to wait for the general utopian society to materialise

Things like the Zombie Emergency Defence classes are a better idea, to my mind at least, because there's a significant established audience for zombie stories that don't necessarily read comics but would be amenable to doing so. That kind of thing, tailored to the particular books they're pushing, would be what I'd like to see more of.

Signings are good for people who already read someone's work, but I'd imagine it's the devil's work to get someone who neither reads comics nor is familiar with the work of the writer/artist to go to a signing and buy something by them.

There's a certain risk of artistic snobbiness that can drive people away if you stress too much about the idea that some comics are not just comics, they are art. At the end of the day it's all still stories in pictures that someone hopes to sell for money, and if a creator finds the marketing side of selling their work too crass or distasteful they probably shouldn't be trying to make a living as an artist.

magwea

I have no real complaints about the state of the Dublin comic shops. We are relatively lucky compared to other places geographically, i know i wouldn't be reading as many comics if i had to make a 50km pilgrimage for my fix.

I'd personally like to see more manga, and better shelved, at the moment its really just an afterthought, I've seen Fun Home shelved beside Fruits Basket which is a bit senseless. i'd still say manga would be the biggest pull for new customers. Anyone see how many girls read this ****? Seriously, shoujo is like crack.

Art snobbishness really isn't an issue that i can see here at all, the dublin shops sell themselves as pop culture retailers. Heck, there could definitely be more classiness for my tastes. I enjoy reading "art comics" more than i do the latest big event crossover, but i'm fine with that sort of stuff filling the shelves since its what mostly sells and keeps retailers alive, its not like they are polluting the shelves with their presence (just your minds).

livingtargets

I think something along the lines of Page 45 (I think that`s the name)in England,with none of the geeky fanboy crap that pushes Average Joe and Joanne away from comics,would work better towards making comics an accesible medium.

And I`m sick of shops seeing a genre(superhero) and not a medium(comics).
Think of how stupid it would be for every music shop to ONLY stock one type of music.That`s how comic shops operate.
Even if you managed to sell a million copies of Spiderman,that would not be a victory for the medium.

Comics are only a niche market because we`re not telling stories that should be told,whatever the subject,we`re telling the same story over and over with a few pages of ads stuck in.
And don`t say comics will not exist if superheroes disappeared.Look at Persepolis and the like,succesful comics with not a coca cola or join the navy ad in sight...

Fysh

livingtargets wrote: »

And I`m sick of shops seeing a genre(superhero) and not a medium(comics).

I think that's my single biggest problem with how most of the shops I've seen in Ireland and some of the shops I've seen in the UK operate. Not all of them are like this, but it does make it harder to get people to accept comics when, after explaining that comics as a medium has some really sophisticated storytelling, you have to explain why so many of the items on display involve either underpants-on-the-outside adventure stories or borderline-exhibitionist women in sexually suggestive poses.

livingtargets wrote: »

And don`t say comics will not exist if superheroes disappeared.Look at Persepolis and the like,succesful comics with not a coca cola or join the navy ad in sight...

The thing is, comics in their current form would not exist if superheroes disappeared. and because of the relentless efforts by marvel and dc to trample all over any title they do that isn't in some way superhero-related, they seem to have no idea of how to sell any other kind of comic now and thus are terrified that other genres don't sell and lack an audience. The Direct Market would probably collapse if Marvel & DC suddenly stopped releasing superhero titles, but frankly everyone else involved in publishing would just switch to selling their product through bookshops and keep going...

sunny2004

Fysh wrote: »

To be honest the Marvel-centric stuff is always going to sound really stupid because you're talking about a fictional world in which people put their spandex underpants on and "fight crime". .

Slips off spandex underpants and asks why ?

ztoical

livingtargets wrote: »

And I`m sick of shops seeing a genre(superhero) and not a medium(comics).
Think of how stupid it would be for every music shop to ONLY stock one type of music.That`s how comic shops operate.
Even if you managed to sell a million copies of Spiderman,that would not be a victory for the medium.

Comics are only a niche market because we`re not telling stories that should be told,whatever the subject,we`re telling the same story over and over with a few pages of ads stuck in.
And don`t say comics will not exist if superheroes disappeared.Look at Persepolis and the like,succesful comics with not a coca cola or join the navy ad in sight...

Dear god livingtargets, how are you so smart at such a young age. Thats a really great sum up. Good analogy with the music shop.

I have to agree with the "don't say comics will not exist...." as I've said in other threads other countries have bigger comic industries then the american direct market and they wouldn't be effected if the big mainstream comics were to go. I'm not saying I want them to go, I like my superhero comics, but I do dislike this view that they are the be all and end all of comics and are holding up the industry. In France comics aren't viewed as a niche market but as a very serious art forum. And in Japan you find comics everywhere, in ever corner shop and people of all ages/genders/backgrounds reading them. The issue with american comics is that they are no longer sold in the corner shop and that use to be their main market, its since that market died that we've seen the "comic shop" come more to the front and comics become more and more niche.

BlaasForRafa

Fysh wrote: »

I think that's my single biggest problem with how most of the shops I've seen in Ireland and some of the shops I've seen in the UK operate. Not all of them are like this, but it does make it harder to get people to accept comics when, after explaining that comics as a medium has some really sophisticated storytelling, you have to explain why so many of the items on display involve either underpants-on-the-outside adventure stories or borderline-exhibitionist women in sexually suggestive poses.



The thing is, comics in their current form would not exist if superheroes disappeared. and because of the relentless efforts by marvel and dc to trample all over any title they do that isn't in some way superhero-related, they seem to have no idea of how to sell any other kind of comic now and thus are terrified that other genres don't sell and lack an audience. The Direct Market would probably collapse if Marvel & DC suddenly stopped releasing superhero titles, but frankly everyone else involved in publishing would just switch to selling their product through bookshops and keep going...

The snobbishness on this forum wrecks my head sometimes. Its like every superhero title ever is ****? Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Walt Simonson, Ed Brubaker, Tim Sale....all pure **** and drek.

Lately I've been getting into indy people like Chris Ware, Linda Medley, joe Sacco but its more despite this forum than because of it.

Fysh

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

The snobbishness on this forum wrecks my head sometimes. Its like every superhero title ever is ****? Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Walt Simonson, Ed Brubaker, Tim Sale....all pure **** and drek.

One of the reasons I like this forum and started posting here when I first joined boards is the relative balance of discussion between different genres that people talk about.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with superhero comics; that doesn't mean that every comic story has to have superheroes in it. And yet you look at mainstream American comics and a horrendously high proportion of them are superhero titles. A hell of a lot of the online discussion about comics would benefit from a wider awareness of comics as a whole, rather than the persistent nostalgic focus on the last 40 years of Marvel & DC comics that seems to inform so much of what's coming out from the big two. I mean, you look at what Marvel and DC publish and even including their smaller imprints like Icon and Vertigo, only a fraction of their publishing can be said to have nothing to do with superheroes. I'm sure Warren Ellis had some comment to make about this making an analogy with traditional prose publishing in which an equivalent percentage of material consisted of Nurse Romance fiction.

If you don't like the fact that some people on here find the perpetual adventures of the spandex underpants brigade really boring and repetitive, nobody's forcing you to change your mind or reject them, but an interesting discussion might come out of discussing what you like about them with people who don't find them appealing.

For that matter, it's a bit disingenuous to slip a bunch of older names into your list of creators and try to claim that because forum members including myself don't rate a lot of contemporary pervsuit comics, we're automatically dismissing the value and merits of those creators.

magwea

Kirby, Ditko, Simonson, Brubaker... make great comics, period.

Regarding matters of taste or intellect, I'm going to snob crap superhero comics just as hard as any the next bull**** "indy". Its just that there is alot less "indy" being made.

Just look at the manga market in the US were almost anything slightly obsurer then say Naruto gets hyped crazily regardless of merit. This is barely an excuse.

Why be so insecure in your tastes BlaasForRafa, and anyway Fysh bends over backwards whoring for superheros everytime anyone complains, most of the time.