Comic Shops

[scratchie]

Grant wrote:

As I've mentioned in previous columns, the comics shop was a response - a good one - to a set of historical circumstances that otherwise could have wiped out the business altogether.

Can someone point me to these previous columns? I've often wondered what made Marvel and DC switch from newsstand distribution to comic shops. I suppose it must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but today, it seems like it will insure that most comics will never expand beyond a very small core of readers.

Ironically, the last time I was in New York, I bought one of the Walking Dead trade paperbacks at a newsstand in Penn Station.

[glennsim]

Grant wrote: Can someone point me to these previous columns? I've often wondered what made Marvel and DC switch from newsstand distribution to comic shops. I suppose it must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but today, it seems like it will insure that most comics will never expand beyond a very small core of readers.

Ironically, the last time I was in New York, I bought one of the Walking Dead trade paperbacks at a newsstand in Penn Station.

Short version, as I understand it: Newsstands decided they didn't want comics, so the idea was born to make it more attractive for the shops that were selling back issues to start selling new issues.

[Steven Grant]

Sort of.

The real short version is:

Newsstands by the mid '70s largely decide they're not interested in comics anyway, at least in any number, since comics are a very low profit item and space can best be used for more profitable publications.

The main distribution points around the country severely cut back on comics distribution because there are far fewer outlets for them.

Shops that got comics can no longer get them.

New York comics fan Phil Seuling comes up with a plan to buy comics directly from comics companies. (Hence the term "direct market.") The companies are very tentative and resistant, fearing alienating their traditional distribution networks, and get involved in stages. (Marvel was actually owned by their distributors at that point, which complicated matters, while DC was historically strongly connected with the country's dominant distribution chain, IND or Independent News Distributors.)

Early comics shops spring up out of antique stores, book stores and secondhand magazine shops, now able to get comics through Phil as well as through local magazine distributors, giving them some control over what they get (since magazine distribution of comics was traditionally haphazard, and distributors would usually randomly strip covers off runs of comics, especially low numbered comics, to return for credit). The new comics are largely come-ons to bring collectors in for the far more profitable back issues, since that market has been building since the late '60s.

By the late '70s entrepreneur companies like Eclipse establish themselves on the back of the growing direct market. The successful competition, as well as the growing percentage of their own titles being sold through comics shops as traditional distribution and outlets continue to dwindle, convinces DC and Marvel to get behind comics shops more or less wholeheartedly.

By the early '80s, despite many growing pains, the comics shop and the main direct market distributors are firmly established, and Marvel in particular is taking steps to put the new market in its camp, including hiring a new marketing representative entirely dedicated to dealing with the new market.

Etc.

The main point, though, is that comics did not abandon the newsstands and other traditional outlets, the newsstands etc abandoned comics.

- Grant

[scratchie]

Thanks for the recap, S.G.

The question, of course, is what now? Is it even conceiveable that comics could find a spot in America's newsstands again? A few months ago, on the Classic Comics board, there was a discussion of how we got into comics in the first place, and a large number of the stories began with "my dad brought me home a pile of comics every week..."

As far as the monthly/trade question goes, one thing I haven't seen addressed very often is the question of advertising, and to what extent the trade paperback is subsidized by the videogame and chewing gum ads in the original comic book. As with TV-on-DVD today, the trade paperbacks are almost pure profit, but I wonder if Marvel could afford to put out a title that existed only in trade paperbacks, any more than ABC could afford to release Lost on DVD if they hadn't broadcast it with ads first.

[Dennis]

does the newsstand even matter? what if newsstands ceased to exist? does that mean we can't get pictures of naked women in their 50s anymore? c'mon people. there's something called the internet.

[Steven Grant]

In this case I think Dennis is probably right. The newsstand doesn't really matter anymore; it's vestigial at this point. It's more nostalgia than anything that makes people look at the newsstand as a solution. The comics jones is spread via exposure, but that exposure has always most effectively been word of mouth.

- Grant

[NatGertler]

The actual physical streetcorner newsstand isn't entirely dead, but it doesn't seem to hold the same place as once it did. People's shopping patterns have changed.
The newsstand disribution system (which reaches a range of stores) does have its comics successes, but they tend to be items that are designed for that market - higher page counts, higher price points and/or smaller footprints.

[Steven Grant]

Or very well-known characters. Newsstands are mainly what's keeping Archie in business...

- Grant

[scratchie]

Or very well-known characters. Newsstands are mainly what's keeping Archie in business...

That makes me think of the place I always see Archie: the supermarket.

I guess the problem with the newsstand is that most people don't walk or take trains anymore, so there's no opportunity to walk past a newsstand and no impetus to pick up some cheap reading material.

But if Marvel or DC could get a few titles in the supermarket -- preferably featuring big-name characters -- I bet they'd sell a few. Good luck with that, though.

[Steven Grant]

Most supermarkets, Wal-Marts and Targets, at least here in Southern Nevada, carry a handful of comics in their magazine racks, usually, some variation on Spider-man, Superman, Batman, X-Men, Simpsons and a smattering of others. Marvel had BARBIE in many supermarkets when they published it. So why do magazines distribute to grocery chains etc? Stupid accounting tricks, mainly.

But magazines in supermarkets are notoriously bad sellers - that's why you rarely see empty spaces on newsstands - and most eventually get returned for credit. It's basically a no-risk venture for the stores. Where magazines really sell in stores is at the checkout stands, and magazines pay a ton of money to get placed there. It's not something the stores do on a whim. Archie can afford to place their digests there because those are all reprint and virtually pure profit, but if they were paying for original stories there's no way they could afford it.

So most comics publishers who place titles in supermarkets and similar venues face either getting clipped on what's often 90+% returns, or they can shell out all their profit and more to the stores in advance. It's not a very promising venue, at least as things are now.

- Grant

[NatGertler]

Or very well-known characters. Newsstands are mainly what's keeping Archie in business...

That's not an "or"; the Archies that actually sell are the digests, with their high page counts. Last I checked the numbers, they sold about 4 times as many as the standard-comics-format publications.

Oh, and the digests are not quite "all reprint"; they each start with a new short story.

But the margin on digests is slim enough that, when TMNTurtles were huge (as they may soon be again!) and the TMNT Adventures monthly was far and away Archie's biggest seller, they only turned out a few issues of a TMNT digest; it certainly looks as though the additional licensing cost was enough to kill the profitability of what was likely a very large seller.

[Lenny Riggio]

I think Dennis is basically correct. There is a very common example that is always taught in MBA programs about the railroad industry and why it declined. The people who ran the railroad business were shortsighted because they thought they were in the railroad business, when in fact they were in the "moving people" and "moving stuff" businesses. So they failed to compete against planes, cars and trucks which did better at "moving people" and "moving stuff." If they had foresight, the great railroad companies would have bought airlines and trucking companies early on, and perhaps integrated them into the rail system some way. (The counterexample is IBM. IBM could have thought of itself as being in the computer selling business. But they realized that they were also in the helping business-computer users--in the old days of big IBM mainframes, IBM techs would actually work full-time on site at the companies that owned the mainframes. So IBM still exists and thrives, even though its main business now is IT consulting--helping business-computer users--not manufacturing and selling computers.)

Well, the comics industry is in the business of delivering comics content. How that content is delivered is important, but not the main thing here. It seems to me that comics will inevitably become more electronic. Publishers may be able to transition into this new way of delivering content, but I don't see how comic stores can. (Or book stores or brick-and-morter libraries, for that matter.)

The transition is probably going to take a long time, but I can't see the comic store as we know it surviving in the long term. I don't say this as an internet triumphalist--I love comic stores, and love browsing in a physical place. But I loved record stores, too, and they have rapidly disappeared. It will happen with comic stores too, I believe.

[bartl]

I think Dennis is basically correct. There is a very common example that is always taught in MBA programs about the railroad industry and why it declined. The people who ran the railroad business were shortsighted because they thought they were in the railroad business, when in fact they were in the "moving people" and "moving stuff" businesses. So they failed to compete against planes, cars and trucks which did better at "moving people" and "moving stuff."

That was why the railroad companies didn't expand into other businesses. It's not why the industry declined. It declined because of a combination of factors, including a lot of interference from governmental (both domestic and foreign) sources (the former very well oiled by the competition, although, post 1950's, part of the plan was to have highways circle around urban areas, to keep transportation going after a few nuclear strikes.

[Rob Allen]

...
New York comics fan Phil Seuling comes up with a plan to buy comics directly from comics companies. (Hence the term "direct market.")
...

There's an often-overlooked aspect of the beginning of the direct market that I learned about from historian & comics dealer Bob Beerbohm. The idea of buying the comics non-returnably, direct from the publisher, was not a new thing that Phil Seuling invented; it was already standard operating procedure in the world of underground comix. Most, if not all, of the players in the beginning of the direct market were experienced underground distributors. In effect, Marvel and DC became underground publishers.

Later, in Patrick Rosenkranz' book Rebel Visions, I learned that the earliest underground comix were distributed thru a pre-existing sales network that had sprung up to distribute psychedelic concert posters in the Bay area. So the whole modern comics distribution system derives from the San Francisco counterculture. Next time you visit your LCS and pick up the contents of your pull box, thank a hippie.

[founder81]

I guess the problem with the newsstand is that most people don't walk or take trains anymore, so there's no opportunity to walk past a newsstand and no impetus to pick up some cheap reading material.

This statement got me to think one thing. Today there are more choices for Travel entertainment. Portable DVD players, laptops, and handheld video game consoles all immediatley pop to mind. These have replaced the need for cheap reading material just to pass away time.