Highway 62

The retailers concern, as above, is that the books they order will languish on the shelves. These books were ordered with the assumption that the DM would get the first crack at their audience, not that they’d be published for free on the internet concurrent with their DM debut or that the DM retailers would be scooped by publishers selling at a show. Now, we can argue the effectiveness of advertising books with free publication of their entire contents online (for the record, I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but publishers should let retailers know what’s going to happen before they place their orders – let the self-fulfilling prophecies fall where they may.) And we can argue whether or not comics sales are in and of themselves a zero-sum universe where one book bought at a convention or at Amazon is the loss of that sale to a retailer. I’m not a marketing genius and I’m not sure the data exists to persuasively argue either position, so it comes down to anecdotes and emotion.

Nitro, meet glycerin.

I personally don’t believe in the zero-sum model. I suspect it’s close to true when you’re talking about items with a limited shelf-life (yes, monthly pamphlets, I’m looking at you.) But for an evergreen product, like a trade collection or >gasp< an original graphic novel, the sales window is expanded, not compressed. Anything with a spine can stay on a shelf for an extended period and still have a shot at selling, as opposed to a monthly comic whose audience is coming to the stores on a weekly or near-weekly basis. So for those books, I can see the retailer frustration rise as the sales window compresses. My feeling, though, is that retailers whose sales are split between monthly/evergreen products would rather be sitting on an extra ten dollars of trade inventory than ten dollars or even less of monthly inventory. In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be that much excess at all, but we don’t live in a perfect world. If it were, then everyone would get their orders filled perfectly and they’d know exactly how much to order of what book. I know. Keep dreaming.

So the DM retailers want to protect (and I mean that in the most benign way) not only their inventory/order dollars, but they want to protect their ability to serve their audience in the face of massive transformation all across the comics industry, from the move to a “Big Two Plus” marketplace, to the growth of the trade market, to places like Amazon and other bookstores poaching their bread and butter genres/publishers, to the rise of web-based publication. These forces aren’t nearly done, either. Since the 90s, there’s been constant motion in several directions at once. So retailing ain’t easy. I’ll note, by the way, that while I use the term “retailers”, they aren’t a “big hive mind-mass” (tip of the hat to Alex at Rocketship). They’re all real people with real personalities who are really doing the best job they can with what they have.

And on the indy publishers’ side (who are equally non-monolithic, to say the least), they’re also trying to do the best by their books and the artists whose books they publish, and oh yeah, trying to keep themselves afloat and maybe even grow their readership while they’re at it. And some of them feel that they’re red-headed stepchildren in the world of the direct market, and that their larger siblings are always going to enjoy a disproportionate chunk of the pie.

Both sides in this argument are driven by concern, and to some extent, fear for their bottom lines in this changing market. This makes some retailers wary of indy publishers (particularly brand-new indy publishers), which in turn feeds the perception that the indy guys (and gals) need to build their audience where and how ever they can. Can you say “cascade”? You know where this is going.

Now, as for what I’m going to do. Good question.

is due to hit the shelves on the 26th of March. I’m just finishing the last proofreads, etc now. If all goes well, it should be printed in time for the upcoming Wonder-Con (which is in San Francisco, a city served by a number of fine comics establishments, that number shooting up to “a ton” if you count the Bay Area and points south.) Theoretically, I could sell a few copies and that may or may not have a dire impact on the regional sales of the book. I really have no way of guessing.

But then, the book would have to be ordered by retailers for those potential sales to happen in the first place. Let’s be real. I’m a new publisher, with a first book and not a ton of advertising behind it in the DM. I am actually paying to have an insert put into all Diamond account invoices this week to advertise the book. Yes, you can do that. It’s pretty reasonably priced. My account rep at Diamond was able to secure a “Spotlight On” box for the PREVIEWS that S:MM solicited in (the current issue, check page 299). I’m getting the word out as best I can through my vast network of bloggers, etc. I’ve done some things to raise visibility, and I’ve passed on others (no PREVIEWS ad – it seemed like a lot of money for real estate in part of the magazine that a lot of retailers never get to).

I’ll be doing advertising outside the DM, in the horror magazine RUE MORGUE, most notably. But that won’t hit until the month the book ships. I didn’t see a lot of value in buying an ad for a book that’s not going to be out until months after the ad runs. Yes, I miss the pre-order window like that. But the reality is, I can’t get a lot of people motivated to pre-order a book. If they see it in front of them, I get a response. I’ve found that people want what they want when they want it. Pre-ordering doesn’t figure well into that. Of course, pre-ordering makes the DM world go around (or does it? I’m curious as to what percentage of books actually get pre-ordered in the DM.) Even so, I'm pointing people to local comics retailers in the ads, telling them about The Master List so they can find a local store (yes, that's an imperfect resource, but it's an imperfect world we live in.) If I was smart, I'd send them towards the list as well. Maybe I oughta do that, too.

But will that translate into interest at the DM level so that they can pre-order STRANGEWAYS and have it on the shelves for people to pick up? My crystal ball broke on the way back down the mountain, so your guess is as good as mine.

As to the question of convention pre-sales, the one that sparked all this off, I have to say the risk of alienating DM retailers is not something I can shrug off easily. I’m not interested in taking sales out of the region before the book can make its way in the DM. Would I sell enough to make it worthwhile? How much would it actually cost, aside from the table, etc? Would any of the local retailers be irritated enough to blackball me, a publisher of a book that they’re going to order in the low single digits? Would they ask if they could get the book at cost and have me sign a stack to go back to their shops (because I’d gladly do that – and Rory Root of Comics Relief has already extended a like offer).

Making the full cover price (or with the .99 rounded off) as opposed to what I see out of a Diamond sale, seems pretty tempting, I have to admit. Particularly in my case since it’s all been money out on Strangeways (even if the book had been published through Speakeasy years ago, it’d have been money out, my eyes were open on that.) Ultimately, though, I can’t see the small number of sales I’d make at a show like Wonder-Con being worth the animosity generated over such a move. Working directly with an area retailer to help get the books in people’s hands, now that sounds a lot better.

And as a publisher of a comic like STRANGEWAYS (perceived special-interest/genre, black and white, OGN not pamphlet) I’d rather be working with retailers than cross-purposes. If it works out for both of us that making them available at cost from me (no matter how many or few they pre-ordered from Diamond), then that’s fine by me. I’m not in a position to pick and choose friends. Of course, this whole brouhaha sort of puts the cart before the horse since I was going to visit SF-area retailers this weekend and get their takes on STRANGEWAYS and talk about convention sales. So much for my big surprise…

I’ll add, that orders from Diamond are still open, so any retailer reading this could adjust their orders up or down as they see fit. Not that one little blog post constitutes anything like advance notice on the Diamond contract that “This item may be available from other venues before it is available in the Direct Market.” It doesn’t.

As for the bigger questions swirling around this whole issue, don’t expect any revelations/resolutions in the short term. A good chunk of the friction here stems from the structure of the market itself (high discounts for non-returnable merchandise versus lower discounts and returnability, a market transitioning from serial pamphlets to more durable books and exacerbating the worst qualities of both models, large publishers in franchise maintenance-mode and not expanding readership, smaller publishers doing the heavy creative lifting and taking larger risks in developing talent, audience shift and malaise whilst a new audience bubbles up from below). The position paper that started all this off, while far from perfect, at least appears to have been a starting point for the conversation, even what we end up talking about isn’t what got us all fussed in the first place.