Blog @ Canadian Geek

Since the point of Behind The Counter is to give you all an insight as to how comic shops work, instead of “just” ranting this time around, I thought I would share some more of the process of running the store. This time around, we’ll deal with the love/hate relationship retailers have with Back Issues (BIs).

On several of the industry blogs and forums, there has been recent discussion on the usefullness and profitability of BIs. As a touched on a dog’s age ago, Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics believes that any retailer who does not carry back issues is doomed to fail. Easy for him to say as the primary objective of his online company is to supply back issues. But not every store WANTS to carry BIs or NEEDS to carry BIs and the reasons for those would fill another column. Here, we just want to get into how retailers decide what collections they will buy and why they pay what they do.

Let’s set-up a senario to help things along. Mary, after kicking her mousey, insecure, $8/hr Subway working boyfirend to the curb, decides that the best way to get back the money she loaned him for Cirque du Soliel tickets was to sell his comics. Mary has heard that comics appreciate in value and are good potential retirement assests so she calls around to the local comic shops to see who’s buying.

The first question Mary should reasonably expect to get is “Do you have a list of the books?” It’s not likely that Mary does, nor does she know who many are even in the collection. She’s got several boxes of varying sizes and the books are in no particular order so, over the phone, there’s little to no chance of moving the collection as the retailer will have no idea what’s s/he’s getting into.

Now Mary will be inclinded to say things like, “They’re all in their original wrappings/plastic.” which is a bad thing to say since very few to any comics ever came in “plastic”. Retailers will know that she means they are in comic bags but even that could be dubious. I have bought collections where the issues were in their original “plastic” only to see a ton of books wrapped in plastic kitchen wrap. Also, just because a comic is in a plastic sleeve doesn’t mean it didn’t get read repeatedly before getting there.

With little knowledge of what Mary is selling, the retailer may offer a blind, low amount ($.10 to $0.15 per book) or just not bother, the latter more likely. As in any medium, 90% of everything is crap and in a blind collection, hoping for 10% of anything good enough to get a return on the purchase is slim, especially in such a chaotic collection.

Aside from the gamble of quality in the collection, there are several other factors that play into purchasing a comic collection. Most sellers only consider the upfront cost of the collection and often get offended when a store owner offers $200 for 1500 comics. However, from the owner’s side of things, there will be;
1. the time to sort through the collection, culling out the heavily damaged books, removing any outdated or improper storage material and alphabetizing
2. the time to catalogue the books
3. the time to grade the books
4. the time to calculate the values of the books
5. the time and costs to bag and board the books.

So let’s say HH bought Mary’s 1500 books at $0.15 each. Right off the bat, HH is out $225. Now to go through the process above (which we have just done recently with several collections we have bought), a total of about 15 hours of staff time is required for steps 1 and 2, another $150-$175. Now, steps 3 and 4 are normally done by “the boss” and, depending on the collection, can take from 2 to 10 hours. Let’s say Mary’s collection is mostly all newer books so they can graded fairly quickly in under 3 hours, adding another $100 (yes, that’s conservative) to the total.

For the final step of bagging and boarding, we’re going to say that out of the 1500 books, only 1000 were worth converting to BIs and to clean those up, that would take about 4 hours of staff time ($40 to $60) and the cost of supplies ($45 to $60). So, now the final cost of each of those $0.15 books is an average of $0.58.

On the surface, that still seems pretty good if each book retails on an average if $3 to $4. But the real question still remains; how many of those comics are sellable? If we take the “90% of everything is crap” adage, then the retailer is only going to make $300 to $400 from a collection that cost him $580 and there’s no telling how long it will take to recover that money. A few books may sell right away but in reality, it will take a several months to recover the cost if they are lucky.

There is not a lot of data (if any) on the percentage of sales a typical comic shop does on back issues. Some stores specialze in them while others won’t go near them. They require space, time and captial. They are a long term investment and, increasingly with the competition of high discount/no overhead online sales, more of a good will gesture for a shop’s regular clientele.

Of course, things also change dramatically with smaller collections containing key books, older collections and larger collections, all of which will incease the amount of time involved in grading. When selling your collection, especially a big bulk one, do not expect a generous offer from your local comic shop guy. There’s a lot more on the line for him that just cutting a cheque to you.

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There’s a lot of sayings that go along with the word respect; “You have to earn respect.” “You have to give respect to get respect.” “Respect your elders.” They also all seem to be said as absolutes but frankly, I think they’re all more just starting points or guidelines. Enter into relationships with a mutual respect and over the course of time decide if that respect is warranted or not. Case in point, I recently had a conversation with an elder who was trying to earn my respect but in the process out right lied to me. Killed two out of three of those sayings right there.

Comics are a medium that has long gone without much respect, in my opinion, though I’m baffled to understand why. The only logic I can apply to it is just being uninformed. I have found, generally, that those who “dislike” comics have never read them. Sure there are some that have read a comic or two, probably not very good ones, and were turned off never to look back but a greater majority haven’t even tried.

There are two conflicting opinions about what comics are these days; “Comics are just kiddie stuff” and “Comics are only for adults.” Kinda tough to be both, eh, but those are the two most common sayings I hear from the general non-comic populace. Interesting how something can be only for kids is only for adults at the same time but that’s where over a hundred years of a lack of respect will get you.

When I go and speak at schools, for any first time visit I try and open with my “comics are a medium” speech, to help clarify to those in the room what comics actually are. And it’s not just the kids I’m giving perspective to. Once I finish my mini-speech, facial expressions change to the, “Oh, really? Wow” faces that everyone should have when talking about comics. Frankly, I believe there’s no other medium where the creative output is as high, the creators work as hard or are as accessible to their fans as comics. And yet, so few know than a couple of the big names or even that Spider-Man and Superman are owned by two different companies.

Granted, things are changing in our favour. Personally, I have been invited to speak at more schools and, astoundingly enough, also asked for return visits. Another big deal is the number of conferences I’ve been invited to speak at. This summer I’ll be at three different events spreading the news about my favourite medium and all instances I often hear a phrase that, while said innocently enough, always makes me chuckle;
“Can you tell the kids / talk about the world of comics for 15 to 20 minutes and then answer some questions?”

As many of you know, I can talk about anything for 20 minutes. How I enjoyed Spider-Man: One More Day, how great John Byrne is, how tasty my rice was last night in my dinner. So you can imagine how challenged I must be to talk about the entire medium of comics in just 20 minutes and then field some questions. I, somewhat foolishly, made the comment to a customer the other day that went like this, “Would you ask the Rolling Stones to come and speak about music for 15 to 20 minutes and then field some questions?” to which the customer said to me, “Did you just compare yourself to the Rolling Stones?” Ego aside, the point was more to that no one can speak about any medium for such a short period of time nor would, in most other cases, anyone be asked to.

Many would argue that it’s because comics are such a young medium that people aren’t familiar enough with it to truly respect it but when you look at it against film and television, comics are the oldest of the three. In fact one could even argue that the “art” of comics could date back to the Egyptians making it ridiculously old but really, we’re just looking at the modern day comic book.

It’s been a long road for comics to try and gain respect and an even tougher one to decipher. Why did comics not receive that same acclaim as early film? The appeal to children was there and that may have created the misconception that they were only for kids but film had cartoons and it’s now a mega-industry. Television, really just an extension of film, provides viewing material of all sorts aimed towards children and adults in many genres, just like comics, but they still can’t compare. What is it that held comics back? Here’s my outlandish theory.
Comics are the most complex medium to create, consume and enjoy and, thus, it holds less appeal to the general masses.

More next time.

The Shepherd

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A recent word storm has sprung on the net over the date of this year’s New York ComicCon, which apparently falls on the Jewish festival of Passover. This Rant is going to touch on that, the writer of the initial criticism and about society as a whole, I suppose, so if you are the type who does not enjoy, appreciate or respect the opinions of others in regards to religion, please stop reading now.

I only wish I could feel as passionately about anything as a traditional Jewish observer does about their faith but I don’t. I lack the personal resolve to commit myself so intrinsically into anything that I will always be relegated to the sidelines of absolute beliefs. And while I seldom comprehend one’s absolute devotion to, well, anything, I can respect it. To a degree.

Neil Kleid is a New York based cartoonist who has, at the end of January, taken some offence to the fact that the 2008 New York ComicCon is being held on the weekend of Passover. He posted an open letter on his LiveJournal stating as such.

Without knowing all of the particulars of why a show that had, for the previous 2 years been held in February, moved to April, Neil decided to take the organizational committee to task for allowing the show to occur at the same time as Passover. He actually states that he is “annoyed that the folks at Reed (Exhibitions) didn’t even take the holiday into account.” without actually knowing if it was taken into account or not. He further states that “it’s frankly insulting” that the organizers didn’t even take the time to “open a calendar and see whether the dates of the convention conflict with major holidays”. Neil knows a lot for someone who, in his opening, admits that “I don’t know the details” about why the date changed.

Lance Fensterman, head of the NYCon replied to Neil’s comments and made it clear that that weekend was all that was available to them at the venue where the con was being held. Even after seeing Lance’s reply, Neil still was not happy. So my question becomes, how far do we go please everyone?

I can remember a time when everything and I mean everything was closed on Sundays and Christmas (except essential services). It’s hardly the case these days, especially when you see movies like AVP Requiem opening on Dec 25th. Has Christmas become less of a holiday because of it? Well Neil thinks that “the decision to take the dates given (for the NYCon) despite them falling on Passover makes our holiday appear to be of lesser import.”

While I can’t disagree with his feelings, I do have to ask, where does it end? At what point do we draw the line when considering holding an event that falls on a holiday? What are the criteria? Do only certain religions get considered? With an increase in the number of “recognized” religious dates, how could anyone schedule anything without raising the ire of some group of people?

And I can’t believe for one minute that nothing happens on Passover. Like Christmas, the movement to provide not just services but also entertainment to those who do not recognize certain religious holidays is growing fast. As a member of the sector that no longer HAS to be open nearly every day of the year but is EXPECTED to be open every day of the year, the arrogance of any individual to say that an event shouldn’t occur because they can’t be a part of it offends me, especially when laced with the ignorance expressed in Neil’s open letter.

It’s sad that there are people in the world who are still looking to be persecuted instead of dealing with actual problems. The NYCon did what they have to do as a business and I’m sure it was not an easy decision to make. The fact that Neil, without knowing anything about why it happened, instantly skewed the happenings towards a bashing of his religion is a bit disturbing to me. Instead, why didn’t he just email them and ask, “Hey, did you know you booked your con on Passover weekend?” Had he done that I’m sure the comic internet community would have had to deal less with the passion of Neil’s faith.

I’m sorry you’ll have to miss the con, Neil. I applaud your faith but your attack on people without knowledge of why they do what they do is truly more damaging than a comic con on any holiday.

-The Shepherd

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There’s no disputing comics have grown in the last couple decades. Point the finger at the Dark Night, Watchmen, the Punisher or whoever you wish but a lot of the charm and innocence of the comics of yesterday have departed us in favour of more “real” and “gritty” stories.

I’m not even sure if the supposed harmless or all ages titles being published today are really that good for kids either. I was informed by one parent that “Mouse Guard” was too violent for their 9 year old but a part of me thinks back to the fantasy animal books I read as a youngster (”Watership Down” popping to mind instantly) and wonders why today’s parents are concerned with showing their children images of mice sword-fighting snakes and each other. But that’s not really the point of this Rant.

What is more concerning me is the recent push by publishers to create comics for kids, specifically, educational comics. I’m not against education in comics, in fact I’ve learned as much from comics as one could, I suppose, but when these books are targeted at schools to be used as tools for kids, there is one thing that pisses me off more than anything.

The price.

Case in point. Standard comics (Spidey, Sups, etc.) are generally 24 pages of story, full colour, for $3 which breaks down to about $0.13 per page (if we use the actual solicited numbers, 32 pages, cause you should count the ads, it’s $0.09 per page). In my opinion, not a bad deal for some storytelling and artwork that I get to keep around and revisit when my whimsy hits. However educationally generated comics seem to have a much higher value.

Barron’s Graphic Classics produced two books in late 07, one based on Dracula and the other adapting “The Man in the Iron Mask”. Both books are 48 pages for $8.95 ($0.19 per page). Capstone Press offered a great selection of books for Black History month in the December Previews featuring not just the standard King Jr. and Jackie Robinson but also Booker T Washington and Wilma Rudolph. Sadly the books are 32 pages for $7.95 ($0.25 per page). And in 2006, HH bought several books from Rosen Publishing, with the intention of reselling them to the schools we had been dealing with. I was so excited when I first saw the books that I didn’t even look at the price. Talk about sticker shock. 32 pages for $11.95.

I complained to Rosen and apparently I wasn’t the only one and they did shave off $3 per book but that still left them in the realm of unreasonable. And not just for the price but also for the quality of the storytelling and the art. They were sub-standard by comic market levels and when I attempted to continue my dialogue with Rosen as to why their books were so pricey (I stayed away from commenting on quality), they never responded directly, only saying they were sorry I was unhappy with their product.

There are exceptions and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Eureka Productions and their series of “Graphic Classics” (usually 144 pages for $10 BUT, black and white). Overall, I am befuddled as to why comics that work so hard to entertain and educate kids feel the need to price themselves so ridiculously high. It is the same reason I never wanted to carry Pokemon cards in my stores as the price per pack, and we were on the low end at $6 for a 6 card pack, was offensive when compared against Magic The Gathering, which I could retail for $3.75 for a 15 card pack.

Is the market aimed at children so cut-throat that the “bleed ‘em dry” mentality must be so dominate? When you have a new breed of readers/players/collectors every couple years, isn’t the longevity of your product a bit more secure than that of an aging Super or Spider-fan? I’m truly at a loss.

Which is why when schools ask me about these books, I warn them ahead of time. With budgets as tight as they are, I can get them 5 times the page count and value for their money against an educational book by getting them an “Edu-manga” and teachers love that. 24 pages for $8, come on! Educators may be desperate for tools to help teach kids but they’re not stupid.

On a parting note, I should mention that a fairly big name comic publisher mostly known for their horror comics is jumping into the mix. IDW, home to such children’s classics as “30 Days of Night” and “Gene Simmons Dominatrix” is debuting the first of their children’s picture books with January’s “Michael Recycle”. Order your 28-page book for only $15.99 today!

The Shepherd

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I see on forums (forii?) across the webernet with people questioning how and why certain stores “only” get certain things, why things are missing, why one store gets books a week or two after another store, etc. I thought I would take this week to answer some of those questions instead of going on about how much I hate the “Christmas” season and, in kind, humanity in general during said season.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

“There were 2 covers for “Amazing Ultra-Men” but my comic shop only got the ‘B’ cover.”
“My comic shop didn’t get “All-New Fierce Guy” this week but Ted’s Comics did.”

Both of these questions have a simple answer - human error. Now, where the human error occurred, that can vary. First, there’s the store owner/manager/trained monkey who has to record the order, either in the old-fashioned pen and paper method that gets mailed or faxed to the distributor or entered into a data form that gets emailed to the distributor. They may miss a line or miss-type something that results in that book not getting ordered.

The second error could occur when the product becomes available and the peoples in the distribution warehouse are “pulling” product for stores. This is a pretty simple process, in essence, where good folk read a pull sheet and grab that quantity of a certain type of comic and put it into a box for Joe Retailer. What can get complicated is when you think about the fact there are 3500 plus stores in North America who are all getting their comics “pulled” at the same. Every week. All year long. And pull sheets aren’t sorted by title; they are generally sorted by code numbers, making the potential for boo-boo’s even greater.

It’s got to be a bit of a tedious process and I can easily see how Billy could have thought that he pulled 40 copies of “The Mighty Omegas” for Alex’s store in Wyoming but accidents happen and with several million comics a month being distributed across NA, fatigue and human error is bound to occur.

Oh, and then there’s the shipping companies. I have gotten boxes for stores in other provinces and other stores have gotten boxes for me. It happens.

“The latest trade of “Unbelievable Mutant Mommas” was supposed to be out last week but it didn’t ship. When’s it gonna be out?”

When it’s late, it’s late. We, the lowly retailers, don’t get always get updates when late product is going to finally arrive. Sometimes we do but with the sheer number of books shipping in a week/month/year that are running late, we just can’t remember them all and, no, there’s no quick reference master list with that type of info.

This kinda goes hand-in-hand with, “How much will it be when it arrives?” or “When you were selling this product 4 years ago, how much did you sell it for?” A good business person knows a lot about their product. An excellent business person knows an awful lot. But in the end, there’s only so much we can know and sometimes even less we can instantly access to give you some instant gratification. Sometimes, we need a moment or it may require some research and if it does, please be patient. If a busy business owner is willing to take the time to find it out for you, cut them some slack while s/he interrupts what they were doing to tell how much your $3 comic costs exactly (yes, it does happen).

“My store carries “The Excellent East Coast Bashers” but not “Ted Humphries - Squirrelly Avenger”. Why don’t they carry both?”

In short, there’s a lot of f***ing comics out there kid and we only have so much money to buy stock. The key to that sentence is that we BUY our product. Whatever you see on the shelf, we had to purchase and cannot return or exchange. Once it’s in our store, it’s ours forever.

Back in the day, newsstands (drugstores and the whatnot) all got their comics from regional distributors and could tear off the covers of unsold comics and return them for credit. While eliminating the risk of over ordering, the profit margins were small and with the extra paperwork to get credit for unsold product, the effort outweighed the return and many stores got out of selling comics.

From there stemmed the “Direct Market”, where retailers would buy the product outright for bigger margins. This led to stores being able to support themselves by just selling comics, assuming they were savvy enough to know what to buy and how much. These days most retailers cry out for huge margins and full returnability not realizing the absurdity of the request.

“Can you order…?”

This question can end a million different ways but the answer is generally always the same. If it had a street date of more than a couple of months ago, it’s no longer available. Most companies make their product, comic or toy, based on initial orders from distributors. Sometimes they make a little extra but there are very few distributors who “stock” merchandise. Once the product is released, that’s usually all there is. The exceptions to these tend to be trades and Manga, mainly due to their lack of collectibility, which are often reprinted and kept available.

There’s more (there always is) but you probably have better things to do. I don’t, so ask me what more you would like to know about this wacky, madcap industry called comics. Until then I shall remain your

Shepherd

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Welcome to Canada, home of the over converted SRP and constantly fluctuating dollar. As we’ve all heard by now, the Canadian dollar is hovering at par with the US and publishers of comics, magazines, books and more choose not to either A) adjust their cover prices or B) just remove them all together. I guess it’s better to look silly than professional.

Many blogs and columns have addressed the issue with a lot of people who aren’t in the know trying to speculate why publishing houses are doing (or, more acurately, not doing) when it comes to cover prices. I won’t go there cause the only people that can answer that are the head honchos at Marvel, DC, Random House and more and currently, they refuse to do so. What I will touch on is what the people on the front line ARE doing about it.

In Edmonton about 3 weeks ago, a BIG news item came out talking about how Audrey’s Books was now charging the US cover price instead of the Canadian. A nice gesture, sure but not without it’s flaws.

First, they didn’t institute this policy until the dollar actually touched par. Why didn’t they feel the need to not overcharge customers when 3 weeks earlier the dollar was sitting at 1.04? Was the 4 cents too much to lose? Hard to image when you’re charging cover prices based on a 1.35 exchange rate. So, even though it was too late in the game they manged to get some media attention and look like darlings. (And I’m not meaning to pick just on them, many businesses did this - car and applicance dealers, etc. - but Audrey’s got a lot of media attention over it.)

The second issue is how they and several other businesses have decided to just start charging people the US cover price, basically giving people this huge discount against what they were paying the week previous (even though the week previous the dollar was only about 2 cents more costly). Again, a nice gesture but what happens in a month or 6 time when the dollar drops again? Will these stores just flip back to the overinflated Canadian price? Probably except the issue then becomes that the covers prices won’t be adjusted properly and stores will be taking a loss.

Charging the US price is a short term solution that only plays customers like a yo-yo which is why HH, who started discounting Cnd cover prices more than a year earlier, has adopted the policy of pricing all of their product based on the exchange rate they are billed at by their US distributors. Pepole pay what we pay. That seems fair.

And for full disclosure, this was not a concept we came up with. Kelly Dowd, owner of Red Skull Comics in Calgary, began this policy back in 1998, when the dollar was in the gutter and it was a gamble since he was then charging more for many books. Most publishers wouldn’t price comics with the actual Canadian exchange rate becasue it was so high. So if the dollar was sitting at 1.65, they would use 1.5 in hopes to keep more customers. Sadly, this cost retailers money but Kelly discovered that if you have a good store and your prices are fair and honest, it won’t matter what the price tag is, people will still come and buy from you.

So thank you Kelly for helping us help the Geeks of the world. Well, at least the Geeks in the Edmonton area.

* First Rant in a while and I’m a bit dreary so my apologies if this lacks it’s usual venom.