Question:
I'm planning of starting a comic
shop by my school and I was wondering
what titles you think I should stock.
Also, if any of you have or work
at comic book shops, are there any
advices you can give me? I know
the industry isn't in it's prime,
but there is no comic book shop
for about 2 hours drive from where
I go and the nearing townships have
about 200 000 individuals. Granted
it's in Quebec, but I live in an
Anglophone community, so I figure
I can get at least 100 subscriptions.
I'm not really doing it for the
money, if I can break even at the
end of the day and initiate some
kids to some new superheroes; I'll
be able to sleep very well. Any
ideas for titles to stock? I figure
it'll just be a small operation
inside a small used book store,
so I can only stock like 30-40 titles
and that will include trades. I'm
going to put a fair bit on emphasis
on the kid market (5th grade to
8th grade) so any suggestions for
appropriate titles?
Answer:
I would strongly encourage you to read the article "Comics
Retailing as a Career" at:
http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg147.html
Chuck is a columnist for the Comic Buyer's Guide and also runs Mile
High Comics in Colorado. He posts his articles on his web site, which
are fascinating to those interesting in the history of comics, comic
sales and the comic book industry as a whole. The list of his other
articles is here:
http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/main.html
Some things to keep in mind:
1. The best discounts come in larger volume purchasing, so your margins
get smaller the lower you go.
2. DC & Marvel represent about 80% of total market sales, so if you
are starting small, begin with those two publishers.
3. If you are going to stock only 30-40 titles, look at the Top 300
titles being sold (as displayed by ICV or Diamond Distributors. For
example, of the top 40 in April 2006, 10 of these were limited run
miniseries (including the top selling Infinite Crisis), so take that
into account.
4. If you sell back issues, get a web presence as well. Many comic
shops do a sizeable percentage of their sales this way.
