you know one of the biggest sales points of (familyfriendly but also porn) comics here are the news agents? Always have been since back in the day the newspaper publishers were also comics publishers.
One series was also sold via the postman ensuring a huge circulation

The other big sales point is the supermarket. Basically, if your (kids)comic isn't sold throught the supermarket, you won't make a profit (i.e. more than 20k sales)

(for the record, I live in a town of almost 300k people and has 7 comicstores each specialising in a genre, 10 bookstores where they sell comics and dozens of newsagents plus 10 bigger supermarkets)

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Interestingly, out-of-print collected editions have replaced singles as THE hot commodity on the secondary market.

A quick search on ebay shows that early Absolute Editions (Planetary, Danger Girl, Authority) are all fetching $200.00 each, the ANNIHILATION Volume 1 Hardcover sells for $75.00, etc. The Barnes and Noble exclusive Ultimate Spider-Man omnibus hardcover and early Ennis Punisher collections are seeing similar action. And don't even get me started on the aftermarket prices of early Marvel Masterworks volumes.

And it's not just hardcovers. After Bendis announced that the Hood would be the Big Bad in the upcoming year of New and Mighty Avengers, but before Marvel took the collection back to press, the original OOP softcover was fetching about $30.00.

When was the last time a single saw that kind of jump in the secondary market?

Remember that I'm only speaking to the specific point of the difference between having them in discrete location and having them on newsstands or otherwise all over the place, and what I think is some puffery regarding the desirability of the latter. I've written a ton of times about coverage issues like entire towns not having any comics accessible to them, and have done so for a dozen years; this isn't what I'm talking about here.

While it's certainly logical that more people will pick comics up if they're available in a lot more places, it's also logical that more people would read them if they were free. I'd suggest that knowledge isn't very useful.

It's more fruitful if not a basic requirement to think of these things as systems, with positives and negatives, than to use a limited reading of their positives as a club with which to beat on other options that have to exist in the real world. Luckily, this is one of those where history provides a guide. Positives to the spinner rack system included greater ubiquity and higher cumulative sell-through of what was there; some of the negatives were drastic limitations on content and variety, arbitrary supply problems and some real questions of profitability.

I do think that comics companies were too quick to give up on newsstands and that more effort should have been put in to sustain that market and make it work in some way. If anyone has a system that will work now that involves greater ubiquity for comics, I'll be as happy to buy Iron Fist at the grocery store as I am right now to buy Shonen Jump there.

I just don't buy a limited portrait of a system as a criticism or an ideal and wanted to say so, that's all.

It may seem that I'm arguing for a return to the "comics in every store, for every taste, as long as it's Superman, X-Men or Spider-Man" days.

I'm not, although I probably didn't go in depth enough to explain.

I thoroughly believe that direct marketing is not the way to go for long-term viability of the art form. I really don't. Thus my "mass market into niche" statement earlier in the thread.

But why not bookshops? There's a B&N or Walden's or what-have-you in pretty near every mall in America, and stand-alone B&N stores dot the landscape.

The TPBs already sell there -- manga sells very well through there (although that brings up another discussion -- the serial periodical vs. the ongoing chronicle) so why not have "sampler packs" or somesuch for sale through the bookshops?

The local B&N can order the Warhammer 40K novels I need to complete my collection, would it be that much harder for them to order, say, "Hawaiian Dick" if that was included in the Diamond Sampler this past month and I really enjoyed the storyline?

There needs to be an infusion of comics into the mass market at some point, I think. The movies (atrocious as a few have been) are a good jumping-off point, but there needs to be some kind of follow up.

I know I've forgotten something I wanted to say here.

In the shitty little town I grew up in, there was ONE bookstore. I convinced the owner to sign on with Capital City and let me order comics. Not *everything*, just the stuff *I* felt confident would sell. He gave me a 'comics budget' and told me that if comic sales were losing money after 3 months, he'd cut them. I made sure to stock a handful of superheroes, but in LOW numbers... there was a 'mainstream' DM comic shop nearby that I felt a.) did that and b.) since it was run by a friend I didn't want to 'pirate' his customers.

By the second month, we were not only in the black with comics, we were making a good profit. Yummy Fur, Love & Rockets, Zot, Cerebus, Elfquest, Real Stuff, Hate, Vampire Lestat, etc... all did really good numbers. Mind you this is in a blue collar town with a population of around 20k. The people who came in buying Steven King books I suggested they try Eclipse Clive Barker books. If someone bought Ramond Carver, I'd suggest they try Real Stuff, and so on. 4 out of 6 would at least *try* the books and about half became regular readers.

the footnote to this is, after a year and a half, I left for school, and it completely fell apart because there wasn't anyone to do that kind of 'customer matching' or salesmanship, but it convinced me beyond a doubt that a larger audience *is* out there...

Rantz Hoseley

That's the thing -- there's enough crossover with novelists writing comics and comic writers becoming novelists that titles could work -- and then other comics in that genre could sell.

Yes, there would need to be a knowledgeable person there (which is why I suggest "Sampler Packs" at first from Diamond.

Anita Blake? Novels and comics.
Apprentice:Magician? Same.
D&D? Same.
Warhammer? Same.
World of Warcraft, for bog's sake? Yup.
Got somebody picking up Marlowe? There's loads of detective comics out there -- the aforementioned Hawaiian Dick, Fell, Criminal, Potter's Field, &c.
Romance novels? I know there's romance comics out there, but I don't read them. :P

In lieu of having a comics-oriented employee, this is something the industry could do. Have a "suggestion" list. IE, "If your customer purchases the new Stephen King laundry list and asks if you can make any horror recommendations, you may wish to suggest Fall of Cthulhu (included in this pack.)" "Does the customer have Laurell K. Hamilton's newest? Suggest Guilty Pleasures in comic form. &c.)

Because regardless of the solution, I think it's going to take everyone to implement. From big to small, everyone's going to have to sign on in order for the industry to launch.

I think what this thread proves beyond all doubt is that What This Industry Truly Needs (tm) is Rantz, some sort of cloning device, a speech by which all the Rantz clones will be convinced to give up on their cloney future plans, a time machine set to 1989, 4000 copies of Your Directory to America's Small-Town bookstores, and 3999 greyhound all-across-America passes.

The 4000th Rantz clone can work part-time wherever Rantz is and help him ink.

...why am I thinking of a scary version of that Elvis cover right now...?

The last thing the world (or comics) need is thousands of me, chain smoking, swearing and generally not being pleasant.

(I will take the 'inker clone' though...)

Rantz Hoseley

"In the shitty little town I grew up in, there was ONE bookstore...Mind you this is in a blue collar town with a population of around 20k...."

Wow! 20,000 is a "shitty little town"? No wonder I feel, despite living in an industrialized state, that I'm more in the sticks than many folks in states supposedly more sparsely populated.

Reed City Michigan (the county seat of Osceola county), : (from Wikipedia)"As of the 2000 census, the city population was 2,430". I'd say it's dropped some, since then, with two factories closing.

Still, maybe fifteen years ago, we had 4 spinner racks in town and no one asked if they still made comics.

Even the nearest "big town", Big Rapids, had only a population of 10,849. It's a college town, so much of it's potentially comics buying audience isn't counted. It used to have a comics shop -- and briefly, 2. Currently it has one non-chain bookstore that never carries more than half a dozen TPBs (not counting Garfield or Dilbert collections) -- and those are mostly connected to recent movies (though I did find the first 100 Bullets TPB there -- the only Vertigo book I've seen there).

In this part of Michigan, you have to cross several counties to find a comics shop.

http://mlpeters.com
http://comicspace.com/mlpeters
http://myspace.com/mlpetersartist

There's Lewiston, on the Idaho side of the river (which is the 'big city' in those parts and where the bookstore was located) that was 10-20k, depending on what you defined as the town limits.

Clarkston (where I grew up) was on the Washington side of the river and was pop. 4-7k depending on where you drew the town boundaries (farming communities tend to spread out.)

The nearest town was the county seat for that part of Washington, Asotin, which was pop. 500-1,000.

from there radiating outwards, the towns just got smaller until you hit Spokane. (which was the BIG city)

It's telling that when I left to move to LA after high school graduation, my sister had to hear rumors of me dealing drugs, joining a gang, becoming gay, and joining the Satanic church where I was studying to be a high priest. (because THOSE are the things that happen when you move to a godless babylon like LA)

Rantz Hoseley