Navigating a Crowded Marketplace

If there’s one thing we all can agree on, it’s this: The comics marketplace is crowded. Very crowded.

This should not be a surprise to anyone. When I talk to retailers, it’s an issue that consistently comes up as a problem.

I hear some of you saying, “How bad can it be?” To find out, let’s start here. Twenty years ago, Image Comics was publishing what you might call a handful of comics every month. Less than 10. Today, they solicit over 50 comics per month.

And 20 years ago, these publishers either didn’t exist or, in some cases, they were just getting off the ground:

• Ablaze
• Ahoy
• American Mythology
• Antarctic Press
• AWA Studios
• Boom! Studios
• Clover Press
• DSTLRY
• Dynamite Entertainment
• Fairsquare
• Mad Cave
• Massive
• Scout
• Silver Sprocket
• Vault

(This list is by no means complete, and no one should read anything into which publishers are on it and which are not. I just cherry picked some of the more prominent players, plus a couple run by friends.)

I am not saying these or other publishers are flooding the market with bad comics. There is a surfeit, a veritable bounty, of great comics out there, and even if you subscribe to Sturgeon’s Law – that 90 percent of everything is crap – that still leaves a lot of product to reckon with. I won’t even bring up variant cover editions of virtually every monthly comic, since I just covered variant covers in the past few weeks.

Twenty years ago we also didn’t have book publishers like Abrams, Scholastic, Penguin Random House and others producing graphic novels, many of which are aimed at young readers. And as comics retailers know, you know your chances of snaring a future customer are much higher if you hook them with a Dogman graphic novel than, say, the latest issue of Scooby-Doo.

And I haven’t even mentioned manga. Sure, there was a lot of manga out there 20 years ago, but most of it was sold in bookstores or Japanese specialty stores. Now many — perhaps most — comics shops have a section to showcase the works of mangaka like Junji Ito.

Given this tsunami of product, how do retailers deal with the ordering process? There are at least a few answers to that question…

Some stores rely heavily on customer pre-orders. If a debut issue doesn’t get significant pre-orders, a store may only order a few copies “for the shelf.” On the other hand, if the title does get decent pre-orders, the shop will most likely do a little calculus and order up beyond the pre-order quantity. As an example, if POTATO MAN #1 gets 25 pre-orders, the store may order 35 copies.

Other shops place orders based on publisher promotion. An obvious example is the recent enormous success of BRZRKR, from Boom! Studios. The publisher knew when co-creator / co-writer Keanu Reeves was going to appear on late night TV to talk about the series, and they made sure retailers knew it was happening. You really can’t beat that for increasing consumer awareness and demand.

There are shops that curate their orders to their clientele – that is, they know their customers well enough to know what will or will not be of interest to them.

And let’s face it – there are also what used to be called “Marvel / DC” stores. These days they might include Image as well, but what we’re talking about here are stores that don’t order much in the way of comics from other publishers besides the biggest few.

At the end of the day, there’s no “one size fits all” solution to market crowding. But there are steps publishers can take to help retailers order with more confidence, and we’ll look at them next time.

Next: Ordering made easy. Well, easier.