Personally, I think shops need an online pre-order option. like goldenapplecomics.com, etc. The shop absolutely should be pouring through the catalogues - that's called running a business, what business doesn't do this for ordering what they sell? Then the business itself needs to find a solution for its customers. If comic shops want to survive and thrive. then yeah, they have to start adopting the practices of real physical storefronts.
I see your point - but the flip side is that retailers only have so many resources to spend on new comics which even the most comic focused LCS probably makes up less than 35% of their actual revenue. There really isn’t the motivation for a retailer to do those deep dives looking for indie comics to take a chance on - which may or may not just end up collecting dust on the racks. The two major distributors actually just focus on the larger publishers with very little actual incentive for retailers to go deeper. Not saying it’s right … but it is a reality. Back when there was just the one catalog we learned that about 25% of retailers didn’t even order from the “back half” where we (Cosmic Times) and all the other indie publishers could be found, so it’s a pretty safe bet to say those same retailers haven’t changed their approach to ordering.
Not that this is the answer in full, but I think we have to look at retailers as not all being the same kind of store, and not lump them into a single "retailers" group. I currently work as a wine sales rep - in the wine world, every distributor (essentially a publisher) has their own "book". We have to go shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant, and sell to each individually. Buyers have to juggle 100's of "books" and reps and distros, and each city/area has its own rep per distro (aka "publisher"). Buyers (aka retailers) are of course hard to get their attention, hard to get their time, hard to get a sale, but you cover so many places and areas that it works out, albeit not easily. It's a TON of work.
Now, I'm not saying that's the model for comics - though no doubt there are elements here that hold true, in that you gotta make face time with retailers to get on their shelves. That seems to hold true for most niche industries across the board. But in the wine world you have the shops that mostly just cary the big brands, and almost zero little guy stuff, like BevMo, Total Wine, Target, etc. Then there's the shops that carry almost entirely little guy stuff and virtually no big brand product. Indie Retail outlets and restaurants and the like. I think comcis need to find the difference between these shops. Marvel and DC should have their books, and then probably the "back half" needs its own distributor period. The shops that have their identity wrapped up in that back half book will always care, and the shops that don't can largely just ignore it.
This was the way the distros were largely divvied up back in the 80's / 90's indie boom. Diamond absorbing everything was the beginning of end of it, and I firmly believe we need to stop thinking we need to go back to that. It was never a boon to indies. It's a separate ecosystem, and should be structured, executed, and treated as such.
Semi-casual comic fan here, I'll have to reread this, I like reading about comic book production/background as a side interest, even though I don't know too much yet. Years ago the only way I found indie stuff was browsing covers that attracted me while I was still able to go to a physical store. Several years ago, that became impossible because of traffic and I started using online TFAW. I really loved their system of just searching for a title or general query and sorting by the on sale date. (I still have some 90s Previews, but never actually ordered from them). Now I'm kinda waffling between MCS and DCBS, trying to still figure out to use their search functions correctly since TFAW went down. Mostly I started finding other indie publishers by going to comic conventions, and using La Porte's "Comics I Like" section and backed several of them, but I can't support all the ones I like because money ofc, even though I want to.
Kevin’s Substack is the best, but the Kickstarter environment is so much different than the direct market. Maybe someone should do a daily (or weekly) Substack where instead of highlighting Kickstarter books, they highlight indie comics available for preorder that wouldn’t be on most people’s radar.
Yes, I'm not sure how to find indie publishers (for those who can't go to physical stores)without maybe looking them up.
Wikipedia has that large list, but you'd have to be hardcore to go through everyone to see if they have a storefront of some sort. Thinking off the top of my head though.
Personally, I think shops need an online pre-order option. like goldenapplecomics.com, etc. The shop absolutely should be pouring through the catalogues - that's called running a business, what business doesn't do this for ordering what they sell? Then the business itself needs to find a solution for its customers. If comic shops want to survive and thrive. then yeah, they have to start adopting the practices of real physical storefronts.
I see your point - but the flip side is that retailers only have so many resources to spend on new comics which even the most comic focused LCS probably makes up less than 35% of their actual revenue. There really isn’t the motivation for a retailer to do those deep dives looking for indie comics to take a chance on - which may or may not just end up collecting dust on the racks. The two major distributors actually just focus on the larger publishers with very little actual incentive for retailers to go deeper. Not saying it’s right … but it is a reality. Back when there was just the one catalog we learned that about 25% of retailers didn’t even order from the “back half” where we (Cosmic Times) and all the other indie publishers could be found, so it’s a pretty safe bet to say those same retailers haven’t changed their approach to ordering.
Not that this is the answer in full, but I think we have to look at retailers as not all being the same kind of store, and not lump them into a single "retailers" group. I currently work as a wine sales rep - in the wine world, every distributor (essentially a publisher) has their own "book". We have to go shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant, and sell to each individually. Buyers have to juggle 100's of "books" and reps and distros, and each city/area has its own rep per distro (aka "publisher"). Buyers (aka retailers) are of course hard to get their attention, hard to get their time, hard to get a sale, but you cover so many places and areas that it works out, albeit not easily. It's a TON of work.
Now, I'm not saying that's the model for comics - though no doubt there are elements here that hold true, in that you gotta make face time with retailers to get on their shelves. That seems to hold true for most niche industries across the board. But in the wine world you have the shops that mostly just cary the big brands, and almost zero little guy stuff, like BevMo, Total Wine, Target, etc. Then there's the shops that carry almost entirely little guy stuff and virtually no big brand product. Indie Retail outlets and restaurants and the like. I think comcis need to find the difference between these shops. Marvel and DC should have their books, and then probably the "back half" needs its own distributor period. The shops that have their identity wrapped up in that back half book will always care, and the shops that don't can largely just ignore it.
This was the way the distros were largely divvied up back in the 80's / 90's indie boom. Diamond absorbing everything was the beginning of end of it, and I firmly believe we need to stop thinking we need to go back to that. It was never a boon to indies. It's a separate ecosystem, and should be structured, executed, and treated as such.
Semi-casual comic fan here, I'll have to reread this, I like reading about comic book production/background as a side interest, even though I don't know too much yet. Years ago the only way I found indie stuff was browsing covers that attracted me while I was still able to go to a physical store. Several years ago, that became impossible because of traffic and I started using online TFAW. I really loved their system of just searching for a title or general query and sorting by the on sale date. (I still have some 90s Previews, but never actually ordered from them). Now I'm kinda waffling between MCS and DCBS, trying to still figure out to use their search functions correctly since TFAW went down. Mostly I started finding other indie publishers by going to comic conventions, and using La Porte's "Comics I Like" section and backed several of them, but I can't support all the ones I like because money ofc, even though I want to.
Kevin’s Substack is the best, but the Kickstarter environment is so much different than the direct market. Maybe someone should do a daily (or weekly) Substack where instead of highlighting Kickstarter books, they highlight indie comics available for preorder that wouldn’t be on most people’s radar.
Yes, I'm not sure how to find indie publishers (for those who can't go to physical stores)without maybe looking them up.
Wikipedia has that large list, but you'd have to be hardcore to go through everyone to see if they have a storefront of some sort. Thinking off the top of my head though.