You’ve got an anecdotal example of a good employee at a bookstore (and there are plenty of ‘em), I’ve got anecdotal examples of clean, friendly, well-stocked comics shops (there are three in my area alone, but Austin has always been a good comic book town)… I think the average is more like 50-50 as to whether a bookstore or a comic book store is better for a new reader looking for graphic novels, and it all depends on the area you’re in, the shops that are available and the staff at hand.

More to my point, though… is this employee stocking these displays because that’s his job, or because he loves comics and he’s able to do it at his job? Is his manager going to commend him for it, is he going to get promoted for promoting comics? Or is it just as likely that management will decide that display space should go to the latest bestsellers and take the comics display down? The focus of a comics shop employee (or at least a good one) is in selling folks on the medium and giving them comics to their taste that’s going to bring them back. While you can certainly find plenty of bookstore employees who are going to do this because they love the medium, I don’t know that it’s their job. And that makes a difference in how much effort they can put into it, no matter how much the employee might wish otherwise.

I dunno, maybe I’m just reaching here, but I do think that there are things a specialty market can do that the more general market can’t, and matching diverse tastes to a diverse product is one of the key things. Going the extra mile by offering money back guarantees or a product swap if they don’t like what they buy is part of it, and I don’t see most big box bookstore employees having the freedom to do that.

Sin City is pretty heavily promoted and pretty successful. The comics are unvailable to reorder for large periods of time leading up to the release, including the week of release.

300 is heavily promoted and very successful. The book still has problems being readily available for order when the movie hits.

Am I the *ONLY* one who sees the common thread here?

On the flipside of the coin, not only were V for Vendetta and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen readily available for reorder, but DC did consignment deals with hobby retailers that got plenty of copies on the market.

Amazing how much more of the product we retailers can sell when the publisher is remotely competent.

Tim Stoltzfus at More Fun Comics

We recently got a second comic book shop in town. Before that, we had only one shop that did more to drive people away from comics then all the polybagged event crap comics combined. A real hole in the wall that is always cluttered with junk and reeks of cigarette smoke. New readers are much more likely to stop in at Waldenbooks then they would a comic book shop. Especially if that shop smells like an ashtray and everything it sells is covered in dust.

I have to think on average, it’s better for possible new readers to first go to a Waldenbooks or a Borders then it is for them to seek out their town’s local comic book shop.

Sin City was very difficult to stock while the movie was out (plenty after the fact - but unfortunately, my experience has been that movies don’t generate title readership after the movie exits theaters - in fact it tends to kill readership. Sin City, League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Hellboy all sold much better in my store before the movie was ever announced than after it closed in theaters).

Dark Horse seems to be having the exact same problem with 300 that it’s had with every other movie tie-in graphic novel (and I urge retailers to be careful with their backorders. In a few weeks, when this movie closes, I suspect interest in the 300 graphic novel will close as well - at least that’s what’s happened with ever other graphic novel we carry that’s had a comic adaptation).

And while I agree with Rory that foresight helps in situtations like this (which is why we have copies in stock too) - a lot of comic shops do not have the budget to order 100 copies of a $30 hardcover graphic novel that takes about 3 minutes to read.

Also, if we’re going to talk about foresight, we really need to address the foresight of whoever it was at Dark Horse who made the decision to put so few books into the system (unless they don’t have the funds to order tens of thousands of copies of a $30 hardcover graphic novel that takes about 3 minutes to read). But to put this on retailers is sort of like blaming the victim here.

What I mean is, shouldn’t it should be reasonable for a bookstore to expect that a publisher will publish enough copies of a book to coincide with a major hollywood movie release of the same title?

Just about every other publisher (from traditional book publishers to DC Comics) manages to plan better than Dark Horse when they have a movie tie-in coming out.

We have over 100 copies in stock now at Comic Relief. By the time the reorders get to Diamond, we’ll have some on back order.

Yes it would be great if it was in stock now. In the mean time I suggest that DM stores place a back order.

We had bumped our minimum in-store on 300 to 5 about two months ago, in anticipation of the movie. About two out of three times when we reordered, it was out of stock. The week before the movie, we ordered 10 from Diamond (the week before that it had been out of stock). We’re currently down to 1, and when I tried to reorder on Monday, Diamond was again out of stock. As was Baker & Taylor, a major book distributor.

Dark Horse has been better with each movie. Hellboy was very poorly stocked, and Sin City was better but still not great. 300 we’ve mostly been able to get, but the news that a new supply isn’t right around the corner isn’t good… I’m down to one copy, and both of my usual re-suppliers are currently out… if *their* resupply is not quickly coming, that’s a shame. We’ve been selling 300 on a semi-daily basis, at about five times the rate it usually sells… but the heat on the movie isn’t going to last forever, and people want the graphic novel *now* after seeing the film, not a month or two from now.

From my point of view, it’ll really be a shame if all of those copies are funneled into the bookstore market when I’m doing my damnedest to provide the kind of well-stocked graphic novel store that M. Lusk is pining for, along with a staff that knows comics better than probably most Borders and Barnes & Noble employees. I can pretty much guarantee that my staff are going to be more interested and more capable of engaging a customer who comes in to buy 300 and maybe helping them find more graphic novels, rather than viewing this purchase as a one-time lark into the medium. Not to say there aren’t comics fans amidst the employees of the big box chains, but it’s not necessarily their direct job to keep customers interested in the medium the way it is an employee of a dedicated comic book shop.

Just my two cents, as someone who has worked retail through all three of Dark Horse’s recent major movie releases.

M.Lusk- I’ve thought the same before as well, and if I weren’t one of those people spending all day actually making comics, it’d be wonderful to own a store like that . . . with a cafe . . . and sell classics adaptations and study guides alongside coffee to bring in all the college students and free wifi to drag in more customers. I imagine you’d need a good location, though. Like across the street from a busy restaurant that has a long wait list (read comics and have coffee during that thirty minute wait!) or in walking distance of a college campus or across the street from a highschool where it could be the afterschool sort of hangout and the kids skip class to read cliff notes and finish their last-minute essays and homework. Even if books weren’t always selling, you’d still make a killing on drinks and snacks.

The ogn section has also got quite a bit bigger since last month to boot!

There’s also a Frank Miller/Neil Gaiman table set up at the front of the store 20% off. Miller’s Batman as well as Jim Lee’s Batman actually and a whole slew of Sandman books.

Meanwhile, no one has asked for anything Ghost Rider.

Stumbled upon a cool site, Zannel, that has all kinds of interesting behind-the-scenes footage which makes you really appreciate the actors’ talents in this film. check it out…

Of course, they are mostly still there, while they can’t keep Cap on the shelves. Heck, they are selling out of back issues from the days when Cap “died” and John Walker took over. Talk about unexpected!