Comics Marketing: Church vs Spurgeon On That Retailer. (It’s not as exciting as you’d think.)

Tom Spurgeon had this to say about my two recent posts about That Local Retailer:

This is for the pair of you that keep e-mailing to ask if I think this material about a retailer that suggests people don’t buy certain comics is an example of backseat driving someone’s business: I suspect it is. I understand why folks might think that kind of thing worth commentary as an example of comics’ twisted values. I’m sure someone has posted “Never tell your customers not to buy something!” somewhere, and I bet someone has brought up some horror stories about being made fun of at the cash register. At the same I also think it’s pretty common in retail on a lot of levels. I’ve even had the owner of a restaurant tell me he didn’t particularly like the white fish he had in the house at the moment and I should stick to the crab cakes. It was an owner of a restaurant where my father and I ate — you guessed it — every Wednesday night. I have no idea how this retailer conducts business from day to day so I can’t testify as to how his telling people not to buy something fits within the overall tone of his establishment. To be honest, I’d rather have the retailer that told the truth about some comic he didn’t like as opposed to all the retailers I’ve had that failed to tell the truth about the availability of books I wanted.

1.
I find it odd that Tom, of all people, fails to see the difference between “good individual customer service” and “poor overall marketing practices.” Someone telling a regular customer “You know, that’s just probably not what you want to buy” is distinctly different from sending out an email to a few hundred people that says “Don’t buy this – we think it sucks.”

Tom’s example of restaurant owner telling two regular customers he wasn’t crazy about something on the menu that night is an example of the former: the owner knew Tom and his dad, knew their tastes, and knew he’d see them next week. This comics retailer was doing the equivalent of emailing his customers and saying “Wow, don’t come in and eat the white fish.” No mention of the crab cakes or anything else on the menu.

2.
And he’s sending that out there to people who may have only visited once and left their email. An email newsletter sent out to your customer base as a whole should serve one purpose: getting people into your store. I’ve never been to this retailer’s shop, but I am on their list after attending a small convention they had set up at. I’d happily ignored these emails until curiosity struck and they they sent out two emails that said “Don’t buy this comic that’s coming out” prior to the first one I posted, with the second featuring no other comics, just a long, poorly-spelled and unedited screed against the current Marvel editorial team and Amazing Spider-Man.

That doesn’t really make me want to shop there, and I buy way, way too many comic books. In a business where no small amount of readable, enjoyable material comes out every week, it’s not hard to find something you can recommend to your readers.

3.
Other people have brought up the fact that their retailers do the same thing, and mentioned some shops that have a considerable presence in the blogosphere. (Which, let’s face it, is the equivalent of having a considerable presence at the Poughkeepsie Flea Market.)

I wouldn’t shop at their stores, either. Call me weird – I don’t want or appreciate preemptive negativity in my retail interactions. Yes, that probably comes across as jargon, but this is what I do for money: I think about how businesses present themselves on the web (and in print, of late.) If a customer is reading and enjoying Amazing Spider-Man, there’s a chance than an email like the second one discussed would sour their opinion of the shop in question.

4.
Now, I’m not saying I don’t want their opinion on something, but I am saying I don’t want them telling me that they don’t like something without knowing my tastes and buying habits. There are some retailers who I solicit advice from pretty often, particularly when it comes to niches they obviously enjoy and know a lot about.

5.
A lot of people have said “Well, that means he cares about me.” No, he cares about his little clubhouse of nerds and making sure you know what they think about how things should be run at Marvel or DC. The small group of nerds who feel some sort of validation by their retailer “telling it like it is” is vastly outweighed by regular people who just want to buy some funnybooks and maybe pick up something new they’d like.

6.
Yes, the irony is apparent to me too, even if I think the term “backseat driving” is a bit much.

Comics Marketing: The Return Of That Retailer

An exact quote from latest email from the retailer who sent out last week’s newsletter:

What will [REDACTED] think about Amazing Spiderman #568 that ships this week??

I know that I am disgusted. Incopetennce has been rewarded. When Peter revealed himself in Civil War our store had a huge influx of “civilians” readers who wanted to read comics again. Theese new customers and long time fans were betrayed by Marvel with their erasing of years of continuity. The books have been terrible. Awful. From what sales data I can locate it appears that Amazing Spider-man’s numbers are up. UP!! Most fans are not enjoying the new status quo, AND the books are selling better. Good Lord.

This was a teaser sent out, presumably, to everyone in the database, linking to a review that ends with:

Not only don’t buy this, but shout out to Marvel you won’t buy it as well. Maybe they’ll find another reset button.

Last week’s lesson was: “Don’t Buy” is a very poor message to send to customers.

This week’s lesson is: If you think sending out emails trashing the products you sell is a good idea, use spell-check, for fuck’s sake.

Comics Retailers In “Unable To Stop Being Fanboys” Shocker!

So, somehow I got the mailing list of a retailer who’s based in the same general area as myself. His email newsletter is actually not horrible, done in HTML and very attractive, with inbound links to his website designed to get traffic up. He talks about sales, shows, and perhaps most interestingly, he reviews comics. Here’s the review of this week’s Astonishing X-Men:

This issue improves a little over the last one, but not much. The whole issue takes place at a spaceship graveyard where the X-Men are looking for a murderer. They find him. A battle ensues. A spaceship blows up and the X-Men escape, angst intact. A decent enough plot for a comic yarn, but the execution leaves much to be desired. I just don’t believe Ellis has a handle on these characters.

Throughout the issue, everyone seems to feel the need to explain how their powers are going to work, as if this were a brand new team book. Instead of Emma just telling her teammates she found the one guy not thinking in Indonesian, we get a lengthy exchange of dialogue leading to a full page revelation of “he’s up there” (at a strange angle). This was backward. They are a strike team. You give the information first.

Explanations come after if there’s time. Also, we had to be told three times that Wolverine is heavy. Why all this extra explanatory dialogue? Let’s move on to the art. Bianchi’s line work is really good. The ink washes are very stylish and the coloring reflects that. The problem is, the art isn’t serving to tell a story. I don’t know if this is the case, but it seems as if all that extra explanation thrown in the dialogue is because the art didn’t tell the story it needed to. There seems to be some poor choices in panel layout here. The fight between the bad guy and Wolverine barely makes any sense, even with the poor dialogue. For those of you needing your X-Men fix, you may want to stick with Uncanny. This new version of Astonishing doesn’t measure up to the preceding team. Not buy.

Not buy. A retailer, in his newsletter to customers, is telling people to not buy a comic book before it hits stands. He’s telling them in advance that he doesn’t think they should spend their money at his shop, on this comic. This is the stupidest goddamn thing I’ve seen lately from an industry plagued with stupid goddamn things. I don’t want my bartender telling me that I’m drinking the wrong damn thing; I don’t want the clerk at the record store giving me shit because I’m buying some motherfucking Yanni; and I don’t want the guy who’s selling me my weekly comics fix to tell me to not buy a fucking X-Men comic. Also negatively reviewed: Trinity. You know, the weekly comic series that pretty much means $150 per customer over the course of a year to a shop who sells it?

As a lot of you know, I am an Extreme Part-Time Comics Shop Employee; I work every other Sunday. It pays for my singles and, frankly, I sort of enjoy the work: I like organizing shelves, doing little sales-y displays, and chatting with people. When people buy things I don’t read or care for, do you know what I say? Nothing. If they ask me what I think, I say something like “Oh yeah, a lot of people have been talking about that, but I’ve not gotten around to it yet” or “It’s not my thing, but a lot of people like it.” It’s called basic salesmanship, and it’s something that’s really lacking in comics retail.