Glen Soustek of Westlake Cards, Comics & Coins, Inc. in Roselle, Illinois read the September sales article (see "It's Official: Q3 Comic Sales Sucked") and had this to say about the plummeting numbers.
I have to wonder how much of the downward trend in comic "sales" is simply comic dealers abandoning the failed concept of ordering 100 of a book in order to get a variant they can dump on eBay for $10 and then selling 10 of the original 100 they ordered and tossing the other 90 in a quarter bin just days after arrival. We see this sort of thing in the Chicagoland area all the time--west-suburban landfills are glutted with this stuff.
I've held the position for some time that the numbers we've been fed are nothing more than the byproducts of over-ordering due to variants and other gimmicks--and that we've seen a false-bottom in terms of actual comic "sales." Price reductions can't hurt, but they certainly would have helped more in December during the holiday shopping season than in January when consumers are struggling to pay their holiday bills.
And do any of us need to re-order trade paperbacks through the current system when they are available online or at major retailers for far less than we (the comic dealers) are paying for them?
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
'Byproducts of Over-Ordering'
Posted by ICv2 on October 20, 2010 @ 11:00 pm CT
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