Ilan Strasser of Fat Moose Comics in Whippany, New Jersey took a look at his August and September sales and noticed some trends:

September is here, traditionally the time of year when sales go down at my store.  There are a number of colliding factors involved:  kids returning to school and the associated costs for their parents, the usual end of summer decline in product until the holidays, and the corporate sector planning layoffs in anticipation of fourth quarter profit reporting which makes consumers skittish.  And this year, the soft economy the past few months have done nothing to help.  Usually, my decline begins in the third week of August and continues till late October, when holiday sales begin.

This year, the decline began early, hitting me the first week of August, even though we had four product lines on sale during the month in anticipation of the reduced revenue stream.  The lackluster response to the items on sale (trades, minibusts & statues, D&D items, and Japanese anime) was unsettling to say the least.  And then something happened...

People started coming in again, sometimes in droves.  And they haven't stopped since. We had two items on sale in September: back issues and, in a second effort, trades, graphic novels, and hard covers.  This time the response was fabulous as far as trades go, and the back issue sale has led to a steady, if not huge, movement of older books.  But even the success of the September sales cannot alone account for the great increase in business we've seen during our normally tepid fall transition.

After spending some time thinking about it, I believe our current increase is due to the tremendous amount of interest generated across a wide group of titles.  Books like JLA/Avengers, Jim Lee's Batman, Supreme Power, 1602, Ultimate Spiderman, Ultimate X-Men are selling incredible numbers.  We're also getting great movement on older titles that still move out consistently such as the revived Astro City, JLA, Uncanny X-Men, and New X-Men.  And our midlines are actually increasing while new books like Arrowsmith are being tried out on a regular basis and given a fair shake, thereby selling in decent numbers.

I hope this trend continues.  In my 21 years of business, I've rarely seen so many great books offered to the reading public over such an extended period of time.