If you've been reading the news here on ICv2 you'll have noticed a trend that is strongly underway and which will dramatically change the face of comic and game retailing over the next few years. Essentially, the major publishers have learned that the big money lies outside of the direct market, and that's going to ensure big changes for us. Don't believe me?
Let's start with X3 and Superman Returns. While both movies have sparked intense debate within the comic book community, the bigger issue is that superhero movies are the impetus for this eventual shift away from the direct market.
A recent issue of Business 2.0 magazine featured a lengthy article about Avi Arad and his relationship with Marvel films that put that in perspective. At first I was a bit surprised to see a major article on the comic book industry in a magazine normally focused on relatively big businesses. But after reading the lengthy article, I realized that it wasn't an article about comics at all, it was an article about movies. In fact, comic publishing was barely mentioned, and the comic retail market wasn't mentioned at all. No, this article was concerned with movies that made hundreds of millions of dollars, not comic books that sell 30,000 copies and wait for a trade paperback to become profitable. In its first four days X-Men: The Last Stand did $120 million in sales. Superman did $82 million in its first five. Look at those numbers. About 12 million people saw X3 in the first four days, and we all know there aren't 12 million comic book fans coming into our stores every week.
A friend recently returned from meeting with agents in
This holds true for game companies as well. Games Workshop product is in my local Barnes & Noble. Target already carries Apples to Apples and is adding Blokus and many other 'hobby' games to their new family gaming sections this year. And the trading card manufacturers clearly target the mass market for many of their anime-inspired trading card games. Why? Because they all know they can ultimately move more product through these channels than ours.
Will we ever see street dates? If we do it will be because Barnes & Noble or Borders demanded them. As stated previously all the mass market stores are seeking to improve sales by examining categories that offer new opportunities like manga has the past few years. In the early 90s we were all worried about bookstores and the emergence of a national chain of comic shops. With the biggest movies every year being those based on comic book characters, you can be sure that the mass market will be looking at every possibility to cash in.
And can you blame the publishers for looking elsewhere? While I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, comic retailing is in desperate need of some professionalism. By some estimates less than 10% of comic and games shops have POS systems. Some don't even have cash registers. Every day Diamond spotlights stores in their daily email who have rows of yellowing and broken long boxes as their main display feature. Many stores display their new issues (arguably their most important merchandise each week) on old folding card tables. How many retailers each year refuse to participate in FCBD because they feel that fifty dollars is too much to ask them to spend on promoting their businesses?
Recently I sat down with a friend of mine who runs a software company. He was interested in doing a side project and we spoke for a few hours on doing something for the comic industry. Between my thoughts and his inputs from other industries we soon had an extremely exciting project that I thought would be incredible for most stores. But after talking with many key industry people we realized that even if we gave it away we couldn't get enough retailers to participate to make it worthwhile. And I'm sure that holds true for many projects that we never see. It's not that people don't want to do them, it's that the retail level as it exists today won't support them. And so projects and products move away from the direct market toward those avenues where they become viable.
The most recent ICv2 Retailers Guide to Games labeled 2005 as an 'Extinction Level Event.' Now Ryan Dancey (founder of Five Rings Publishing and former Vice President for Tabletop Roleplaying at Wizards of the Coast) had this to say in the current issue of Games Quarterly: 'Firstly, I see the retail tier disintegrating. Literally. I think that instead of a monolithic block of stores called game stores, we'll see retailing of games taking place across a wide continuum of places, including on-line, in kiosks, in malls, at shows, and in small retail spaces.'
I've said it before that I like to only write about things I feel we have control over. Well, our level of professionalism within this industry had better be one of them. I don't profess to be the best, smartest, or most experienced retailer out there. There are waaaay too many people I look up to for me to believe that. But I can try to share some of my thoughts as I try to improve my business. And I encourage each of you to do the same. Share the thoughts and actions that you're doing on a daily basis to make your business stronger and more professional.
Why? Because the direct market has essentially been saved three times over the past decade. How many comics and games shops would still be here if it were not for the emergence of Magic and Pokemon as comic sales were in sharp decline? How many are still here because of Yu-Gi
-Oh!? Maybe your store would have weathered those lulls without those products. But what would the industry look like without all the stores that wouldn't have?
The time to get professional is now. Share your ideas. Help your fellow retailers. We've been saved three times. Thanks to our 'success' in the mass market, we won't be getting a fourth shot.
