Gail Burt of Metropolis Comics in Bellflower, California saw John Riley's comments on the Dark Tower release event (see 'Sharpening the Sword--On Competition, Part 3') and agrees that retailers should take advantage of every promotional opportunity provided by publishers:
I saw John's comments today, and I once again marveled at how silly we retailers can sometimes be--I, also, in spite of the fact that I used to be a huge King fan, almost passed on the opportunity Marvel and Stephen King handed us. Almost.
Thank goodness I didn't. I decided that as one of several comic shops in the
At 11:00pm, my assistant manager and a few happy volunteers showed up at the store. At 11:15pm, we noticed a crowd forming out front. By 11:30, we saw a definite line. By 11:45 a spooky, atmospheric fog had rolled in, blanketing the street, deadening noise, and being generally perfect for something Stephen King would be involved with. At midnight, we welcomed 60 - 75 customers into our store, and of those, I would say only six to ten were people we had seen before. NEW customers. As I chatted with them while they waited to check out, I found out several were regular comic collectors that were completely new to our store, were favorably impressed, and promised to return. One guy like that would have made my night. I think we hooked more than one though.
We had a great time at that promo night. We partied, met new people, made a bunch of money (thanks, Marvel and Mr. King!), and did NOT sell out of our promoted book! We had enough to last nearly all week (I did order stout on this title, thankfully), and have noticed a persistent uptick in our sales in the nearly two weeks since then. Like John, I sheepishly realized that after all of the comments retailers make about how publishers don't really support us, sometimes they practically hand us money and new business and we don't even recognize it when we see it. So once again--retailers, take note: EVERY chance to bring a new customer, EVERY promotional opportunity, even if it isn't something we personally would be interested in, is an opportunity for someone new to visit our stores--because like John said, every title is someone's favorite. And once more, thanks to David Gabriel and all the folks at Marvel for making this happen-- it rocked!
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