Sharpening the Sword is a regular column by retailer John Riley of Grasshopper's Comics, a 1300 square foot comic and games store in Williston Park, New York.  This week, Riley talks about good service in specialty retailers and the size of the threat from digital comics. 

Well 2007 is almost over and I have to apologize for not hitting my goals with the column this year.  Over the course of this year I was a carpenter, plumber, electrician and more as we spent a tremendous amount of time renovating and adapting our store to a changing market and economy.  There have been many issues I wanted to discuss over the past two months, so I thought I'd start covering them here before we move into a new year in two weeks.

One of the biggest developments over the last few weeks was the launch of Marvel's online subscription service and what it meant for the future of comics retailing.  Personally, I still think that the greatest threat we have in our industry is our own stores.  A few months back I encouraged everyone to go to a specialty store in a hobby that you know nothing about and see what kind of service you receive.  Well a few weeks ago I took my oldest daughter guitar shopping.  We walked in to a Guitar Center store, the dominant music instrument retailer in the country.  It was full of people and guitars of all types.  We spent almost half an hour there looking around, and at no point did any sales people approach us.   In fact, even the store greeter ignored us when we entered and left the store!  The salespeople all spoke with the customers who looked like they belonged there, customers who already 'spoke musician,' customers they were comfortable with.  I was looking to buy a guitar and amp for one daughter and a drum kit for another, so they lost a thousand dollar sale by ignoring us.  But my first thought as we left was, 'do people ever feel like that in my store?'  I was in a different world, and I surely would have appreciated a knowledgeable guide in it, not being made like I didn't belong there.  I certainly hoped people never felt that way in my store, and having been on the other side of the fence I had a new appreciation for it.

OK, that said, what threat does a Marvel Online Subscription hold for our industry?  In the short term I don't think it's a threat at all.  But in the long term....that's a different story.  We can look at other industries to get an idea of where the general compass is pointing.  When it comes to bookselling, obviously the largest force on the planet is currently Amazon.  So where does Amazon think the future of book retailing lies?  Well, after investing millions of dollars, they just released their own ebook reader: the Kindle.  Obviously, they're not the first ebook reader out there.  But the difference with theirs is that the entire device is designed to work with the Amazon service.  You can download a book from almost anywhere (it has its own wireless connection like a cell phone), click hyperlinks in the text, and do a bunch of other interesting stuff.  BUT, you can't sell the book, trade the book, give it away to someone else's device, or do anything with the book other than read it.

Amazon is betting its long-term future on the Kindle.  In CEO Bezos' mind, traditional publishing is just an incredibly inefficient use of resources, and really he's right.  But even while betting on an entirely digital future, he concedes that the traditional book is not only a nearly perfect package, but has a tremendous emotional attachment.  Nobody is expecting the traditional book to disappear any time soon, but long term Amazon is already laying the groundwork for a digital book reading future.

The really important element here is that Amazon has designed the Kindle as part of an integrated service.  At the moment, it seems to be the best e-reader out there, and guess what, it only works with books from Amazon.  This is entirely the same process that Apple took with the iPod.  They designed the best toy, and hooked it up to only work with their service.  But what Apple is now learning is that the best toy and service in the world isn't much without control of the actual content.

Over the last few years the music industry has seen sales of CDs decline tremendously, and sales of digital downloads haven't come close to making it up.  The music publishers may be the most closed minded people in business today. They publish mostly commercial garbage for a decade, consolidate radio so it only exposes a few artists, sue their own customers, and then wonder why people aren't buying CDs.  But while they can't seem to see the flaws in their own operations, even they finally realized the value in being the entity that owns the content.

For the past year or so the music companies have been arguing with Apple about pricing and launching online music store after music store.  But as they continue to see their sales plummet, they finally realized that they make much more money by 'renting' out their music catalogs on a subscription basis.  This allows them to take in more money than selling through third party retailers, leverages their assets, and allows them more control over their catalog.  The big push by nearly every major studio today is to move toward a subscription model for digital music, in which for a monthly fee you can listen to anything you want. 

Perhaps this is where Marvel is heading in the long-term future.  But comics have such an intrinsic tactile experience that I don't see our printed books going anywhere soon.  And let's face it, Quesada is the king of pumping out variant covers for books, so he's in no rush to eliminate retail outlets any time soon!

Despite all the threats of online retailers and subscription models, there is yet to be a Website that can recommend a good comic or trade paperback on the fly like a good comic shop employee can.  No Internet store is discussing last week's books with the customer, speculating on what's coming up next, and making recommendations based upon the customer's feelings about characters, creators, and past stories read.  Ultimately, we are still an incredible source of information for the comic collecting world.  And of course, our sense of community is often more valuable than any other facet of what we provide.

Of course, I could be totally wrong.  After all, Amazon's $399 Kindle is currently sold out for Christmas.

Like I said, this has been a tremendous year of change for us and the market.  So next week I'll end the year with some thoughts on one of the biggest changes we've made to address the new world we seem to be living in.  What change is that?  Well, for the first time since we opened in 1992 our store now no longer stocks back issues.  I'll tell you all about it next week.