Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk is a weekly column by Kendall Swafford of Up Up Away! in Cincinnati, Ohio.  This week, shares his experience with this year's Free Comic Book Day.

Well, it’s the day after Free Comic Book Day, and I’m tired.  But it’s a good tired.  I used to hate Free Comic Book Day.  It seemed to be filled with people coming out of the woodwork just because they heard the word ‘free.’  No interest in comics, no chance to try and engage them, they just want to grab free stuff and go, probably stopping by the grocery store for free samples on their way home.

About two years ago, I decided to try and change that, and make it more of a celebration.  Maybe many of you have done the same thing years earlier, I don’t think I reinvented the wheel here.  But now we have people come for the free, and stay for the cheap.

The centerpiece of the day is our gigantic 50¢ Sale.  Over 25,000 comic books, all 50¢ each.  Again, not a new idea, I’m sure.  It appeals to my regular customers, it appeals to infrequent customers who typically live too far from my store to visit regularly, and it appeals to those that just came in because they heard the ‘F’ word, and wanted somethin’ for nuthin’!  My regulars also get double points on their reward card, and we sign up lots of newbies for our U-Card.

We’ll add a little icing on the cake with character appearances, such as the Star Wars 501st or new this year, Spider-Man.  Not enough!?  For the second year in a row, we’ve had a raffle to raise money for The Hero Initiative.  Last year, the prize was two super-rare DC variants from the ComicsPRO Annual Meeting and this year, a $1000 shopping spree!  Man, no wonder I’m tired...

So, huge crowd at 9am for the start of the sale, huger crowd starting at Noon when the characters arrive, and the hugest crowd at 4pm for the raffle drawing.  My thinking throughout is; plan to party, and party with a plan!

It was my desire to have the sale outside in the employee parking lot beside the building, but the weather was not on our side.  Instead, we have several hundred square feet of display space, with all the fixtures on wheels, which we typically convert to space for in-store gaming.  That space was used for the extra inventory for the sale, and the days leading up to FCBD were spent making sure everything was perfect.  I think my wife thinks I work way too hard at it, but everything has to be perfect, not just every Free Comic Book Day, but every other day of the year, and as I’ve mentioned in past columns, I sweat the small stuff.

So, what were the results this year?  I has honestly lowered my expectations this time around.  Even though sales at the store have remained quite solid and steady, my gut was telling me this was not a year for the record books.  Here in Cincinnati, the economy is a little soft, but not dramatically slow, and as with most things here, our recovery will lag behind the rest of the nation.  And there was a lot more buzz around Blackest Night #0 than anything published this year.  I’m thrilled to report that 2010 was our best Free Comic Book Day ever, in every way measurable.  Number of guests, number of transactions, average transaction per guest, and on and on.  Mind you, it wasn’t as dramatic an increase as we’d seen the year prior, but I was expecting a significant drop over ’09, and boy was I wrong!

I have no particular insight as to why it was so successful, other than we made the effort.  I can’t stress enough how much the little details matter.  Our in-store promotion matched our Website efforts which matched our email campaign which complemented our Facebook and Twitter presence.  Google ads, press releases, follow-up press releases, and on and on and on.  It’s an intricate puzzle.  The media outlets that were so interested in covering you last year, might not want to know you this year.  Last year, we had half-page coverage on page one of the local section in our (only) major daily newspaper.  This year, the local media all but ignored the event all-together.  So why the increase?  We stick to the fundamentals day in and day out, we keep building good will, and our brand, throughout the year, and we mix in the right amount of fun.  And it all adds up to make Up Up & Away! the place to be in Cincinnati this year for Free Comic Book Day.

I’d love to hear about your experiences this year. Share your thoughts on Free Comic Book Day 2010 with ICv2.  Tune in next week, and we’ll be talking about the comic book on the iPad.  Are we all doomed?  Tune in & find out!

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.