Chris Powell of Lone Star Comics in Arlington, Texas sends in his report on this year's Free Comic Book Day event.

2010 was one of the best Free Comic Book Day events we've ever had.  There were lines at each of our 7 stores before opening, and over 4000 people came through our doors to try out new titles or to try comics for the first time!  At several of our stores, women turned out in equal numbers to men, which is an encouraging statistic, and the percentage of children (under 16) was up, as well.

Our marketing of the event was very focused, to maximize the effectiveness of time and energy spent.  We promoted the event on our Facebook and Twitter accounts to encourage current customers to bring friends and family that weren't already into comics.  We ran our annual competitions for local school and public libraries, awarding a free graphic novel prize pack to the school and library that sent the most people our way.  We distributed flyers to hundreds of area businesses that were near our stores and that have complementary product mixes to our own.  We had costumed characters in the parking lots, waving in new readers that did not hear about the event in other ways.

One of the most effective promotional efforts was our outreach to local city councils.  We had 6 local cities (Arlington, Plano, Euless, Bedford, McKinney, and White Settlement) that made official City Proclamations regarding Free Comic Book Day, with the mayor of Bedford even visiting our store to read the Proclamation and "declare the day open".  This resulted in more media exposure and gave us a great "in" when talking with libraries about promoting the event.

The publishers had the best mix of product yet, with titles appealing to anyone that walked in the door.  Diamond's organization of the event was solid, again, with books and merchandise arriving on schedule.  It was good to see some of the marketing materials arriving earlier, but this is an area where I think we'll continue to see improvement.  The latest I'd like to see materials like pens, bags, buttons, etc. is the first week of March, giving us 2 solid months of promotion.

On behalf of all our team members, I want to express Lone Star's thanks to everyone at Diamond Comics and the participating publishers that made this event a success in its 9th year, we're certainly looking forward to the 10th!

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