Jared Myland of OK Comics in Leeds, England sent us his Free Comic Book Day report and announces the day 'a great success:'
Over last couple of years Free Comic Book Day has been a major event on our retail calendar. Personally I look forward to it on many levels. It draws people to our shop; it massively increases sales for the day; gets us local, national and sometimes international publicity, it makes visitors aware of comics they may not previously have been aware of, and this year it did a little bit for charity.
We arrived in the morning to find a small line of people wanting to be the first to get the free books. My staff and I encouraged everybody to take as many of the comics as they wanted. Soon the shop was filling up with happy faces, young and old. And even though people had come along to pick up the free books they were all spending too, and spending lots. The whole morning we were rushed off our feet.
We invited Oxfam down to the shop to promote their 'Control Arms' campaign. It's a petition for a global arms treaty which aims to prevent the deaths of the half a million people who're killed in armed violence every year. The petition is 'signed' by providing a self-portrait. We had illustrators and photographers on hand to help out. Our shopping arcade was buzzing with life.
Many of the visitors were surprised to find that we had more than just the advertised free comics available. We'd invited a few local small press creators to contribute to add a little local indie flavour, so had a small selection of black and white self published stuff on offer too. All through the afternoon we were kept busy and the Oxfam stall outside continued to draw attention.
And we had buns. One of our favourite customers had decided to treat everybody to some Superman and OK Comics Buns. She must have made hundreds. Thanks Georgie.
We ran out of free comics at about 5pm which just gave us enough time to clean the store, cash up and head for the pub. It was one of our busiest days ever.
Free Comic Book Day is a great way to promote the store. Unlike spending money on print advertising, flyering or radio adverts we actually see results on the day and have control over how we market the comics and the store on a more personal level with each individual customer. In the first week since the event I lost track of the amount of customers, new and old, who've revisited the shop and asked about comics they'd picked up.
From a business point of view FCBD was a great success, we took more than enough money to cover the cost of running the event; and from a comic book ambassador point of view it was a great success too, we got people into comics that they wouldn't normally buy. I wish that Free Comic Book Day was more often than just once a year. Well, guess what. At OK Comics, it is. Just for the people that couldn't make it in on the Saturday we're hosting a mid week Free Comic Book EVENING, as part of Leeds Shopping Week, a citywide celebration of retail. Hopefully we'll expose even more people to the delights of comic books.