Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, marketing

Comic Store In Your Future – Basic Marketing Now Voided?

The comic market seems to be leaving basic marketing for comics behind. Void Rivals #1 is the comic that I have gotten the most grief about this year

The comic market seems to be leaving basic marketing for comics behind. Void Rivals #1 is the comic that I have gotten the most grief about this year. The day and days after it came out, I had people upset I did not have more copies on hand so they could buy them. What happened? When Void Rivals was available to order months ago, it was pretty vague on what it was about. No cover art was shown on Diamond at the time even. It was revealed close to the release date that the Transformers were returning and that the Autobot Jetfire was in the issue. I ordered more, and my reorder came in a week late. People were upset that I did not have more copies then, even though I told everyone we have more coming next week. People seemed to think I was stupid for not ordering more; I explained that the publisher kept it hidden from us when the orders were due. Apparently, I am just supposed to know somehow with some people.

One person told me, but Robert Kirkman is writing it. The Walking Dead Deluxe reprint series outsells 75% of the new comics in store. His other projects, such as Oblivion Song, sold poorly for us before it ended. His Firepower sells in the low single digits for us when it comes out. Not one person here requested Void Rivals before it came out. I did have another person nice enough to show me an image of the 1 in 100 ratio cover with Jetfire on it with his phone. That is how I should have known that the Transformers were in it, even after I told him there was no info before ordering and that we could get it for him next week. Did people think I was lying about the lack of information for Void Rivals before it came out? I will admit it is crazy marketing. Did it work? Did people get more excited by the sudden news of the Transformers coming back in Void Rivals than if it had been announced that Jetfire would be showing up in the issue months before the release? Did Void Rivals lose sales or gain sales in the long run?

I am happy that the Transformers and G.I. Joes are returning to print. I have customers that only get Transformers, so when there was no title to pick up, they had little reason to come in. We did see a sudden surge in back issues sales for Transformers and G.I. Joes due to the lack of new material, though I also want new material for the properties.

Bad Idea is a company that I have had people asking me to get their comics for them and are surprised when I tell them Bad Idea will not sell to us directly, along with many other comic stores. Crazy idea, right? They keep coming up with off-the-wall marketing ideas that keep them in the limelight.

For decades basic comic marketing had the title of a comic on its cover. Now we have comics that not only do not have their name on the cover, they do not even have the character or characters in the comic on the cover. Moon Knight recently had a Guardians of the Galaxy variant that did not mention Moon Knight or have him on the cover; it had the Guardians of the Galaxy instead. That cover was the last issue of that comic to sell; I was lucky enough that a customer asked me, "You sold out of Moon Knight?" Luckily, I flipped it over, showing it was Moon Knight, and sold it. On Groot 2, I missed a sale and reordered it due to forgetting one of the covers has Spider-Man and the Avengers on it instead of saying anything about Groot or having him on the cover. I remembered after posting the order. Comics are non-returnable, oops.

Not following basic comic marketing procedures makes it confusing to the person new to comics wanting to try to get into comics and even to the comic collector who has been collecting for years. Keep it accessible so people can easily buy what they are looking for.

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