Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic shop, rodman comics

Comic Store In Your Future – Comic Book Shopping Etiquette

"Even after over thirteen years of owning Rodman Comics and thinking I have seen it all, I am still proved wrong."

Even after over thirteen years of owning Rodman Comics and thinking I have seen it all, I am still proved wrong. When I shopped at comic bookstores, I may not have liked all of them, though I was never rude, asked for a discount, or felt entitled. I enjoyed picking up my comics at a comic store and was thankful for the service. I did try a mailing service once and did not like it; I never received many of the books I pre-ordered and pre-paid, so I would need to try to get them from a comic store anyway. The mailing service even managed to be rude to me. I made a mistake on an order form once, and they photocopied it and wrote thanks a lot, circled my mistake, and sent it back even though they accepted the order. I am all for pointing out a mistake I made, though there is no need to write thanks a lot and send it back after accepting it. I dropped them off and went back to weekly trips to my comic store. I missed talking comics with people at the store; it was good to be back.

Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. For Free Comic Book Day, I thought, like many others do, that the comics for that day are supplied for free to the comic stores. Publishers make more money than comic stores, so they send them for free to small businesses. While shopping at Dragonfire Comics from one of the owners, I learned that is incorrect. At a reduced price, comic stores buy the comics to give away on Free Comic Book Day. The owner I was friends with was not pleased with Free Comic Book Day. After opening up Rodman Comics, I understand the reasoning behind his thinking. After years of having Free Comic Book Day, I look at it as a way to give back to my customers who actually buy something and don't just show up once a year for freebies on Free Comic Book Day. As I have written before, our sale in March consistently outsells Free Comic Book Day without buying comics to give away. As I have written before, nothing new has been done with Free Comic Book Day; nothing new has even been tried to get new people to come back. Something as simple as including a coupon in one of the free comics saying come back next week with this coupon to buy the follow-up issue. Nothing new at all.

I was shocked that this Free Comic Book Day was not going well. We had people who had abandoned their pull box, not responding to our repeated calls, show up to get the free comics on Free Comic Book Day—one person who was getting all the Spawn titles before just disappearing. I even said, "Hey. I called you multiple times and never heard back about your pull box." He just replied, "Oh, I have been busy working." I bit my lip to stop myself from saying, "but not too busy to show up for free comics." I repeatedly told him the comics in his pull box were now on the shelf and in the back issue bins. Did not seem to care. This one happened on the Monday after Free Comic Book Day, and I was not at the store for it, though I got a call from one of my employees, which stunned me and confused me. Someone wanted to get free comics and free comics put into their friend's pull box for them if I got the story correct. I was flabbergasted. Their friend had not been in at all this year; I remember emailing the person saying you need to come in once a month to take care of your pull box last year and not seeing them or hearing anything back. I told my employee no and to say to the person we have to sell some of the left-over free comics on eBay to help make up for people abandoning their pull boxes and that we give away the still-on-hand free comics that are kid-friendly to kids for free. Last year, at the local parade, I handed out comics to kids.

When people go to restaurants, there is a tipping etiquette—rewarding good service. The better the service, the more one tips. The more work they do, the more they tip. Was the service over and beyond? Then, a better tip. Tipping may strengthen service in future visits. I am not saying I want tips or comic stores want tips. I am just amazed at how comic shopping etiquette is so different. When people abandon pull boxes at comic stores, they cost the store money and time—the opposite of a tip for good service. I once had someone who abandoned their pull box tell me they like to eat. No kidding, I thought, and comic store owners don't?

My least favorite thing about working at Rodman Comics is calling, or having an employee call, people who have fallen behind on their pull boxes. Roughly ninety percent of the time, these two things occur when calling people who have not picked up their pull box in a month. A voicemail and a message are left, which results in nothing but a waste of time for us. Or if the person actually does answer, they tell us, oh yeah, I will be in, sorry, or something along those lines… and then does not come in. Instead of doing something more productive, we often waste time. Even if it is a slow day, we can list material on eBay to sell or do something much more productive. When I was new to the business, people would come in, saying another store would no longer let them have a pull box or were selling comics in their pull box. I was like, whoa, how mean! Each one of these people had problems with pull boxes with us. I learned there were two sides to their stories, not just the one we were getting. An established comic store isn't dropping pull boxes to be rude, and they are selling comics that were in their box because they weren't picking up their comics monthly. I didn't foresee people who abandoned pull boxes without returning our calls, returning months or even maybe a year later. They would come in when I wasn't working and open up a pull box with an employee who had never seen them.

I learned that people are who they are; we have been locked into who we are over the years. Every person who returned a second time abandoned their pull box again, except for one person currently. I have wondered if I need to type a list of people who cannot have a pull box so that when a person wants to open one up, we don't go through another box being abandoned again. Will it look off-putting to have an employee look through that list when a person wants to open a pull box? Just ask the person? I wish everyone were honest.

Another strange fact is that every Magic: The Gathering player who has had a comic pull box with us ends up abandoning their pull box without a word, save for one person currently. The Magic players are catered to so much with free gaming and so forth that their store etiquette is askew. That is partly the fault of Wizards of the Coast, the owners of Magic the Gathering. They don't care if a store is foolish enough to let them play for hours for free while buying all their product offline. Wizards is still selling product.

I have even had over a thousand dollars worth of product pile up on hold and told the person no more. Oh, I will get it, I was told for months. While this was happening, this person was trying to go around me by asking my employees to hold more material for them even though I flat-out said no. How rude. I finally put back all the material after months of waiting. The person couldn't even remember what they had on hold anymore. However, he said that I would have gotten it all the time. I should have asked if that would be before I died.

I have had people come in, buy a few things, and add more than they purchased to their pull boxes. The pull box gets overfilled, and another area has to be used for the overflow. Every person who did this abandoned their pull box.

So why am I making such a big deal over people who abandon or cost a comic store money? Multiple reasons, it is poor etiquette that is fine with too many people. It hurts the comic store, which in turn hurts the comic industry. The odds are that a store is less willing to order more if it has too many products sitting and is abandoned by people. One person abandons a pull box, costing a store $100, which is no big deal. Ten people abandon a pull box at $100 each; that's a thousand dollars. That could be just in a month for some stores. Then that happens each month of the year. That is twelve thousand dollars lost in a year because a store ordered what people said they wanted, and those people thought it was perfectly fine to stick a small business with it. Things happen, I understand. Not communicating that something happened to cause a pull box to be abandoned is laziness and poor etiquette towards small businesses. A waiter or waitress deserves a tip for great service, while a small business owner loses money even if they did excellent customer service like a waiter or waitress did. Even before I opened my own small business, costing someone money was not something I could or would do. It is just wrong.

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