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Collectors Cornered by Randy Myers

Published Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:00:59 -0500

Randy Myers of Collectors Corner writes for Bleeding Cool

As a comic store owner (Collectors Corner, in Baltimore, MD) I wanted to provide some counter balance to two articles featured today on Bleedingcool from a retailer's perspective.

My heart, as a retailer, goes out to both Comic Book Ink and Comic Vault for their troubles. We need comic stores and store owners that are positive with an enthusiasm for the material, but more than that from personal experience, I think we need less idealism and more realism.

Having opened my store just one week before 9/11, I felt the serious effects of a severe downturn in the economy immediately after what happened. Since opening in 2001, there were many times when I felt like I was doing everything I could as a small business owner to be a better store, to promote comics to non-comic readers, be more profitable by adding more product lines, and be as innovative and proactive as possible. Time was as much a burden as it was an asset learning from every endeavor. Slow and steady growth has been key to the store's success as we continue to move forward. After working seven days a week literally for almost seven straight years, I finally hired part-time help which allowed me to spend more time with the family and friends. When the housing bubble burst, and the economy was in shambles again, people were frantic, cut frivolous spending habits, stayed home more and worried about their future. In our store, comic sales remained flat for almost two years during the worst of this latest crunch, yet some titles' sales even increased. I was shocked that things were not as bad as many thought they would be.

While comic book readership has dwindled and is just a shadow of its former glory, losing more readers with each boom and bust cycle, cultural shifts and other factors, I have always felt these constant predictable cycles of boom and bust in the comics industry could be better managed by those benefit the most. I have never felt that when opportunities were presented to the larger publishers in this industry that they took full advantage of them to grow readership and shore up the financial future for all of us involved, from publisher to distributor to retailer. Each bears a responsibility equal to their influence, in my opinion, for the state of things today; many stores are struggling, yet miraculously many are actually thriving. Collectors Corner is thriving. It is what I had always wanted my store to be, a place where comic books are the focus and where the best are showcased and discovered, read and discussed. Small press sells here, social events crowd our in-store meeting and gaming area, women and children are frequent shoppers, and we are busy nearly every day of the week.

Now there are many things working against even great stores: potential digital penetration of the current and possible future readership that may not be a stepping stone to print, over saturation of characters, missed deadlines, late books, quantity over quality market practices and so many more intricacies that would be even more boring to get into here. One thing I have learned is that you must remain positive and hopeful at all costs, but above all, be a realist and have a keen sense of practical business operations. For example, my store manager emailed me Phil Hall's article, My Monthly Curse #12, on this very site; it reads like the exact words that I have preached to him on many occasions. Those last four paragraphs of said article are the most distinctively accurate commentary on comic book retailing I have read in a long time.

In a related situation currently being discussed amongst retailers, I do not feel threatened by DC's recent #1 announcement, even though my instincts tell me there will be both good and bad from a headline-grabbing, controversial line-wide re-launch. I do not feel that alienating existing core readers or risking losing a small percentage of them is the right idea. I think all along retailers have been on the right track asking for consistency in publishing that comics come out on time, maintain a level of quality, innovation in way that benefits all of us and grows readership. I know I am the minority in this, but I still do not believe that digital distribution is the answer, not from Diamond, DC, or Marvel, but that is an issue for another column. I wish both Comic Book Ink and Comic Vault the best no matter what the outcome, and I believe that print comics have a life of their own and will be around for a long time to come This is the attitude I wake up with every morning and go into my store with to make sure that when a kid buys his first comic or the regular's wife asks what I think she would like, I can place something real in their hands.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIJWvFH83w4[/youtube]

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