(Comics Retailing) Here's a periodically-posed question: why don't "black books" sell? Over at Silver Bullet Comics, Alan Donald lines up ten people to answer just that question, but only Swedish editor Fredrik Strömberg gets the answer right:
"[...] Also, considering that this question really is about matters in the USA (even if this is not stated), it seems to me as a European that the fact that your comics are sold in speciality shops, and thereby only reaches the fans and not the general audience, is another important factor. The comic fans in the USA seems to be mostly white boys, a fact that works as a catch-22 to make sure that other groups like for instance female readers and creators for the most part are locked out of the action."
It's a point worth repeating: comic books primarily sell to a network of consumers whose tastes are conservative and narrowly defined, a tiny minority of Americans who buy works of an astonishingly restrictive genre within the medium. Since no one else has any real reason to set foot in a comic-book store, the odds that a comic book appealing to someone other than that tiny audience will succeed in the Direct Market are virtually nil.
The comic-book audience is fueled by fantasy-identification and nostalgia, and inserting characters who don't directly feed those twin engines of Direct Market commerce into the equation is difficult work. A comic book about a white vigilante who combats two-dimensional representations of evil is a saleable property because the audience is overwhelmingly composed of white men in their thirties looking for the escapist thrill of their childhoods. A comic book about a black vigilante, even using similar plot contrivances, is less likely to sell because the only audience it has going for it is, well, white men in their thirties looking for the escapist thrill of their childhoods. If such a book were put in front of a black audience, it might very well sell -- in his response, Professor William H. Foster III quotes a cartoonist having great success selling to Black Cultural Fairs -- but it's difficult to imagine circumstances that would lead to such an audience wandering into comic-book shops in any real numbers. Why don't black books sell? This is a trick question, right?
I realize that this is an old, old complaint on my part, but what can you do? Much of the comics industry seems mulishly committed to solving the low-sales problem by finding that one... perfect... variation that makes the stagnant world of superhero comics sell well again, but only so long as the end result still reminds the fanbase of the books they bought last year. Variations on a theme are the order of the day, but only if the variations aren't too wide. Telling most retailers that stocking and marketing other kinds of comics might draw in a wider variety of clientele seems to do little if any good. Even when some retailers do stock other kinds of material, they never seem to go so far as to actually tell anyone; how precisely is the passerby on the sidewalk outside supposed to know that you stock manga, or anime, or James Kochalka and R. Crumb comics, when every sign and poster on the shop window features Batman and Wolverine? And so the network continues to cannibalize itself, until even the companies which earn their bread-and-butter catering to just these tastes start looking to other markets...
(I don't mean to cast too wide a net, here; there are retailers who do indeed feature a wide variety of materials for sale, and do their best to make this clear to potential customers, but a cursory glance at the sales figures will tell you that they're very much in the minority.)
The strangest aspect of this phenomenon, however, occurs when comics retailers find some material that they carry for sale somewhere other than their shops. I could easily go to town mocking the inevitable reaction, but frankly I doubt I could ever match the real thing. Don't believe me? Watch San Diego retailer Ed Sherman go to town at ICv2 over the realization that his local Best Buy carries a wider stock of anime DVDs than he does:
"This is a sad time for specialty retailers. The US anime companies have sold us down the river now that anime has hit the big time. Most anime companies will not even sell directly to us, thus preventing us from even attempting to compete with the large chains. I hope comic retailers can read the writing on the wall: TPBs, floppy comics, exclusive releases, and RPGs and CCGs in the chain book stores = the End Times for specialty comic retailers. If you think I am an alarmist, remember, it has already happened in the world of anime."
I don't think Ed is an alarmist by any means... well, at least, no more of one than I am. I do think that he's unable to see the forces at work here, though, if phrases like "sold us down the river" are any indication. Ed: it's been a long time since I've found anyone willing to guess that there are more than 500,000 people purchasing materials from the Direct Market. in a nation of 280 million people, this amounts to less than one-fifth of one percent of the American population. Furthermore, the August sales charts clearly show that, even if you count Dark Horse exclusively as a manga publisher, Japanese-produced entertainment constitutes less than 10% of this tiny little network's sales. Manga and anime have only ever been a minor diversion for retailers looking to "diversify" their stock a little bit -- but even here, the fastest growing pop-culture phenomenon in the USA still counts as little more than a blip, saleswise. This hardly sounds like a group of retailers that distributors of Japanese-produced media should be spending a lot of time courting, now does it? Given that his shop is named Rising Sun Creations, it's entirely possible that Ed isn't even, properly speaking, a Direct Market retailer, and that Diamond isn't his main supplier; he could well be purchasing the anime he stocks from a wholesaler more devoted to such a product line. If this is true, though, his tone is wasted on ICv2's principal audience.
Ed's complaint that Pioneer Entertainment and its competitors won't sell directly to him is likewise a silly one to be directing at DM retailers. Best Buy is a nationwide chain with a demonstrable commitment to stocking anime DVDs in detail and selling them aggressively. The Direct Market doesn't have nearly the commitment to the form that the electronics retailer has invested. Given this, could anyone sane possibly fault the likes of Tokyopop or ADV Video for preferring to sell their wares at Best Buy? Given the diminished Direct Market stakes, can anyone sane really fault comics publishers for looking elsewhere in search of customers? Hell, can anyone sane really fault me for sounding more manic-depressive each time I write about the Direct Market?
