A question concerning comics being sold outside the comic stores.

[Antiyonder]

It's brought up often that among several things, one factor that prevents comics from selling to a wider audience is lack of stores carrying them.

Now when suggested that comics need to be sold in more mainstream areas (grocery stores, convenient stores and gas stations), the response I come across is that even when available they weren't profitable enough to be sold.

Now my question is why the more mainstream stores simply can't just purchase and sell the top selling comics. Surely the top selling titles would make them good money? But then I figure I'm overlooking something, so imput would be nice.

[Dreyfus]

It's because they're not as popular as they once were. People would rather spend money on other things. There is an interesting story about this happening in the future with the Hastings outlet chain. It's exploring comics as an option for replacing business lost due to digital music sales.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Comics were always kind of a marginal item, in terms of potential profit, for newsstands and drugstores and the like. Now that they're:

A. Less popular than ever.

B. Rife with objectionable violent and sexual content.

C. Very expensive, too expensive for most kids to buy.

D. Balkanized to the point where you have to buy way too many titles to follow one story, more titles than most places have the space to actually carry.

It's even less likely that we'll go back to the good old days of the spinner rack. I have seen some magazine-sized comic books at Wal-Mart, though, capitalizing on the popularity of the films. My local grocery store sometimes gets Archie digests, and for a little while it even tried carrying a small selection of comics like Avengers and Sonic but seems to have ditched it.

[Dreyfus]

I bought Iron Man Magazine #1 from Wal-Mart (would have gotten #2 but their computer system wouldn't let me). You see that kind of stuff sometimes when a movie comes out, but in this case I found that the material was actually a fun read. It introduced me to the Marvel Adventures line (along with FCBD). So if something like that is out there for any kid to pick up off the rack, you could potentially get new readers to start buying books.

[Manga4life]

It's brought up often that among several things, one factor that prevents comics from selling to a wider audience is lack of stores carrying them.

Now when suggested that comics need to be sold in more mainstream areas (grocery stores, convenient stores and gas stations), the response I come across is that even when available they weren't profitable enough to be sold.

Now my question is why the more mainstream stores simply can't just purchase and sell the top selling comics. Surely the top selling titles would make them good money? But then I figure I'm overlooking something, so imput would be nice.

There was a time when I could (and have) purchased a copy of Amazing Spider-Man or Superman from the magazine rack at places like CVS, Brooks Pharmacy, the grocery store or a small mom & pop convienience store, but those days were a long time ago and comics were a lot cheaper and popular back then. I have not seen a comic book in places like those since the really early 90's, like probably 1992 was the last time I saw something like that.

It's a shame, comic books will probably never be as mighty and widely available as they once were now that they are way too expensive, available online and not nearly as popular as they once were. I do once in a while see some of the more popular titles at places like Barns & Noble and Borders Books, but it's a small selection and apparently they don't update it all the time, they get a small shipment once every few months an employee once told me.

[Anthonynotes]

Others, particularly Shawn, have already noted the main reasons for comics not found at newsstands anymore. Would imagine another factor is comic companies themselves, or rather Marvel and DC, pushing/moving to the direct market system in the 80s leading to their disappearance from newsstands---yes, it's going to a dedicated comics audience, but at the expense of visibility from Joe and Jane Sixpack who might've bought little Billy an issue (well, assuming they were the kind to buy little Billy a $4 pamphlet that's part 1 of 47 of a mega-storyline involving the Joker repetitively and gruesomely slaughtering a population the size of Chattanooga for nihilistic, cheap-shock-value reasons...). Granted, the comic companies' parent conglomerates don't care about comics having visibility (since "visibility" = the various TV shows, movies, and merchandise that're way more profitable and publicly visible), which can't help much...

One exception, and one reason they still sell well, is Archie: their comic digests are still often found on newsstands or at supermarkets, and thus why the digests often have sales matching or beating most of the superhero stuff. ANother exception is Japanese manga, which is also widely found at mainstream bookstores like Barnes and Noble or Borders (the borders I went to yesterday had a display dedicated to promoting the manga, while the superhero stuff sat in a smaller corner unpublicized), and presumably sells well.

-B.

[Ed Liu]

The biggest thing to remember is that the move to the direct market wasn't so much that comics decided to leave the newsstands as much as they were pushed. Newsstands face a real problem of inventory management: you have limited real-estate to move material with a shelf life as low as a day and as high as a month, the profit margins are razor thin, and there's far, far more material for you to sell than there is room to sell it.

A comic book takes up only a little bit less room than a magazine, but the profit margins don't make up for the extra comics you can sell in a newsstand setting compared to a magazine (or 2 paperback books) unless you're moving a LOT of comics. Put simply, a retailer will make more money selling a magazine than a comic book. This is all the math you need to understand to know why newsstand dealers don't really want to deal with comics. This is why comic books were being pushed off newsstands in the 70's and why the direct market was created in the first place. All the stuff about the material (too violent, too interconnected, whatever) is secondary and came about because of that decision. While aspects of the material may be blocking newcomers from accessing the material (and I'm not entirely convinced that they are), it is not and never has been the reason why newsstands and supermarkets and drug stores aren't carrying as many comics as they used to.

If you do find a comic book (and you still can -- I see them all the time in local supermarkets and bookstores), it's going to be something instantly recognizable -- Archie, The Simpsons, Spider-Man, the X-Men. The latest TV tie-in comic book. Maybe Superman if you're lucky.

[Zorak Masaki]

I do see comics at my local bookstore (a whole section actually, the top half is marvel and dc titles, the bottom half are titles for younger audiences like archie, simpsons, johnny dc, etc)

[Wolf Boy2]

Gas stations in Virginia usually stock Star Wars and sometimes Marvel Adventures. I haven't seen a DC comic in gas stations since a Batman issue I read at Shetz in 2004. I remember Amazing Spider-Man being carried in Shetz stations during the JMS run, until OMD raised the price and went weekly in 2008. Actually, I don't think they carried the title all the way through Back in Black.

However, at two college bookstores in Norfolk, Virginia (eFollet at Old Dominion University and Barnes and Nobel at Tidewater Community College), graphic novels have been outselling manga in droves. Perhaps it's because of the college-aged audience? But neither store sells single-issue comics.

Norfolk is a good area from comics, though with two great shops (Trilogy and Local Heroes), with a larger Trilogy shop in Virginia Beach that stocks back issues that go back to the '50s. Because of the availability, there is a thriving comics community.

[Zorak Masaki]

Personally, what i miss seeing are those multi-packs of comics (usually between 3-5 comics). Those were always good ways to "test" certain titles and to fill holes in collections.