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Monday, April 25, 2005
Four Thoughts
I've noticed in the last month to two months that sales on Image titles have improved. We've gone from not being able to give any new Image titles away to either selling out or doing respectable sales on almost all of them. (This is new titles, mind you. All things Spawn are still spiraling ever downward.) The sole exception to this trend is Amazing Joy Buzzards. We've only sold one copy of one issue of that comic, and that was to someone whose regular store sold out.
Now, I'm curious as to what caused this shift. I haven't noticed any increased amount of hype on Image's part for their new titles, nor have I noticed any positive word of mouth for any of these new Image titles (Well, except for Amazing Joy Buzzards). The two possibilities that seem strongest to my mind are that this is a specific example of how, in general, comics sales are trending up without any one particular comic or company seeing a drastic increase in sales, or the comic buying audience is so skittish about "sell outs" on "hot titles" that they're speculating on new titles again.
I have this horrible suspicion that the latter possibility is more accurate.
So, you all know how I don't like discounts very much. I think discounts encourage bad behavior and spending habits in customers. A particular telling example of this happened today, with one of our discontinued product lines. There are these items that we no longer carry, because they were too expensive, took up too much space, and we had too much competition locally for them. But we still have a good stock of them. More stock than we'd like to have, in fact. So, in a bid to get rid of the damn things, we marked them down. They were, on average, about $30 to $35 each. We're now selling them for $5. This is a discount of a little over 80%.
I had a customer today want to haggle with me on the price. They're. Only. Five. Dollars.
Marked down from $35.
I'm not going to mark them any lower than that! Do you have any idea how hard I had to talk my boss into letting me sell them that cheaply in the first place?
I really wish we had a big sign on our door that says:
We are in no way affiliated with the computer store next door or the skin-head clothing shop across the street. We don't know why either one went out of business*. We're very sorry that they still have your computer/money/hold items/special orders. We can't do anything about that.
Stop asking us about it.
I don't think it'd do any good, though. I mean, when the lights are off and the closed signs are up--at eye level, mind you--it doesn't stop people from shaking the door trying to get it to open.
*--In both cases, we can sort of hazard a guess...
I am now the proud owner of every issue of Warlord written or drawn by Mike Grell. Including the first annual and the appearance in First Issue Special.
Yeah, I know he's kind of a weirdo.
Yeah, I know only about the first twenty issues are any good.
But think of it this way...I'm now never going to run out of material for Subtext? What Subtext? posts.