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Scott Willaims (@scottowilliams) asks: As a retailer, what would you change about the way the industry works?

Scott, Scott, Scott. That’s a pretty good question, Scott. A strong, virile question. Have you been working out?

I’ve thought about this question for far longer than a person in my position really should. If you’re using your time wisely, a person’s thoughts should somehow line up with the amount of effort they are willing to turn those thoughts into reality. As it stands, I’m the manager of a comic shop that moves a medium amount of product - which is to say, sometimes, I have ideas that are quite above my station. Sometimes, I fancy myself a bigger fish than I actually am. I would like to run a store where the minimum order I’m placing for anything I remotely care for would be higher than 100. As it is, I can push towards that number with the books I champion, but I can’t consistently hit that plateau.

I also have to be realistic about my standing, and the limitations that standing holds. Over the years, I’ve learned that the industry and your customers could really give two figs about where you think a book should be selling. Sure, if you do your job right and push the right product at the right people, the numbers will reflect that. However, you can’t sustain a book on sheer force of will alone.

A number of factors need to come together to help make a series viable, starting with the creative team. A great idea can only sustain so much. A creative team needs to give it breath and form, and it needs to do so in such a way that’s marketable, or else the book isn’t going to sell - but I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Before a book makes it into the hands of the public, and before it can be judged on its merits, books are sold to retailers through the power of idea alone. This is a dangerous thing. This is the thing I would change about this industry.

When there’s a new book coming out, retailers and fans alike are alerted to the book’s existence in the same way: we get a name, a cover, a creative team, and a log line, and sometimes, we don’t even get that. Retailers then have to guess whether or not that book will succeed using nothing more than a few bits of string. If the retailer is worth their salt, they’ll have the shape of how the book will sell, but the bits of finer tuning are left to the imagination. This is a terrible way to sell a product. A publisher wouldn’t buy a pitch based off of the information they expect us to spend money on - and why should they? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to figure out if the concept actually has legs first? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to know that an audience exists before shelling out some hard earned cash?

If I were to change one thing about the way this industry works - from a retail standpoint - I would devise a system whereby retailers could access more information about a title before they have to order it. Some companies do this quite well. Action Lab is probably the best at this, providing retailers with the full contents of their books before orders are due. Surprisingly, DC has embraced this concept with their Vertigo line as of late, providing retailers with black and white PDFs of upcoming series before the first issue comes up for final orders. Being able to sample the series before I have to order it means I know exactly who the idea is going to appeal to. Not only do I have the title, the concept, the creative team and a cover image, I have context, I have execution. This is key in selling comics, and it’s why I make a point to always read the first issue of every series that arrives in my store before attempting to sell it to customers.

A brief side-note: Image did something similar to this by releasing the contents of Lazarus #1 to retailers before the on sale date (but after the order cut off), and the results spoke for themselves… at least in my store. Armed with a healthy amount of orders and the knowledge of which customers would get the most out of the book specifically, I tweaked which files I was going to drop the first issue into without their previous say-so, taking a few off here and there, while adding more than enough to make up the difference. This resulted in Lazarus being my best selling single issue title that week, and the tenth best the following week - which is saying quite a bit, when you factor in how many new books come out each and every week.

If the publishers are smart, they would start providing retailers with access to something before they have to set their final orders for first issues. Give us enough information to make informed recommendations. This is something that I try to do anyway, but armed with said information in advance of the final order cut off means that I will have the correct amount of product on hand to actually do something about it. Will that mean that I will cut numbers on some books? Absolutely. It might mean killing a few of your babies before they can hatch. However, I have first hand experience in the power of selling comics based on the quality of their contents. While I might not personally enjoy every first issue I read, I know which of my customers will, and I sell books to them with equal fervour. I want people to enjoy every single book they buy from me, and with that business practice, I have watched my single issue sales soar, even when the industry was trending down. That’s just me at one store. Could you imagine how well the industry would be doing if this practice could be applied to selling comics to retailers?

That said, there’s more than a few ways this could blow up in the comic industry’s face. Information can be a double edged sword, and unfortunately, you wouldn’t be able to trust it in the hands of quite a few different retailers. Some would illegally leak the information. Others would use the info to unjustly shake up their orders, either dropping numbers on a book they didn’t care for without thinking about the people who would like to read such a book, or increasing orders a little over enthusiastically, powered by their own love for what they just read. Essentially, shops would continue to under-order or over-order, but at least they would be doing so within a system that is trying to work with them, rather than a system that withholds information like a poker chip. It would also stop publishers from exploiting every retailer by withholding and/or changing information, and start preying on the lazy and the stupid. It would eventually weed out the weak and make our industry stronger, full of better retailers who will do bigger business as a result.

Please, can we make this happen?

That’s it for this installment of Um, Actually. Check in every Monday and Thursday for a new batch of questions. If you have anything you’d like answered, hit up our contact page! If you submit anything via Twitter – to @blogaboutcomics, @Leask or @soupytoasterson – remember to include the hashtag #UMACTUALLY so that we don’t lose it. Remember: you can ask us anything. Seriously, anything.