Not sure you need the reminder, but…there’s the reminder. Free Comic Book Day returns to comical-book stores this Saturday, so go forth and load yourself up with a bunch of swell free funnybooks.
What’s nice is that I’ve not come across too many people who weren’t aware of FCBD this year, which is an entirely unscientific poll given that I’m asking people who have literally walked into a comic book store. A non-representative sampling, shall we say. All my regulars know about it, of course, but a surprising number of folks I’ve never seen before had already heard the Good News and were aware of the forthcoming festivities.
Of course there were some folks who didn’t know about FCBD, which gave me a chance to spit out the spiel, specifying “the free comics will be ON TABLES OUTSIDE THE STORE.” That didn’t stop the “will all the comics on the wall/in the boxes be free?” questions, but that’s okay.
Pretty sure I got the word out sufficiently, despite the lack of promotional support from the current owners of “Free Comic Book Day,” having pulled control of it out of the collapsed wreckage of Diamond Comics. Don’t know if they didn’t have the time or the will to slap together at least the usual posters and/or window clings I could have displayed, but as I said last time I talked about this, I just made up my own and hoped that did the trick. I mean, having the Free Comic Book Day buttons and pens and balloons and stickers and merchandise bags would have been nice too, but maybe next year. (I still have extras of some of these items, so I’m not too put out.)
One thing I’m decidedly not doing is promoting the event as “Comics Giveaway Day” at the shop. The other major comics distributor didn’t make a deal with the distributor that actually owns the “Free Comic Book Day” name, so instead of showing a unified front, we’ve now got two different names for the exact same thing. Leave it to comics to take a successful marketing tool and dilute it. Nothing builds business like consumer confusion.
And yes, there has been some confusion. I have been asked if “Free Comic Book Day” and “Comics Giveaway Day” are two separate events on different days, if I’m carrying the CGD comics in addition to the FCBD comics, and so on. It’s taken something that was simple (“Free Comics on This Day!” and made it into “Wait, are these different things, what’s going on?” Yes, it’s easy to explain to people if they come in and ask, but I can’t explain it to the people who don’t. And they shouldn’t be put in the position of having to ask that question in the first place.
Now I did get a promo poster for “Comics Giveaway Day” and 1) I’m not putting it up because, y’know, of everything I just said, and 2) I got it like a week ahead of the actual day, so what good would it have done anyway? Sheesh. Alas, some of the comics themselves have the CGD branding, which I can’t help and I expect will have to explain to folks more than once on Saturday.
I’m pretty sure the CGD name is being well ignored by most shops anyway, so it’s diffusion into the general consciousness will hopefully be limited. And that next year everyone will get their respective acts together and it’ll all be back to just “Free Comic Book Day” in 2027, along with plenty of promo material to help advertise the event well ahead of time.
Oh, one thing I forgot to do is to see if anybody once again ignoring the spirit of the season and actually selling this year’s FCBD (and yes, CGD) books on eBay ahead of the event. Here, let me look.
[TEMPUS FUGIT]
Yup, they sure are. Sigh.
Happy Free Comic Book Day! I hope it’s both profitable and manageable at Sterling Silver Comics this year.
Although we got all of our FCBD books through Lunar, we did get promo posters for FCBD from Universal Distribution about two weeks out. They bought out our primary game distributor and so we have an account with them.