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So yes, today was supposed to be the variant cover-age post, but between last week’s eyeball-related issue, and today’s Free Comic Book Day post, the variants posts have taken a brief break. I will have another one next week, so thank you for your patience.
Anyway, Free Comic Book Day. “How’d you do?” I’m sure you all are asking. And the answer is “very well, thank you!”
I had a changed set-up for the event versus previous years. I know that, after skipping having a specific day in 2020, the thought that an August 14th date would put up well past the COVID pandemic and everyone would be vaccinated and everything would be back to normal, but um, whoops. Needless to say, having a store filled wall-to-wall with customers, crammed in around tables and shelving, would be, if not a possible health risk, at the very least bad optics.
Thus did the comic tables go outside, with one table in front of my store and, thanks to the neighbor’s kind permission, two tables (one long, one shorter) in front of their shop (and the mailbox in the middle):
Now the plus side of this was not having to rearrange the interior of the store, which would mean unloading all the comic boxes from the wooden tables, pushing them into position, and then reloading the boxes so that I’d have room to run the FCBD display down the center of the store. (You can see what that set-up looks like in these pics from 2019.)
The downside is that I couldn’t have everything all set and ready to go the night before, since I couldn’t exactly put up the tables with the comics out front and just leave them overnight. As such, that meant getting all the boxes of the comics moved near the front door before I closed that Friday, and showing up athe shop bright ‘n’ early Saturday to start loading up the tables. After doing so, we just put some tablecloths over the comics and waited ’til opening time to unveil the goodies.
The big fear I had was that by dividing up the day’s main attractions, the free comics and the storewide sales, I wouldn’t see the actual cash business that FCBD usually brings…that folks would show up for the free comics, grab a few (or all), and then take off, never stepping through the front door. But I needn’t have worried. While some folks did pick up their books and leave (which of course is fine!) nearly everyone who came to the tables went inside to buy something. Or they went inside first before picking up the freebies. End result: my largest FCBD sales day so far, by a shockingly wide margin. That makes 20 years of Free Comic Book Days I’ve been involved with that haven’t lost money.
Crowds were heaviest in the first couple hours of the event, but the interior of the store never got so crowded that we had to cut access to the shop ’til folks filtered out and made room. It seemed like it was a pretty consistent flow of customers, with equal numbers coming in as going out. And I’ll tell you, I didn’t leave that register for a moment for those opening hours…just sale after sale after sale. That’s why I never was able to get out there and take a picture of the action. Ah well.
By the way, it wasn’t just me…the usual Free Comic Book Day Boys were on the job, pictured here (my dad, me, and pal Dorian):
…and they mostly kept an eye on things at the front of the store, with Dorian stationed at the tables and my dad at the door.
No real shocks or surprises this years…no weirdos attracted by crowds showing up and being stupid, no one angry or upset…just lots of people getting free comics, taking advantage of deals, and having a good time. No stress to be had, thankfully (though I did breathe a lot easier the moment the money take for the day passed the cost of the “free” comics).
I was expecting some pushback on one decision I made, but thankfully nobody yelled at me about this. The two most in-demand comics for the year were the Stray Dogs release from Image, and Boom! Studios’ Welcome to the House of Slaughter. Well, I’ve written before about the speculator market and its weirdly mercurial nature of late, and as noted a few posts back, House of Slaughter appeared to be the Investment of Choice this time ’round. Well, here’s what I had to say to that:
I don’t generally stamp the books, if only because I get too many and I don’t have the time, but I decided to make an exception. Have fun slabbin’ and flippin’ those. Yeah, I know, real Dick Move, Private Eye, but I wanted people to pick these up to read, not send to CGC. Hey, apparently nobody was mad about it, so it all worked out for the best, I think.
One of the more unusual things I had for reduced price inside the shop was issues of Batman: Three Jokers, of which I still had…quite a few. I mean, I still sold a few at cover price off the shelf, but at the time I decided to order quite a few others and take a chance in order to get all the variants and such. As it turns out, with the sales I’ve made on the regular issues plus the pricier variants mean that my overstock on these was all paid for. As such, out came the Three Jokers all spread out on a small table and marked “$1 Each.” Let’s just say I have a lot less backstock on that comic to worry about now.
Oh, I forgot to mention how was we opened the store and pulled the cloths off the free comics, someone shouted “are there any limits?” I of course said “NOOOPE, take one of each if you want!” As a reminder, at least in my experience, if you give people the option to take everything on FCBD…most people, left to their own devices, only take a few. Some do take everything (perfectly fine by me!) but certain not everyone. So there.
Okay, enough for today. If you have any questions about FCBD, drop ’em in the comments and let me know. Now, I have to concentrate on recovering so I can do it all again next year! And next year…yeah, I think I’ll have the free comics outside again. I liked how that worked. I especially liked not having to move my wooden tables around.
I’m doing things a little differently this year by having the freebies outside at my shop, so I’m curious how everything will go. But I hope you all out there have a fun and safe Free Comic Book Day wherever you’re at! Get out there and get your mitts on some funnybooks!
Just wrapped up an extremely long day at work, dealing with both the new comics shipment and the Free Comic Book Day shipment, which amounted to an enormous number of shipment boxes I had to bust open and sort out. On the plus side, unlike the last few weeks, this shipment was relatively light in shortages and damages…in that I only had a few compared to the nearly unbearable amount of errors that had been the norm of late. On the minus side I got about at about 11:30 Tuesday night with more set-up waiting for me in the morning before I open for new comics day sales. Let me tell you, my boss sure overworks me sometimes.
During my open hours, one of my regulars happened to comment that he saw some of the current batch of FCBD offerings up on the eBays at ridiculous prices, which I’m sad to say doesn’t surprise me. It’s always something, each and every year, but especially not a shock this year, with Peak Speculation running rampant in the market and everyone trying to exploit a character’s “first appearance” or whatever it is that’s got ’em all riled up this time around.
I didn’t get a chance to peek at eBay ’til a little later, and friends, I’ll admit it really cheesed my crackers this time. Usually I just look at it and think “oh well, That’s Our Industy!™” and go about my day, but every time, every time, someone’s gotta take an opportunity to do some community outreach, a chance to build customer goodwill, and just throw it in the trash in exchange for getting ten bucks for a comic you’re supposed to be giving away for free.
That’s typical for our business, continually finding ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I’m a huge advocate for Free Comic Book Day…I know I get the same questions every year about “how does this help?” and “do you get repeat business?” and so on and I really should just create an FAQ because boy am I tired of having to answer those every year.
Rest assured, yes, if you do it right, FCBD pays off. I make a big deal about how every FCBD I’ve participated in (and I’ve done it each year since it started), we ordered lots of comics, gave them away freely and without restriction, and we’ve never lost money on the event due to that day’s in=store sales. And all our customers went away happy. And yes, we’d have people come back and mention their FCBD experience as the reason for their return.
Even now, as a person running his own much smaller store than the ones I used to work at, I still manage to put out a generous spread. And not one of my customers walks about of a FCBD thinking “boy, that guy was sure stingy with the comics.” I give away as many as possible to as many people who want them. And (something else for the FAQ) with no limits in place, yes, some folks take one of each, but plenty of people only take one or two. It all balances out. And it really doesn’t take much to make it profitable…a storewide discount or two will encourage purchases.
But if you’re restricting distribution beyond reason (like, only offering a book or two per customer), or requiring a purchase to get the freebies, or selling the things on friggin’ eBay instead of handing them to someone who might actually read it…sorry, that’s doing it wrong. And I’m sure I’ll get some pushback on that, because I always do (sometimes even from comic creators, who should really know better). Seriously, though, the absolute bare minimum of Free Comic Book Day is “giving the comics away for free,” and if that’s too much for you, stop pretending to participate.
So it dawned on me that I haven’t really said anything about Free Comic Book Day this year…or, rather, Free Comic Book Day Summer, where a few free books are being released to retailers every Wednesday over a period of several weeks.
In terms of cost, this does make things a little easier on me, in that 1) I had the opportunity to adjust orders downward, given that we weren’t going to have the usual huge single day event, and 2) I’m getting charged for these items per week, rather than in a lump sum or two after the end of the event.
One thing that’s a little harder to determine is…well, I always like to say “I’ve never lost money on Free Comic Book Day,” which would sometimes surprise people (and some comic book professionals, whom I hear are like people) given that I order piles and piles of the things and would hand them our willy-nilly to anyone who came in that day. In a single day event, it’s a lot easier to figure “well, I spent this much on FCBD, and I made this much on FCBD, and the second number is much higher than the first, therefore Step 3: Profit.”
I’m giving away several of the freebies this year, but because of the short time we had to get the word out, and given I got the FCBD display poster last week, and the window decal (all crunched up in a box, thanks Diamond) this week, it was harder to get the word out. Sure, I posted it all over my social media, but the average person who maybe just shows up for FCBD isn’t necessarily going to see that. But word is getting out, slowly and surely, and I suspect as the summer wears on more people will be dropping by to get their goodies. Since my expenditures are down this year for the event, I’m kind of “eyeballing” ( mean, best I can) the purchases from people who primarily came in for the free stuff (as opposed to regulars who pick up the free stuff along with what they usually buy) and…I think I’m doing okay in the ratio of money spent versus extra money earned.
I haven’t yet done a “special sale event” to coincide with this FBCD/Summer because that works best in the Big One Day Event Setting, when everybody shows up, excited about the free stuff, and more likely to open their wallets and coin purses to buy more items. Doing a big sale now would just cannibalize the regular day’s sales without the extra, extra traffic to make it worthwhile. However, I’m trying to work on something for later in the summer, once more people are aware FCBD is even happening in this altered form. We’ll see how it goes.
• • •
I’ll respond to your comments on the
last post re: reprint series and the success thereof in short order. Also, I promise I’ll get back to talking about
intercompany crossover comics. No, really. I haven’t forgotten.
PICTURED: artist’s rendering of the what the Free Comic Book Day logo looks like through Mike’s left eye
So I’m going in first thing the morning for what we can only hope is my final eye surgery for the time being, and as such I’ll try to keep my Free Comic Book Day report relatively short.
And in short…it was yet another highly successful FCBD event at my shop, the most recent in essentially an unbroken chain of successful FCBD events for me since their very beginning. We gave away lots of comics, saw lots of new faces, and did plenty of actual business of the coin-of-the-realm type. In fact, I had in my mind a certain amount of monetary expectations, and we easily blew right past that. Once again, Free Comic Book Day paid for itself many times over.
I didn’t do it alone…as always, my dad and pal Dorian were on hand to help out…especially needed this year since 1) my eyes still aren’t up to snuff given the last year’s travails, and 2) I was told by the doctor not to exert myself or really lift anything, so hefting boxes of comics and moving tables around was verboten. However, one of my very longtime customers, Deon, dropped by the store the day before offering his services if I ever needed them, as he had left his job to go back to school and was looking for the occasional odd job if I had any available. “Boy, do I,” said I, and that’s how Deon made the set-up and break-down of the store for FCBD such a breeze.
(Also, my girlfriend Nora had, and is still recovering from, some form of hideous plague and could not also assist, though she really wanted to come in!)
Speaking of set-up, here’s a look at the giveaway tables prior to the onslaught:
And here’s a pic I took of the back issue tables that were pushed together near the front of the shop and provided sale signage:
And here’s one of the very few crowd photos I took when I had a moment:
We were slammed from the moment we opened our doors — I knew we were probably in for a big crowd at opening judging by the huge number of phones calls and in-store queries asking when the event would begin. Before we opened, we had a line stretching across the strip of businesses I’m in, and when the doors did open, we literally had more people than could fit inside the shop…crowds were building up at the front anxiously awaiting entrance.
Nice mix of folks coming in, from preschoolers to grandmas, all taking advantage of the giveaways. And, once again, my policy of not restricting the number of different books one could take worked out just fine…as I’ve said before, when given the choice, only a few people take one of each, while others are happier voluntarily taking a smaller selection. Either way is fine with me! I did have to reassure some people that they could take more than a couple if they so desired, such as in this tweet I posted that day relating one conversattion:
“So all of these comics are free?”
“Yes!”
“And we can take one of each of them?”
“Yes!”
“And we can just walk out the door with them?”
“Yes!”
I think that poor girl still thought she was gettin’ away with something when she left.
Anyway, I said I was going to keep this short and failed miserably, but there’s not too much to tell, really. Like I said, lots of customers, lot of new people, gave away lots of comics (still have a few in a short box on the counter for anyone who couldn’t make it that day), and lots of sales. No real problems during the day…did have one fella who didn’t quite get that Free Comic Book Day was not the day to ask me to go through his collection and buy it, when, like, the store was at one of its busier points and I had a line at the register, but What Can You Do?
One odd thing…the exclusive Funko Pop for FCBD this year was John Constantine, and I ordered a small pile of them, as previous years’ exclusives went right quick. But ol’ Johnny just kinda sat there for most of the day…I was wondering it the Pop fad finally ran its course and it picked FCBD to start pushing up daisies, but suddenly in the late afternoon they started selling, thank goodness. Think I have one left…well, two, if you count the one that somehow maybe made it back to my house.
Eep. This isn’t short at all. Sorry about that. If I don’t get to bed soon, I’m going to be asleep the entire time the doctor is poking sharp objects into my eyeball, and I certainly don’t want to miss that! Thanks for reading, pals, and let’s do all this again next year!
§ May 4th, 2019 § Filed under free comic book day Comments Off on Free Comic Book Day is today!
Get yourself to the funnybook emporium of your choice (preferably mine!) and grab up some free comics to enjoy! And don’t forget to maybe drop a dollar or four while you’re there to help support the kind retailer (preferably me!) offering up the goodies.
Have fun, and I’ll see you all on the other side!
The Free Comic Book Day, she is coming tomorrow, so I hope you’re all ready to get out there and get your mitts on some free comics. Also, don’t forget to drop a dollar or two or a hundred while you’re there to support your local shop, as those free comics ain’t free to us, friends! I’ve been involved in the FCBD event every year since it started, and as a result, have written a whole lot about it, if you care to check out the Free Comic Book category on this here site.
I’m pretty much ready, though at the moment I am medically precluded from tossing boxes of comics around for the time being, so my job Friday night will be pointing at where I want stuff to go while others who are kindly devoting their time to help me do the actual labor. I mean, I can still unload comics out of the boxes and fill up the display tables, so I won’t be entirely useless. But still, kind of a bad time to be told “DON’T OVEREXERT YOURSELF, DON’T MOVE OR LIFT HEAVY STUFF” when one has to, you know, rearrange one’s entire store.
Speaking of my health, Chuck V. asked in response to Monday’s post:
“You know, I don’t want to get too personal and I realize it would take away from the supposed theme of the blog, but have you considered sharing a bit more about what caused this? Kind of a public service announcement.”
Well, if I had to sum up my problems in a public service announcement, it would be “Don’t Be Like Me — Don’t Be An Idiot about Your Health.” I wasn’t taking good care of myself, I wasn’t eating properly, I was drinking way too much soda, I had enormously high blood sugar and high blood pressure, I was overweight…I was a mess, basically. I felt fine, so of course I didn’t think there was any problem, until there was.
What’s causing the problem in my eyes is neovascularization, where new, weaker blood vessels started forming as a result of my poor health and circulation and blood sugar levels. Because the new vessels are so fragile, they can burst easily, especially when one’s blood pressure was crazy high.
Now, the good news is, I’ve basically been Scared Straight. I’ve lost weight, my blood pressure is normal, my blood sugar levels are where they’re supposed to be, I’ve changed my diet (no sodas for a year now!) and I’m doing a lot better than I was. But, the damage I did to my body is still there, especially in my eyes, and needs to be dealt with. Those injections in my eye I’ve mentioned over the last few months? Those were to keep those new vessels sealed and prevent new bleeding. The surgeries I’ve had in the right eye removed (or at least reduced) those vessels, so I shouldn’t have a recurrence of that problem there.
Now the left eye had been doing fine…there was no bleeding there, despite also having those weak vessls. A couple of injections were given to keep that situation stable while work was focused on saving the right eye. But, eventually, despite improvements in my overall health, the vessels in there burst as well. My eye doctor says it could have been just a random spike in my blood pressure that broke those vessels, like maybe exerting myself a little too much, or even just a bad dream could have done it. But whatever the reason, I got bleeding in my left eye now, and I am going back in or surgery on Monday to have that blood removed.
The overall health of my left eye is significantly better than my right, which had some tissue damage. As such, the surgery should be relatively easy and result in quick healing and restoration of my sight back to about as close to normal as we can hope for. And yes, those extra vessels will be expunged as well, and with any luck my new health regime will prevent them from coming back.
So that’s probably more than you wanted to know. I should probably add an “eyeball” category to my site here.
“It wasn’t bio-restorative formula, was it?”
After the last surgery, my right eye was about as red as Swamp Thing’s eyes, so you’re close!
Okay, enough Eyeball Talk….I hope everyone has a fun Free Comic Book Day! And remember, if anyone makes buying something a requirement to get a free comic, give ’em the ol’ bra’s d’honneur and march on outta there. Then come to my store, where I won’t make you buy anything to get your freebies…but I may make sad puppydog eyes at you until you do buy something. THAT’S MY PROMISE TO YOU.
And speaking of my store, I got some paperwork the other day regarding the nomination of my shop for the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. Clearly some kind of terrible mistake has been made. Anyway, more on that later.
Thanks for reading, and have a good Free Comic Book Day, pals!
Longtime ProgRuin-ite Andrew noted on my last post:
“Congratulations. I miss browsing in a fun comic shop.
“BTW, not many kids in the pictures.”
Like I said to him in response, yeah, I didn’t get much of a chance to get away from the register and take too many photos. It was literally a challenge to find enough time to pull out coin rolls to replenish the drawer, I was so busy. But I did have plenty of children pass through the shop that day, as particularly evidenced by my much-depleted shelves and racks of kids books and comics from which I sold throughout the day. All those Raina Telgemeier books…whoosh, out the door they went. I had to pull comics out of the back issue bins to refill the new kids comic rack, that stock got so low. And I’m still getting kids into the shop for FCBD…there were plenty of people who couldn’t make it the day of, but I still have comics laid out for folks to take, and take ’em they are.
Turns out my dad did get a photo or two of the goings-on that day from his perspective at the front of the shop, so here’s a pic showing more young’uns awaiting the gift of free comic books than my photos did:
Okay, I didn’t get a photo as iconic as this one from 2016:
…but rest assured, I had plenty of customers of all ages who left the store happy and with handfuls of free comics!
The Signal Watch buzzed by with
“…This was the first year I noticed that people seem to actually know about FCBD as a thing, that they may only show up once a year like some people do for church on Christmas or Easter, but they know about it and spend money when they’re at a comic shop. That seems good, right? And yesterday my neighborhood’s ‘Little Library’ announced on fb that they’ve got all the FCBD offerings – and people seemed to know what that was. Pretty far off from when this whole thing got started.”
I explained Free Comic Book Day once as “like Valentine’s Day for the See’s Candies stores,” (or Easter, or Christmas, yes) which is sort of like what you’re saying. Okay, some people don’t need boxes of candy year ’round, but when that special day comes, they know where to go. And when Free Comic Book Day approaches on the calendar, folks know they need to seek out Ye Olde Local Comick Booke Shoppe. And yes, a whole lot of ’em do spend money while they’re on the premises.
Yeah, I think there’s a lot more awareness of Free Comic Book Day now…it helps that it’s been around over a decade and a half, and it’s consistently put on every year at around the same time (except maybe that once). Local event publications made sure to note the day, I heard ads on a couple of the comedy podcasts I listen to (plugging the Starburns FCBD comic). It’s become just an “it’s that time of year again!” thing versus “hey, get this, people are giving away free comics, isn’t that weird?” I mean, sure, it’s not achieved 100% awareness across all demographics, but just from personal experience, when I ask people new to my shop (or any comic shop) if they’d heard about Free Comic Book Day, lately the answer is more often “yes, yes I have.” And hey, that’s good. That’s just one more positive thing for the general public to associate with comic book stores, which as a whole can use all the good press it can get.
It’s done, it’s done, and as you may have seen me announcing on my Twittererers, it was quite the successful one. Gave away more comics, had more people come in (swamped pretty much from opening ’til the late afternoon, and even after that we still had a good crowd), and, as far as actual cash/credit business goes, it was my biggest Free Comic Book Day yet at this store of mine…a 65% increase over the business I did my first FCBD here four years ago!
Here are a couple of shots of how my store looked that day…once again, I was pretty busy at the register and couldn’t get out to take too many photos, but I took this one right after we opened the door:
…which is the photo I’ve been using on the store Facebook page and Instagram and whatnot. This second photo I took has a better look at the Free Comics Table, as well as a shot of someone’s reading glasses on the counter that he has to use because of his aging eyes who is definitely not me:
Anyway, this is my 17th go-round on FCBD, which means I’ve been doing it since it was unleashed nearly a couple of decades back, and every year, both at my previous place of employment and now, it’s been a resounding success. Lots of folks of all ages got their free comics, and because I order extra for future use, I’m still giving them away now to those folks who weren’t able to make it in to the event. Saw lots of new faces, too, many of whom went out of their way to tell me it was their first trip to my shop and how much they liked it, which was nice to hear. I know we go around and around about how much good FCBD actually does, in regards to return business etc., but it never hurts to remind people that 1) your shop is there, and 2) your shop is pretty awesome, if I may switch my own-horn status to “TOOTED.”
No real problems or inconveniences I noticed this time…you know, the guy who always wants to look at all the dirty comics while the store is filled with kids, that sort of thing. I was a little bummed when a comic saver customer that I’d long given up on came in to ask for his pull, after not responding to any of my phone calls for months. Er…sorry, pal, gave you plenty of chances. But, you know, that was pretty much it.
There was one other very minor annoyance that I mentioned on the tweeters:
And of course, the internet and that platform’s search function being what it is, I quickly got this response:
Well, at least they know about it! But boy, those paper trimmings just got everywhere.
The most popular giveaway this year was the Spongebob book…ordered lots of those, and ran out of them right quick. There were a couple books that appeared to fit into the “not even for free” category, which I won’t name here so that people will be fooled into thinking I’m nice. But that’s the one downside of letting folks freely pick what they want off the tables versus what we used to do at the old store (create prefilled bags for different age groups, containing all the comics)…some customers just plain will not want what you’re offering. Now, the comics this happened to I didn’t order very high on, but still, it’s a little disappointing to see an unloved book just sittin’ there while its free comic brethren and sister-en fly off the tables.
Pal Dorian (who helped out again this year, along with my dad, and my girlfriend Nora – big thank to all of them!) pointed out that Marvel “left money on the table” (you know, relatively speaking) by not doing a straight-up Black Panther freebie. Apparently we were getting lots of requests for such a thing, and yeah, that seems like a missed opportunity.
I gave away that DC Nation comic, which threw a few folks off by the fact that there was as 25-cent price tag on the cover. “No, it’s free, honest!” I reassured everyone.
And as usual, I sold a lot of new comics off the shelf as well…yes, “sold,” we were making sure nobody thought those were free, too. The big surprise was selling all the available issues of Doomsday Clock, but not as surprising as moving a bunch of that Jean Grey lenticular cover from a few months back that, um, I may have still had a few copies floating around. And I had a few of each issue of that Action Comics “Mr. Oz” storyline with the fancypants covers…moved quite a few of them as well. Speaking of Action, that #1000 just keeps selling and selling. Sold a bunch on FCBD, and I have a constant cycle of reorders on that thing.
Overall, like I said, it was one heck of a good day. Everyone was happy, I made a little scratch, and I gave away a lot of comics, making for my 17th consecutive successful Free Comic Book Day. And I owe it all to being visited by the GUMBY OF SUCCESS the Friday prior, as I was setting up:
Remind me to speak further on this someday.
§ May 5th, 2018 § Filed under free comic book day Comments Off on It’s Free Comic Book Day!
Today’s the day! Get yourself out to ye olde local funnybook emporium and get your mitts on some free comics! And maybe help said shoppe out by buying a thing or two while you’re there! And most of all — have fun! If you happen to be near my store — like, on the same continent or in the same hemisphere — drop by! I’d be happy to see yoU!
Pal Dorian has posted his picks for the comics of note this year, so be sure to pop over there and see what he has to say.
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