Thursday, February 1, 2007

ART VS COMMERCE

Was reading another rave review of FUN HOME, and the reviewer commented that the book seemed to fly beneath the radar of most comics folk for a long time. It wasn't until the outside world, the Time, Inc.s ' and the Entertainment Weeklys' started awarding it prizes that our little corner of the world sat up and took notice.

I know that it was a pure fluke that I read it: I picked it up, like I do most books that come in, and leafed through it. The first chapter seemed to be about a guy renovating his historic house, and since I was in a "This Old House" moment in my life, it caught my attention. Of course, I was totally hooked after the first chapter.

But I've still only sold one copy, to Steven. I've had a number of people comment that they've read it; out-of-towners, mostly. When my one copy sold, I immediately ordered two, because I couldn't stand the idea that I might not have it in stock if anyone asked.

Here's the thing I constantly confront. Quality in no way matches sales.
I'm constantly enticed by a quality project that I simply know that no one in my store will buy. On the other hand, I'm constantly offered pure crap that I know I can sell a bunch. Everytime I order that quality title, my budget is strained. Everytime I order less of the crap than I might be able to sell, my budget is strained.

But I simply can't just go with the top 20% of the titles, the ones that will sell well simply because they got Wolverine in them, vs something like FUN HOME, which I probably will never sell.

I haven't sold MAUS, the Pulitzer winning graphic novel by Art Speigelman, in over a year. Almost all my Fantagraphics and Alternative Press and Top Shelf material gathers dust.

I could easily identify the top sellers, only order those, and drop the rest. My turns would probably go up, my sales might even go up. I'd probably no longer get the compliments of, "Nice Store", but that and .50 won't buy me a cup a coffee.

I could go strictly for the commerce. And I'd hate it.

In a sense, I consider the store itself a work of art. It has themes and textures and hidden depths, and shiny, flashy surfaces and quaint and horrifying and cute and all that is life. Reflected in art. And words. Its really amazing that there are all these talented authors and artists making almost no money working in a field that is looked down upon by most Americans. I'm sure many of them have fantasies of being the next Jeff Smith (BONE) or Frank Miller (SIN CITY), but they know in their hearts that probably won't happen.

How can I not support that?

4 comments:

Von Allan said...

Heya,

It's really tough to see which genres of books sell and which don't. I managed an indy bookstore in a very hip university area and, no surprise, was able to sell an incredible amount of literary and arts-oriented titles.

However, we had a sister store in a mall about a 15 minute walk away. The mall was on the main floor of a building that had about 15 floors of government offices above it. They could sell the pants off John Grisham, Tom Clancy, cook books and romance novels. But a literary novel? Not a chance. It was educational (to say the least) seeing just how different the two stores were. This wasn't a buying philosophy thing - the mall store would not support arts/literary titles. So the purchasing decisions made by the bookstore buyer had to reflect that. I should add that it wasn't like they never tried, either; they just got slapped down repeatedly in their attempts to do this.

I was very lucky since the books I believed in I could easily sell. I suspect, based on your comments here and in the past on the CBIA, that your situation is far closer to what our sister store experienced. There's little that can be done in that case. I do think there's some solace in the fact that you do know what you can sell and can scale back on what you can't. Well, I think!

One question with all of this, though. Have you ever tried creating a POP-type display that showcases the more literary/arts/award-winning titles? With really good signage that would include shelf-talkers throughout the rest of the store pointing to it? I just get curious what a table full of Eisner/Harvey/Pulitzer Award Winners would do, for instance, if they were all bunched together. 'Course, you may have tried all of this and more - blogs are tricky since I don't have a clear cut sense of what your store looks like and how you rack. My suspicion is that you have tried this type of thing and it didn't work.

Fundamentally, though, you probably just don't have the market for it. And, for what it's worth, I think it's pretty nifty that you know that. One thing that bugs me in a lot in business-type discussions (especially small business) is that the first order of business must be survival. There's no point at all investing in stock that you can't sell. If you have the numbers to back it up (which, obviously, you do) then at some point you go with what does sell. Period.

Your blog is quite good, by the by!

todd said...

dangit I already buy enough odd stuff from you. Stop making me feel guilty for not reading this

Duncan McGeary said...

Von,

Based on how many used copies of Grisham, Clancy, etc. we get in, they must sell like hotcakes in the big stores.

Interestingly, in my wife's used bookstore, THE BOOKMARK, we do really well with current fiction, as well as literary fiction.

In my store, selling new books, we also do well with current fiction, maybe with a bit more funk and quirk.

Since we can never seem to keep in used copies Evanovich and Grafton mysteries, I ordered the full line of both authors. I've read both authors and don't care for them, but I figured they'd sell.

And they are just sitting there. Which has surprised me, but also reinforced the notion that with new books I have the luxury of only carrying the best.

You're suggestion of POP displays is a good one. I know that the bookstore in Sisters uses those techniques very effectively. It requires digilence, however, in constantly replacing and posting new signs, so I've been hesitent to start until I'm ready to follow through.

One of those good ideas waiting to be implemented.

Duncan McGeary said...

Todd,

Gotcha!