I always get such a kick out of when Realtors' talk about how the housing prices have hit bottom and will rebound in the spring.

Let me give you a hint. NEVER listen to the maker-- or seller-- of ANY product when they prognosticate. Most them have convinced themselves that things are great, and some are hoping for the best, and the rest-- hopefully the minority -- are cynical liars.

I've learned that when my sales have dropped on a product line, that if I ask the distributors, the manufacturers or even other retailers how they are doing, they'll always, always say "great.!" And six months later, you'll find out they were hurting. The truth will trickle out. That's why it so important to look at the fundamentals, and to believe your own experience. Even better, analyze the situation; if it doesn't make sense, if it seems too good to be true, if something seems off......best believe it.


Borders Books is carrying the Stephen King comic as well as the Anita Blake comic. They insisted, apparently, even on the same terms we get -- non-returnable.

Now I've come to a vigilant resignation when it comes to the mass market. But this is a bit worrying. I know that every single product that the mass market has gone into full time has been a product that went from being a major income producer for me, to a minor sideline.
Every.....single.....time.

There are always other specialty retailers who think that exposure in the mass-market will help sales in the specialty stores, but not to sugarcoat it, those people are fools, quislings, and idiots. We have lost more customers to the mass market, than the mass market has created for us. It has been the common wisdom until now that the B & N's and the Borders wouldn't be interested in comics, and couldn't do them well if they were.

Why not? They've shown themselves to be very adaptive and smart. They've always shown an ability to get a good deal out of the publishers. What would it cost them, 20 sq. ft of linear space? If they carried the top 20% of the comics, They could take away a major chunk of business.

Oh, well, just something more to keep an eye on and adapt to.


On the bright side, the culture at large just keeps moving in our direction. A pop culture store like mine, just by doing what it has always done, is becoming more and more mainstream. (Thus the encroachments mentioned above by mainstream stores.)

When I started, what I would now call pop culture was really only a sideline to my business. We were way too underground to be considered 'pop.' Star Wars and Star Trek were minor components of comics. Toys almost weren't available to me. Books were impossible to do; I'd get the 'latest' SF or Fantasy novel in stock weeks, even months after Waldenbooks got theirs. Geeks and Nerds (I'm not sure we used that terminology back then) were outcasts.

Back then, I'd get a non-comic buyer in the door, and you could see the alarm bloom in their eyes, as they backed out of the store.

Nowadays, I rarely get that reaction. Partly because I've made a major effort to make my store less off putting, but mostly because the average customer isn't surprised or frightened by what I sell, and seems much more comfortable. (It's the same phenomenon I see on T.V. Music that once would have been considered 'hard' noise, is now the background music to stockbroker commercials!)

I mean, we are still a long, long way from total acceptance, but when, in just the last three days, I hear that that Zack Snyder (director of the 300) is well on the way to making the Watchmen, that they are talking about making a Ronin movie, when Ghost Rider of all things seems to be a movie people are looking forward to -- not to mention Spider-man, the 300, etc. I know that we are ideally situated to gain some adherents. This is becoming a very big pool to swim in, and that gives us plenty of diversity.

Besides a middle-aged guy is no longer a nerd -- he's just a middle aged guy.


Baseball cards kicked my butt yesterday. Since the boxes have stopped selling, I decided to break a few boxes to try to sell more packs, and even singles.

Wow, the lettering in the price guides has gotten really SMALL! And my back and neck still hurt from sorting and pricing them. Hard to believe that I used to spent 2/3rds of every every day doing that stuff. I'm trying to keep it simple. I'm taking out only the very best cards and pricing them individually. The rest are getting thrown into a box and being sold for .25 or .50. (I'm not sure I even want to mess with .25 cards, even though they'd probably sell much faster that way.)

I know things are slow when I start dealing with back stock in either cards or comics.....