Second post of the day, because I just read something that made me sit up and take notice.

It was announced at the N.Y. Comicon over the weekend, that for the first time graphic novels have passed comic monthlies in sales.

This is a landmark moment. Graphic novels account for about 40% of my graphic sales. I fully support them, in depth, right down to the most obscure indy's. But most direct comic stores have been a little lax in bringing graphic novels on board. Manga especially has done extremely well in the bookstore market, but manga in particular lends itself to the process of returns, which the bookstores do, and the comics shops don't. So, and here I'm pretty much guessing, but I'd bet I'm pretty darn close, the average presence industry wide in comic shops of graphic novels is probably 25%. From stores that don't carry any, to stores that focus mostly on them.

So roughly speaking, my guess is that about half of the graphic novels that sell in America are sold by bookstores (with manga being a huge chunk of that) and half are sold by comic shops.
Now since there are so many fewer comic shops than there are bookstores, we are selling way more stuff 'per captita' than the Borders and B & N's of the world.

If ever there was a more worthless statistic in sales, it is 'per capita.' Oh, the publishers may understand that our higher per captita sales are a reflection of the depth and knowledge and service support we provide. But guess what, sales are all that really count on the bottom line. The publishers can't quite dismiss our importance; after all, we buy our material and the bookstores are given the option of returning the material. But I have zero doubt that when it eventually turns out, just through normal growth, that the bookstores are selling more overall units than the direct market, I'm convinced we comic shops will be put on the backburner; just the way all the independent bookstores, the independent record stores, the independent toy stores, the independent games stores were.

It's only a matter of time. I see the chainstores lumbering toward me, and if I'm not nimble, I'll be crushed.

So I'll continue to support my 'sidelines' even if they don't quite perform as well as comics and graphic novels do.