Bookstore/Graphic Novel Store

In May of last year, we reorganized the front of the store. We took out most of the used books and replaced them with graphic novels. Since that time, graphic novel sales have beat the previous year month 9 out of 11 times, in most cases by a significant amount.

At the same time, I made more room for new books, and they've outsold the previous year month 8 out of 11 times. 

3 times last year, new books actually outsold monthly comics. When I bought the store, monthly comics were 100% of my sales.

So that's pretty remarkable.

Part of this is that monthly comics are having one of their regular declines, which seems to happen every decade or so. It defies reason in some ways. After all, you can't get much bigger than superhero movies, toys, and assorted merchandise.

But we've always sold way more comics than related merchandise. We can't compensate with toys and other peripheral material.

At the same time, many of the new books we sell are tangentially connected to comics--it is pretty hard sometimes to tell if I'm ordering a book or a graphic novel. The young adult graphic novels are ordered most often through my book distributors, for instance.

As I said, graphic novels have seen steady increases, which has ameliorated the problem. We are currently ahead of last year's sales--despite the worst February in 8 years. (I've never seen such a huge effect from weather.)

So the transition to a bookstore/graphic novel store is well underway. (Really, has been underway for a decade or more.) We are servicing monthly comics fully--but we are also continuing to develop other lines of product. If comics come back in a big way--and based on history, they probably will at some point--that will be an addition.

The most interesting thing about this is new books do not required constant heavy lifting. Sales are consistent whether I'm up to date in my ordering or not. I'd decided to spend the first half of this year not going into debt, so I didn't order new books from Christmas until about halfway through March.

If I'd tried this with monthly comics, for instance, sales would have died on the vine. But with new books, we still beat last year. The February weather problem changed my mind about ordering and I went back to heavy ordering on new books, and sales in March were tremendous.

This is a huge boon for being able to plan our cashflow. Games, toys, new books, and to a large extent, graphic novels, can be ordered when I can afford them, instead of having to buy them no matter what.

This is a 180 degree change from when we had to order THIS WEEK's sports cards or comics--or go out of business. Not being hostage to the timeliness of the product is a huge improvement.

It all makes for a much more healthy and less stressful store.