Wednesday, May 19, 2021

We have changed Masters...again.

All the news about Warner Entertainment merging with Discovery and not one mention of DC Comics. This happens whenever the giants start trading around assets. Comics are such a small piece of the business that they are almost an afterthought. 

No, not almost--they are an afterthought. 

Which of course is dangerous because it shows how little they really care. Dinosaurs stomping around, not worrying about the creatures scurrying beneath their feet. 

The Discovery channel is all about creating as cheap and disposable "reality" programming as possible. This is their stated intention. 

Big time gambles like Game of Thrones, or Warner movies, or...not even part of the equation...publishing comics?  Not so much. 

Twenty years ago I watched a news conference announcing the merger of AOL and Warner. I listened to their reasoning and it made no sense. I bunch of buzz words but no real logic. I remember thinking..."Oh, oh, they don't know what they're doing."

Last year I read an article by the head of AT&T about merging a communications company with an entertainment content company and...it made no sense. Buzz words with no logic. 

This dropping of Warner into another company's lap is just a way of getting rid of a bad deal. None of it worked.

We've been dealing with the consequences of that for the past year. DC Comics left their long-time distributor, Diamond Comics, let go much of their knowledgeable management and--at least for me--became a minor player in my business. We kept ordering, but I could see that there was a huge problem, especially with getting reorders of graphic novels. 

Then, just a couple months ago, Marvel also left Diamond Comics and went to Penguin Random House. Again, a huge disruption and very uncertain future. I don't have a whole lot of faith that PRH can pull it off without a ton of learning mistakes, which we small fry will pay for.

Which leaves games, toys, and independent publishers with Diamond, with--at best--30% of the market they once had? What happens to all the dozens of small publishers if Diamond goes down? Where do we get our toys and posters and t-shirts and all the other ancillary product? Getting accounts with the manufacturers of such items is almost impossible; you must order large quantities, not always of your own choice. Toys, especially, have only been possible because of Diamond.

The future looks uncertain, to say the least.

But not to worry. I have been pivoting for a few years now. About 3 or 4 years ago, comics started declining in our store. This isn't new--comics go up, comics go down. It's been constant for 40 years. We've always been able to adjust to the level they end up at. (Sometimes, just barely.)

But keeping up with the travails of comics is a full-time job. That was all right. It was our job, and in a way, it kept us going because no one else can really do it. Chain stores bring in comics every few years and it always fails because it require way too much care than they are willing to put into it.

I call this "heavy-lifting." 

When comics started declining 3 years ago, I realized that it would require some intensive effort to keep sales up. Graphic novels have always been significant in our store, but I decided to pivot from new monthly comics as my main concern to giving more space and time to GNs. 

Sure enough, GNs went from being half of our comic sales to 2/3rds our comic sales.

At the same time, I decided to go all in on board games and--most especially--new books. This turns out to have been the right decision.

I still give the same space and time to monthly comics--but I'm depending on them much less. It turns out that when you include kids books and young adult graphic novels and overall entertainment books to the graphic novel and comic mix, you have a potent synergy. 

So I'm hoping that Marvel and DC and Diamond and Penguin Random House and all the other players can make the change without too much damage. But it won't be enough to really change what we're doing. 

We have to find ways to be independent and at some distance from the stomping of the Dinosaurs.

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