Comic Industry on NPR

I embedded a player from NPR below with a great interview with Joe Field, the president of the comic retailer's trade group ComicsPro. It's worth a listen for a view on the industry from the media, but Field's comments are also insightful, especially when he contrasts indie bookstores with comic shops. Field admits that comic retailers have seen market share get eaten by big box retailers and then cites knowledge of product and customers as the key strength comic shops have over those national chains.

Some of Field's comments paint a similar situation to that of indie book shops before the big crash that began 10 years ago and saw half of this countries indie bookstore close before the slide ceased. I know one cannot make a direct comparison, and I'm not predicting doom and gloom for comic shops, but it does pose the question of if our local comics shops are vulnerable.

I spent some time this weekend talking to my friends at Diamond Book distributors about inventory and tracking (for a project I am working on) and I found it stunning that most comic shops do not have a live inventory, do not receive products into a database, do not sell online - at least according to the individual I was chatting with. These were all issues the indie bookstore scene was facing when Amazon and the big box retailers came to the fore in the 90's.

Our good friends at the American Booksellers Association have done amazing things in the last 3-4 years to help indie bookstore professionalize how they do business. The results are that in 2007 more indie bookstores opened then closed, the first net gain in around a decade.

I plan to talk at length with ComicsPro (and I was supposed to meet them in San Diego, but well, you know how things happen at San Diego) as I'm interested in what there goals are as an association. Do they have the power to help transform the industry in the same manner the ABA has for it's constituents? Do they need to?

My intention was just to post the interview, but clearly I've rambled at greater length than that......

I'll leave you with a great quote from field, "Comics are the creative genesis of all visual entertainment."


In case the player doesn't work, here is the link to the Marketplace story on comic retailers.

-L