Not sure what I was expecting when I headed into to Barnes & Noble determined to see for myself this purported commitment to graphic novels. Once a regular haunt, I hadn’t been to a mass market book seller in ages -- my wife and I buy nearly all our books off the Internet these days -- but I needed a book on Flash MX and I needed today.
The first thing I found was the not unexpected Batman Begins table. This had all the standard movie tie-in crep, various historical treatises on Batman, the movie sound track, and, naturally, DKR – in hardcover. Sitting quietly along side these was a small sampling of other Batman TP’s like The Killing Joke, The Haunted Knight, and Hush, Volume 1. Not too bad I thought, but not exactly an overwhelming inventory commitment either.
In the very far corner of the store I found the graphic novel section. And you know what, they did a pretty darn good job. There was a 4’ x 8’ table with more highlighted books – most of the Sin City volumes, Spider-man and Superman stuff, A few collected American Splendor titles, and a lone copy of The Watchmen. On the shelves were a strong assortment of recent Marvel and DC books; mostly the titles you’d expect but with surprising depth in a few areas -- nearly the entire JLA and JSA runs were offered and pretty much every Marvel Masterworks volume -- and an equally surprising lack of depth in one area: X-men titles. This surprised me only in that X-men is one of Marvel’s most visible properties and as such would seem to have a mass merchant appeal and yet I only noted a handful of books. Given the recent quality of the various X-titles that’s an appropriate distribution but you’d have to be reasonably vested in the comic book scene to know that and I would have thought B&N’s slant would be more towards the general reader. But who knows, maybe they’re looking to make inroads to the more serious fan as well. It would be interesting to talk to their buyer about the actual buying strategy.
Other odds and ends: a pretty full Sandman run; two hardback copies of Astro City: Local Heroes; a few eclectic titles on the order of Persepolis andGhost World; a shelf full of Star Wars books; and Manga. Lots of Manga. A truckload. Mucho de Manga. One entire four foot section, top-to-bottom, of Manga (and labeled as such) as well as a large freestanding rack of Tokyopop books. And fittingly there was a teenage girl sitting on the floor reading one. I suspect this might be a real profit center. Where do young girls currently buy their books? I certainly haven’t seen them in the comic store in the numbers that would support this level of product sales.
All-in-all a much better representation than the smattering of largely mainstream titles I was expecting. What effect will this on the industry as a whole? Well, it has to have some, right? I don’t see B&N having a major impact on the specialty shops (I reserve the right to be waaaaaay off on that note) so the business has to come from somewhere and if that business is new business and more importantly new customers, that can only be good for the industry as a whole. I think. There’s an MBA case study in here somewhere.
As for me, I did pick up one little item:
Perfect for my upcoming trip to the East Coast.
Kurt - did they have Dark Horse or Image books? I'm also assuming everything was cover price or did they hook up a percentage off for "best sellers" or new TPB's? just curious! not to totally pimp the site but you should check out instocktrades.com if i haven't told you about it already (i have no affiliation) - they're prices are really, really low (35-40% off cover + free shipping on orders over $30 or $50 i can't remember).
Posted by: Zilla | June 28, 2005 at 07:45 PM
Plenty of Dark Horse (Star Wars, Sin City, Conan, etc.); didn't notice much Image but there was a pretty good cross section of everything so I'm sure they were represented.
It was all full retail unless you're in the "club" then you get an additional 10%. That's one of the reasons I wonder about their target market - most experienced comic buyers know better than to pay anything close to full price for TPB's.
And no, haven't used instocktrades, but I will be next time around - they sound awesome.
Posted by: Kurt | June 28, 2005 at 09:32 PM