This week Comic Culture hosts Chris Owen and Walter Durajlija tackle a wide range of topics including comic books in school curriculum, the new Superman comics, a new Planet of the Apes movie, local comic shops staging special events and so much more!
So please sit back, relax and enjoy the Comic Culture radio show.
Comic Culture is produced by Anthony Falcone and is engineered by Andrew Roebuck.
Enjoy Comic Culture March 6 2013 Edition:
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I have a question for Walter. With online stores becoming more and more popular many industries that have brick and mortar stores are having a difficult time competing. How is the local comic shop going to go about dealing with this to bring in new customers and keep existing ones?
example being amazon being able to sell graphic novels for 20-30%off the cover price
Hi Mike, thanks for the comment
Brick and mortar comic book shops are ideally positioned to pave new retailing ground. Pop Culture in general and Comic Culture specifically are reaching a wider and wider audience. Comic shops if they work hard all the time and get lucky some of the time can be seen as hubs for these popular social trends.
Comic shops can offer a social setting, I can make a coffee at home for about 20 cents yet I choose to sit in Starbucks… etc
There is also the intangible of just heading into the shop and browsing and picking the book that “I must read tonight”. I personally can order novels (chapter books) from my distributor for up to 40% off yet I never do. I look forward to going to Barnes and Noble or Chapters spending an hour browsing and on impulse picking something that I want to start reading that night. It sounds dumb I know but this is how I enjoy picking books, I will pay extra for the social experience and for the experience of thumbing through books until one ‘hits me”.
I’m not naive, I know that online shopping hurts brick and mortar sales.
I am an optimist though, brick and mortar comic shops have room to grow their sales in comics, graphic novels and related products. Comic shops are lean, mean adaptable machines, we are not even on the radar for most customers. Figuring out ways to get new customers into shops and then impressing them enough to retain a respectable portion of them spells growth for years to come for comic shops.