Anything We Can Sell You Can Sell Better

The end of the year being the designated time to compare completely useless information, I thought I'd do just that and see how MacGuffin's best seller list compares to Diamond's sales figures. It should make for ridiculously inaccurate comparisons and spurious analysis. The caveats:

A- I'm comparing apples and oranges here, sell-in (to stores) vs. sell through (to readers).
B- We're a small store in terms of sales volume
C- Diamond's numbers are not the actual end of year sales figures. They are a sum of reported sales for the year (not including December). In order for the sales on a title to be reported, they must be in the top 100 for the month, which means selling roughly 1000 copies in a month. A title like Watchmen made the list in 9 months but likely sold some unreported copies in the other months. And now, on with the show.

Best Selling Titles (by unit)

#1: V for Vendetta (Diamond - 30,600) vs. Fables Vol. 1 Legends in Exile (MacGuffin)

These are both older titles that topped the sales charts due to marketing tie-ins. V for Vendetta, obviously bolstered by the release of the film, dominated Diamond's sales charts, selling 1/3 more units than its closest competitor. Add to this the fact that DC offered a consignment program wherein a store could order as many copies as it would like and return them if unsold, paying only freight both ways. In fact, I wasn't able to determine if the numbers listed by Diamond for February and March 2006 included those consignment copies or only copies ordered non-returnable since I would venture to guess that at least some stores took advantage of the opportunity to return unsold copies (MacGuffin was not one of these since we did very well with V for Vendetta and had no copies ordered on consignment to return). A similar promotion led to the first volume of Fables topping our sales charts for the year. As I mentioned elsewhere, we gave away a $.25 promotional reprint of the first issue of Fables a few months ago and since then we've seen once solid sales of the Fables trades go through the roof (to the point where we had difficulty keeping the whole series in stock until recently). Meanwhile, as I said, MacGuffin did well selling V for Vendetta as it placed 3rd on our list while Fables Volume 1 placed 68 on Diamond's list with sales of 5,300 copies reported.

#2: Marvel Zombies HC (Diamond - 22,500) vs. Serenity (MacGuffin)

Marvel Zombies was certainly a bit of a unexpected phenomenon for Marvel, huh? On top of that, there was a one month stretch shortly after the initial release when the first printing was unavailable for reorder, otherwise I have a feeling this would have sold-in even better. While successful, it didn't do as well here, finishing as our 18th best seller a few spots behind Kirkman's Walking Dead. As for Serenity (which popped up at #10 on Diamond's list with 14,100 sold), this is another reason why MacGuffin loves Joss Whedon.

#3: Halo HC (Diamond - 19,900) vs. V for Vendetta (MacGuffin)

While clearly a huge success, you'd think that Halo would outsell Marvel Zombies (it certainly did here) but these numbers don't take into account bookstore sales where a book like this likely thrived. Still, it's exactly the kind of crossover success I love to see for an original graphic novel, even when it comes from Marvel.

#4: Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall (Diamond - 19,500) vs. Halo HC (MacGuffin)

Another original graphic novel in the top five, which I will erroneously take to mean that the format is finding traction in the direct market, so long as it is published by Marvel or DC/Vertigo. 1001 Nights of Snowfall fared surprisingly poorly at MacGuffin (#58 on the year) which I am going to attribute to the fact that we were too busy introducing readers to the beginning of the series to push the hardcover. Or something.

#5: Y: The Last Man Vol. 7 Paper Dolls (Diamond - 16,400) vs. Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures Vol. 1 (MacGuffin)

This place on Diamond's list is actually occupied by Family Guy v.1, but it's inclusion on the graphic novel list is completely arbitrary and I decided to make an arbitrary stance of my own and limit these lists to those titles with over 90 pages). We've had huge success with the Clone Wars Adventures series. Unfortunately, these books (along with other Dark Horse titles like Serenity) are often out of print, significantly limiting their sales potential. Thankfully this volume has been kept at much better stock levels. Volume 1 did not chart at Diamond this year, but volume 6 came in at #50 on Diamond's charts for the year with 5,900 copies. Paper Dolls, meanwhile, was our lowest charting volume of Y: The Last Man in a tie for #93.

#6: House of M (Diamond - 16,200) vs. House of M (MacGuffin)

The only time that a title occupied the same rank on both lists, and despite poor reviews and fan outrage, it continues to sell here (at least a copy a month) and via Diamond (including 1,900 copies in November).

#7: Walking Dead Vol. 1 Days Gone Bye (Diamond - 16,000) vs. Fables Vol. 2 Animal Farm (MacGuffin)

Kirkman + zombies is clearly a winning combination in the direct market and at MacGuffin where the first volume came in at #11. This is one of the few series where the first volume was released prior to 2006 but that first volume still ranked highest on Diamond's year end list. Certainly bodes well for the long term potential of the series.

#8: Watchmen (Diamond - 15,200) vs. Naruto Vol. 1 (MacGuffin)

Perennial seller Watchmen keeps chugging along. Although it says something about this industry that two of the bestselling titles in the direct market this (and just about every) year are both twenty years old (Watchmen finished #17 at MacGuffin). And a manga title pokes its head up at MacGuffin, where the first volume of Naruto (did not chart at Diamond) outsold some entire series. Until recently Naruto was the only series (manga or otherwise) that was worthwhile for us to stock the entire series at least two copies deep, although we haven't seen much movement on the recently released Vol. 12.

#9: Pride of Baghdad HC (Diamond - 14,700) vs. Runaways vol. 1 (MacGuffin)

Brian K. Vaughan versus himself here. Pride of Baghdad is a book that should have some significant legs, although after a huge debut it dropped off quite a bit at Diamond. Even so, I suspect it will continue to sell well in hardcover over the next year and then we'll see another big jump with the paperback release. Runaways, meanwhile, is a series that we do well with but which only seems to chart at Diamond in the month or so after the release of a new volume. I'm very curious to see if Whedon's run leads to renewed interest in the early volumes.

#10: Serenity (Diamond - 14,100) vs. Pride of Baghdad (MacGuffin)

See above.

I have a few more thoughts that I'll hopefully get around to posting before the end of the year (including a list of my own personal favorites from 2006).

A Great Advantage

Competitive Advantage. It means pretty much what it sounds like, either offering the same benefits as one's competitors at a lower cost or offering better benefits than the competition. One of the first questions anyone gets asked when putting together financing for a new business venture is what sets this idea apart, why it is better than the competition.

This is sparked by Matt Fraction's column about great comic shops over at Comics Should Be Good (and the resulting list/conversation at The Engine). The question that gets raised is obvious: What makes a comic shop great? To which I am of course required to answer: Define great. Great to shop in, spend time in, find that one comic that you can't get anywhere else, or by great do we mean all of these things, plus one critical element that usually gets ignored -- the ability to stay open.

For a shop to stay open it needs one of two things: no competition or a competitive advantage. We opened in an area with more comic shops per capita than most areas but without what I would call a great comic shop. So, before we opened I made several trips to as many area bookstores and comic shops as I could find in an effort to see what they did well and what we might be able to do better. It's not that I have any desire to compete with or beat out MOST of those places. It was a matter of figuring out how MacGuffin could fit into the local market. What would our unique selling points be?

Taking cues from several great shops across the country (most notably The Isotope, Comic Relief and Rocketship) as well as the dearth of non-superhero comics carried by shops in the area we felt that the best chance for MacGuffin to be great was to be a book store specializing in comics. We set ourselves up in competition with two different markets, the specialty comic stores that sold primarily singles and the graphic novel sections in Barnes & Noble and Borders which sold a decent but limited selection of trade paperbacks and graphic novels. By attacking both markets we would be forced to build a store with advantages over each. Unfortunately, we've haven't been entirely successful.

It is fairly easy to offer benefits that the other comic shops in the area don't. The most important and easiest to achieve was offering more variety of product. We carry nearly every comic any other shop in the area does plus much more. To the best of my knowledge we're the only store in a 50 mile radius with New Tales of Old Palomar, Firestorm, Project: Romantic, Absolute Boyfriend, Local and Good-Bye, Chunky Rice on our shelves. None of these titles crack our best sellers list, but they sell enough to justify their shelf space and that is all that is really necessary for us to maintain selection as an advantage over both comic shops and bookstores.

Just carrying more than the other guys may be an advantage, but the shopping experience is just as important. To that end, we set out to design a store that was comfortable for new comic readers as well as lifelong fans. I recently heard out layout described as "wasting a lot of space." That may be, but you'd be surprised how many people like to be able to shop for comics without squeezing past a table of longboxes (or Heroclix). And then there's the number of bored spouses who have stumbled on something interesting while relaxing on our couch or wandering around waiting for their significant other to finish browsing. Toss in a friendly, knowledgeable staff and you're halfway home.

On the other side, though, we can't yet compete with the big boxes when it comes to manga. We've been expanding our selection since the day we opened but they've got a huge head start there and it can be difficult (though nowhere near impossible) to pull manga fans into a comic shop. Nor do we have some of the variant covers or statues or memorabilia that some direct market shops carry. On top of that, we haven't developed a local marketing advantage that has translated into concrete sales (it's entirely possible that there are more people outside the state of Virginia that know of us than there are inside it). We have willingly forfeited some advantages and simply missed the boat on others but making a comic shop great is a constant process. MacGuffin isn't there yet (we still haven't put together a successful creator signing), but we're working on it. Hopefully we'll see inspired individuals take the time to figure out what will make their shop great and discover a competitive advantage that will help them thrive.

Of course, then comes the difficult part: communicating that advantage to potential customers.