So good. SO GOOD. Clowes' last couple books were boring middle-aged ennui and I don't really remember much about 'em, but Patience knocked my socks off. One of my favorite things I've read all year.

Using a comic shop locator app, I got 18 results within 50 miles of me. I know of at least 4 others in that range who aren't listed in the app. That doesn't include stores like 2nd & Charles that carry new comics along with other pop culture stuff and secondhand stuff, within that range. There are also many places to get back issues but not new comics in that range including 5-6 Half Price Books, 6-8 antique malls that have comic vendors in them, a couple of used book stores that carry comics, a couple of vintage shops that carry back issues and a host of other places. If I extend that range about 10 miles it encompasses two large permanent all year flea markets, and adds about a dozen comic vendors, about half of which carry new comics as well as older stuff. If I extend it to 100 miles I then add Cincinatti to the mix as well and somewhere between anther dozen and a score of comic shops. There are also about a dozen vintage toy stores in the initial range too, all of which have back issues of some sort available. That doesn't include the comic shop here in the town I live that closed last year either. We also have enough toy and comic cons going on that I could attend one about half the weekends of the year without driving more than an hour. Those cons feature probably a score of other comic vendors who only do shows and online sales and don't have brick and mortar shops.

It is a virtual hotbed of comic activity around here, but if you think about the law of averages and there only being 5K total Diamond accounts in North America, if I have 20-30 of those within 100 miles of me, there is a disproportionate number here in Ohio (and that's not counting the Cleveland, Toledo or Canton/Akron metropolitan area(s) that would likely add more to the total, which means there are vast swaths of the country that are under-served.

Now how well all these shops do is debatable, but well enough that many have been around for a good while and new shops have opened in the last 2-3 years. But many also deal in new & vintage gaming (tabletop & video games), vintage vinyl, and other pop culture collectibles to supplement their revenue streams and most have some sort of online storefront to increase their customer base. Many also do the con circuit and move stock that doesn't sell in store at shows to at least get their initial investments back. A few a hybrid sports card collectible shops too (more common in the Cinci area in the heart of Reds country).

That being said, most of these shops depend on their pull list customers* for floppy sales and don't stock heavily for walk in sales. Those that do have owners who meticulously track their sales from month to month and year to year to tailor their ordering to what actually sells. A few buy in to minimum order levels for rare variants because they have regular customers who buy the variants and cover the buy in expense (which can inflate sales numbers) and either eat the extra copies or sell them off down the road in dollar bins or at cons. For many of the shops, what is kept on hand for walk in casual sales is trades not floppies because that is what sells to that type of customer. Those that have healthy back issue sales with their customer base have large areas with back issue, but that is only about 1/3 to half the shops. A few have no back issues and that isn't part of their business model. Some of the shops have/had digital storefronts with comixology** which allows them to get a percentage of the money from digital sales at Comixology through their storefront, so customers can get digital copies but still support their lcs in some way.

It's important to not only ask how many shops are there, but what are they selling in what format. What do they carry? What percentage of their revenue stream is new comics? Trades? Back issues? Gaming (a lot of shops make more from Magic the Gathering and/or Heroclix around here than they do from new comic and back issue sales and can sell more cases of new Magic releases than they can issues of any one comic title or more than all the copies sold in a month form some publishers)? What are their shelf sales vs. pull list sales for new comics? What incentives (if any) do they offer for pull lists (some offer a % off, some free bags & boards, some nothing)? There are a lot of factors that go into gauging the health of the industry.

And beware of the spin put out by Diamond and some of the retailer associations. They will talk about growth of the industry and they celebrated that in 2014 comic sales equalled pre-speculation bubble bursting levels for the first time, which is all well and good except they were speaking in terms of dollars not units sold, and pre-spec bubble comics cost $1 each, and goods with higher price points (such as DC Direct statues and action figures, trades, omnibuses, etc. were few and far between so the industry moved a lot fewer items that cost a whole lot more to achieve that. Comics cost 4x what they did then, and more high ticket items brought in more dollars per unit, but it took them 20 years to match the dollars sold level they were at. Imaging if you were getting paid 4 times more per hour than you were 20 years ago, but just now made as much in a year that you did back then...is that really a cause for celebration and a sign of growth? They will never talk units moved when comparing to years past because units moved are shrinking. Talking dollars sold shows the illusion of growth, but that's all it is because msrp's keep going up to get that alleged growth in dollars. You have to look at did revenue increase at a higher percentages than average msrp's, and in most cases the answer is no.

I don't think comic fans or customers will go away, but the industry has to evolve and move into the 21st century with its business models and practices, or it will become even more of a niche industry, one that may not be robust enough to support the direct market comic shop model as it currently exists.

-M

*the largest single obstacle to revenue stream and cash flow for a lot of these shops is pull customers who pile up several months of books they don't pick up and then disappear leaving them holding hundreds if not thousands of dollars of merchandise. One of the shops in the area was featured on Bleeding Cool after tweeting a pick of them holding up a sign in front of all the unclaimed pull books at their shop with a tally on how much it cost them (at wholesale not retail) for those books (iirc it was over $10K)

**I am not sure if this feature survived Comixology's acquisition by Amazon, I haven't heard any of the shop owners talk about it in a while, so the new corporate overlords may have discontinued the program.

Problem was Borders was carrying far more inventory than they were selling.  Their bankruptcy took down Tokyopop (in the US, at least) because they owed them so much money for their massive over-ordering.  Borders was run by poor business people, who chased a fickle youth dollar and never looked to the future.  They invested heavily in CD inventory, as file sharing and digital delivery methods became prevalent.  They over-invested in dvd with similar results.  They went nuts with manga and other trades and graphic novels and sat on a ton of inventory.  They handed their on-line presence over to Amazon, for years, and trained their customers to shop Amazon, rather than their own company.  They were way late to the e-book and e-reader table and ended up stuck at the kiddie table.  They would have died long before had they not been in the unique situation that their chief creditor was also their chief shareholder.  He used them to balance his portfolio for several years before it was no longer worth it.  They were in trouble as far back as the late 90s, where morale was so bad in their stores that several voted to unionize (which did nothing for them and the unions were mostly gone in the next 5 years).  They also went overboard opening new stores, adding to a capital drain.  They were a textbook example of how not to run a business.  Unfortunately, their customers were the ones left out in the cold, as well as publishing.  Publishing took a big hit, as the third largest book buyer was now gone.  The volume was not absorbed, much, by Amazon and B&N.

There are far more delivery methods now that I don't think you can base much on numbers of comic shops or presence in bookstores, or things like that.  Diamond's sales figures represent only their distribution; but, they are distributing to a lot of bookstores, as well as comic shops.  When I worked for B&N, we were getting some of our trades from Diamond, for the independents.  Our newsstand material came from our magazine distributor, so we didn't have direct market-only books.  Just before I left, the company expanded the comic presence on the newsstand.  Just after I left, they curtailed it significantly, in many of the stores (depends heavily on newsstand sales for an individual stores; it varies a lot).  Graphic novels and manga have always been a strong niche there, though heavily dominated by DC and Marvel (as you would expect).  The company got more and more itchy about carrying books for more than initial release and wasn't reordering on independents that didn't sell out the initial order.  For instance, we got the first IDW Corto Maltese volume; but none after.  We could local order things and did; but, the buyer's would mark things for return rather quickly.

Manga is still the strongest segment of the bookstore comic sales, as those are faithful buyers and they bring in more new readers than American (from my local experience).  The American stuff depended on things like the superhero movies and tv shows, special displays, buyers putting new releases in prime locations (ie front of store).  The bestselling American title we had was The Walking Dead.  We got all kinds of new readers from fans of the show.  Anything else might sell one or two copies out of the 3 or 4 we received, with our initial order.  By contrast, the graphic novel hybrids for kids, from Scholastic and other childrens publishers, sold dozens and more; things like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dork Diary, Big Nate, and Smile.  Thats where the youth dollar goes.  From what I saw, about 1 in 20 of those kids would move up to American comics.  1 in about 6 or 7 would at least sample manga.  That's where the future of the medium lies, in terms of consumers.

Now, comic formats are being used more and more in ways similar to the Japanese approach, meaning that people read comics in different formats; but, not necessarily traditional comics.  The publishers that nurture those formats will probably be healthier in the long run.  These aren't just fiction, but things like history and reference books 

Number of comic shops can be greatly misleading, as many come and go faster than rabbits breed.  Longevity in the market for the stores within a market has a greater factor.  A lot of stores go under within 5 years, due to poor business factors and other forces.  Retail rent is a big one and one of the biggest factors that affects traditional retailing, large and small.  A lot of these big box department stores that are being closed are being chosen because their revenue vs lease isn't advantageous enough, not because they had poor sales.  The poor performing stores are targeted first, the expensive leases are targeted second.

Fandom is a totally separate element.  Fandom has always been a niche demographic of a niche market.  Fandom buys the cult titles, readers buy the one that fans hate, yet never go away.  If you combined all comic delivery methods and compared to earlier decades, the numbers are bad; but, the same is true for other print publishing, both magazines and books.  I don't think the market is dying; but, it doesn't seem in any danger of growing, much.

When Borders was around, I must have signed up with their insider club. Each week I got an e-mail from them with a discount coupon. The discount was anywhere from 25-40% off. I bought something from them every week and never paid full price.

Doesn't B&N have a similar deal?