Shops are closing in small towns. Shops are closing in big cities. Shops are closing in other countries. People not picking up pull lists doesn't help, but it's a small fraction of people just not buying periodical comics in general.

Marvel put out 118 titles in May 2019. Only 13 of them sold over 50K copies in the U.S. At roughly 5000 Diamond accounts in the US, a title that sells 50K nationally sells an average of 10 copies per account. Factor in large accounts like Mile High, DCBS, TFAW, Midtown, Lonestar, etc, that sell nationally by mail order that buy way more than 10 copies each, and that means most shops are ordering 5 copies or less for most Marvel titles. Considering that each copy makes a shop less than $2 after product cost and shipping from Diamond and that means a shop is making less than $10 a month on average from each Marvel title they carry. Even with 118 titles, that is a pittance. And that's not going to cover rent, insurance, utilities, payroll, etc. DC publishes fewer titles and managed 12 titles selling over 50K. No indy title sold over 50k (Walking Dead came closest with 48K).

the 100th best selling book that month only sold 22K. The 150th sold only 14K. The 191st best selling title and below all sell less than 10K units per month. The lowest selling book in the top 500 (and there are more than 500 titles per month in the Diamond catalog, so some sell even less) sold barely over 1100 copies.

The best selling title was the first issue of the DC event DCeased that sold 242K copies. The #2 title sold over 100K less, and that was another DC event book, Doomsday Clock #10 at 117K. The highest charting book that was not an event or mini series was the first issue of Savage Avengers bolstered by being a #1 with a shit-ton of variants, and it sold under 112K copies. The best selling ongoing that was not a #1, was Amazing Spider-Man at 92K.

Margins are too small on books for retailers to have many unsold copies, which means they can't risk ordering extra copies to stock shelves for casual customers who may or may not buy it, or to stock for a book to sell beyond the week it comes out, which severely limits any potential growth in sales for shops even if there are new customers walking through the door. Preorder/pull customers who stiff shops certainly kill those margins.

If you consider those numbers-i.e. a 50K seller has an average of 10 copies ordered in, that means a shop that is doing well and orders say 20 copies, means other shops are ordering less (and those are ordered in numbers, not sold to end customer numbers). So if one shop is performing above average, and ten is the average, it means a lot of shops are performing under average to maintain 10 as the average.

If your shop is doing well, celebrate that fact, but it doesn't mean that comics shops as a whole aren't experiencing a downturn, and it doesn't mean your shop is doing anything better than another shop that is struggling, they are just blessed with a large enough customer base to make the margins work, but things can change fast-a rural area that depends on one or two plants to provide a lot of jobs can experience an economic upheaval if one of the plants closes and workers either relocate or have to cut discretionary spending because of job loss. If say 10 of those plant workers bought their books at that rural shop, that's a massive hit to their pull base and sales and they can go from doing well to hurting in the three months it takes them to adjust their orders from Diamond since books are ordered three months in advance. Shops in the south in areas suffering from massive flooding may experience upheaval even if the floodwaters don't affect their shops, it will likely affect some of their customers. Here we had several people dislocated by a series of tornadoes that touched down over Memorial Day weekend and even though none of the shops suffered any major damage, they all have pull customers that did and that will affect their sales over the next several months.

Many comic publishers print their books in China, which means they will be subject to tariffs moving forward. This will increase cover prices on some books and may price some existing customers out.

I am guessing most comic shop owners don't have business plans that take into account plant closings, disastrous weather, tariffs and other things that affect their customer base's ability or willingness to spend money on comics. With margins so small to begin with, even small changes from events like that can cause a shop that was in the black to suddenly be in the red and have to consider closing. Cash flow is always a huge issue with small businesses, and especially with comic shops that have to pay their Diamond invoice when the books are delivered, not after they have had a chance to sell them, so no money, no books to sell. So a bad week can mean you can't afford next week's shipment, and that is the kiss of death. Most shops don't have a large enough cash reserve to handle those unexpected twists.

So again, if you have a shop that's doing well, count your blessings and knock on wood. The best business plans cannot deal with some of the challenges facing comic shops these days, many of which are out of their sphere of control. It's why most shops diversify beyond comics these days, because comics in of themselves have low margins and don't sell in enough volume to make it worth the owners while, and it's also why a lot of longtime shops are closing. New shops opening are nice, but new shops are usually under-capitalized and the most vulnerable to cash flow issues, as I think it's something like 60% of new businesses close within the first 3 years because of cash flow issues regardless of the type of business, and the structure of the comic business only exacerbates that issue.

It's not a rural vs. urban issue. It's not a good business plan vs. bad business plan thing, though a good business plan and sound financial management certainly help. It comes down to how big is your customer base, how stable is your customer base, and how well capitalized is your business to handle a sudden downturn or financial hit? A lot of shops use digital storefronts through Comixology and online stores via ebay or Amazon to expand their customer base and facilitate sell-throughs to maintain cash flow and keep their business liquid and capitalized. Some diversify into things like Magic, which has huge margins if you break open a box or seven of a new set of cards and sell the rares and in demand cards as singles. Others travel con circuits to move stuff that doesn't sell in store and increase their potential customer base. Part of that is business plan, but a lot depends on availability (you can't do cons in an area that doesn't have any shows) and staffing-it's hard to run an ebay store or sort out singles if you are the only employee in your store and have to cover the registers, wait on the customers, stock the merchandise, write the orders, deal with damages, etc. etc. And it's getting harder to staff small businesses as well-we are nearly fully employed so it's hard ot compete with other employers offering higher salary and benefits-things comic shops can rarely afford, and if you happen to operate somewhere like San Francisco with a $15 an hour minimum wage, staffing gets expensive especially for a low margin operation like a comic shop (which is why a lot of shops resort to under the table employees who are fans working for discounts on their comics, etc. which opens a whole can of worms about the quality of customer service in the shop and which also hurts the margins on the books sold if you discount them too much).


There are thousands of factors contributing to the success or failure of comic shops that most comic fans don't consider and don't have a clue that they should even consider them because they aren't business men, and sadly neither are a lot of comic shop owners, which contributes to the failure of a lot of shops as well. Even in the boom times, it's tough to run a successful comic shop, and this is hardly a boom period for comics.

-M