Pivoting from Comics, to Graphic Novels

When the pandemic hit, everything changed. For the better.

Three years ago, Diamond shut down - and with it, they blocked the flow of single issue comics. Their decision or need to do this has had wide ranging ramifications, the most important being publishers finding or creating alternative means to get their product to stores, turning the biggest name in the game into (quite possibly) the second or third largest distributor of comics in the Western market.¹

For me, it became an opportunity to rethink our business model. Like many at the time, including creators talking freely on podcasts in that era, we weren’t sure that the single issue market would be returning - and if it did, we weren’t sure it would return as strong.² Heck, Jonathan Hickman talked about developing a plan for the X-Men line to run digitally, and what something like that might look like. Can you even imagine? I’d like a glimpse into the reality where that happened.

Anyway, when Diamond shut things down, it caused us to really take a look at our future, and the systems we were relying on. We had been using Diamond’s point of sale system up until that point, and given their momentary collapse, we knew we had to look into different options immediately.³ We also knew that we needed to keep an eye on our finances and plan our business around the results of this shutdown.

About two weeks in, we noticed something outstanding. Without the constant churn of single issues coming in, we were actually building up money in our savings. This continued as the weeks went on. In short order, we realized something that has to be true for many shops in this industry: selling and ordering modern single issues was not where our real money was coming in - it was, for all intents and purposes, a means to an end at best, and a burden to the industry at worst.

Now that might seem harsh, but try and think of the times. Single issues stopped coming out. Completely. DC had yet to approach other distributors to keep things running on their end, which (in my opinion) forced Diamond to get back in the game and continue on. The fate of the format was in question and we were seeing the results of “just” being a graphic novel shop - and those results were letting us pay ourselves, our rent, and then some. It was easy to look at things and see what needed to be done.

So we set about the work of changing our business - to putting our money where our mouth was, and bet on graphic novels. To that end, we made the choice to change our name from Variant Edition Comics + Graphic Novels to Variant Edition Graphic Novels + Comics. A small distinction, but one that carried with it some intent.

When single issues eventually came back, we started to de-emphasize their presence and focus in the shop, and cutting back on shelf. Not only had we realized that the week to week strain of getting single issues in was a strain on our cash flow, but finally realize that very few, if any new readers were coming in and nabbing single issues. New readers, almost universally, were getting into the medium by nabbing a big satisfying chunk of comics in graphic novel form, and then maybe… maybe… dipping into single issues eventually.

This stance would be bolstered when we looked at the industry, and where the real money was being earned. Graphic novels were leading the pack by far, and ended up carrying the industry through the early days of the pandemic. Things continued to blow up from there.

As a business person, how can you look at a chart like that, and think “wow. We really need to maintain a focus on single issue comic books”? That’s silly. And yet, so many retailers are dead set focused on that part of the industry, and that part of the industry alone. They’ll be that way until they quit in a huff, or go under. It’s sad.

The pandemic was a rough time for sure, but at the end of the day, it taught us a valuable lesson. It helped us focus our business and become who we are today. Currently, I’m not worried about the future. I’m not worried about the product. The store is doing great, and we’re seeing new people popping in all the time, discovering the medium for the first time. And most of them? Have absolutely no time for the single issue format, for reasons best explored on another day.

That’s something. And for all those retailers out there lamenting how hard it is to make money selling single issues these days, it should be something they pay more attention to.

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This week should be an intense one, as the first season of The Indirect Market draws to a close. I intend to take some time off from posting around Easter, to serve as a point to relax and catch up, but we’ll see. Also, this weekend is WrestleMania weekend, which means every wrestling promotion is running something over the next few days, and I have decided to take this Friday, Saturday and Sunday away from the store to just enjoy the madness. But knowing me, I will almost definitely be writing up something while Roman Reigns fights Cody Rhodes. So yeah. We’ll see how April goes.

Until next time.

-B.

1. With a catalogue boasting of Marvel, IDW and (very soon) Dark Horse single issues and graphic novels, as well as DC’s GNs and Kondasha (and a few others), Penguin might be at the top. Simon & Shuster having Viz, Boom and Oni makes them a strong contender. And Lunar (one of DC’s single issue distributors) being a sister company to Discount Comic Book Service - a company that distributes a VERY significant amount of the single issue market to readers - is in the running as well.

2. By all accounts, single issues returned stronger than they had been in a long time, in terms of sales.

3. Which we did - landing on our current system where we run our subscriptions through Manage Comics, and our point of sale and website through Bookmanager - both of which will be topics in upcoming articles.