No, I got that glitch as well. Their system appeared to be saving old data instead of refreshing on the check-out screen.
Dorian | Email | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 12:30 am | #

So as a day of sales how good was Free Comic Book Day for you? In general terms, much better than a normal Saturday? Much Much Better? Super Duper Better? I ask because it is obvious that to many comics fans this is Christmas and Christmas has HUGE shopping effects. I know the purpose is to get people into the store and refresh their enthusiam, but how big is the sales impact on the day itself?
Brett | Email | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 2:27 am | #

Did the name Justin "BATMAN" Meyers remind anyone else of Brendan "Nightwing" Hockenberry from Gail Simone's old You'll all be Sorry column?

Glad to hear FCBD went off semi-seamlessly, Mike. If FCBD does nothing else, at least it turned me on to Owly.
David Cutler | Email | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 3:23 am | #

Regarding he/hee, that gets on my nerves too. Nice to know someone else shares this with me...
Johnny B | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 6:22 am | #

Yeah, I hate that he/hee mixup, too. I actually called a friend out on it once, and he said it was supposed to be the "heh" sound. I worked him over, and now he types it as "heh," like he should.
Bill | Email | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 10:17 am | #

I can't believe "he he he" bothers you more than the grammatical nightmare that is "You won't be interrupting any more innocent victim's sleep again!"

Gah.
Chris | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 11:13 am | #

Brett - Yes, sales were up over our usual Saturday take, which is always nice. What I'm really curious about is customer reaction to/usage of the coupons we distributed that day.

Chris - Don't worry, I saw that too.
Mikester | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 11:28 am | #

Brett, As a general rule, our store does exactly the same on Free Comic Book day as on any other Saturday. That's what's so madening. Imagine having twice the volume of customers, but the same amount of sales. And the rudeness of people! Here's my FCBD analogy: Imagine you work in an ice cream parlor that gives out free samples. Now imagine that every customer demands a free sample of every flavor then throws the sticy wooden spoons on the floor and leaves without buying anything. That's what it's like. The kind of people that come in to FCBD aren't the kind of people that the promotion is supposed to attract (non-comic readers). FCBD attracts greedy nerds who have to complete their collection. I don't know how many times I heard "What!? I can only have 3?! That's not fair?!" NO. What's not fair is that you're a grown man (although there are many greedy nerdy women in Cambridge as well) who just ripped a free copy of a comic out of a child's hand because you have to have all of the "gold sponser" comics. Pathetic. Just pathetic. Plus there were whole nerd families that came by and had LOUD conversations with each other while paying customers got driven out of the store by their obnoxioness. FCBD is straight from the devil, if you ask this retailer. And the funny part about it is that we have to pay for the comics we give you. So we don't gain any new customers and we actually lose money on this. Thanks, piggies.
Jamie | Email | 05.07.06 - 11:40 am | #

Why participate in it then, Jamie?

I'm not trying to be antagonistic; I'm genuinely curious.

Was this the first time your store has participated in FCBD, or the first time you saw such awful behaviour on FCBD?
Bully | Email | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 12:03 pm | #

I originally emailed this question to Mike, but there was some sort of error, so I'll post it here for any retailer to respond to.

My local comic shop didn't participate in FCBD yesterday because, according to him, you have to buy a minimum of 200 comics and they just couldn't afford it.

So my question is this: At minimum, how much does it cost retailers to participate in FCBD? I know there's a shipping charge, but do you have to pay anything to the publishers as well?
James | Email | 05.07.06 - 2:00 pm | #

James - Sorry for the e-mail error...not sure what's happening there.

According to the original Diamond soliciations, in order to participate in FCBD, your minimum order had to be $5.00 worth of each of the 10 Gold Sponsor titles. So, the minimum cost to the retailer is $50.
Mikester | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 2:19 pm | #

Thanks for the answers Mike and Jamie. I saw mostly parents and kids at the more active store I went to on Saturday, but I suspect may not be normal. I know that I spent money that was over the top on Saturday, no not stupid money, but more than I normally spend in a week.

Could it be that splitting the day into a kids day and an adult day would get better results? I grabbed about seven comics from the free pile, four of them can be passed on to my son, three cannot. I am fine with the more 'mature' comics, one was my favorite from the day, but it is confusing and frustrating to parents to have to screen every comic to see if it 'kid friendly' or not. For a parent who is not a comic fan I suspect it is nearly impossible.

Anyway, I enjoyed the day and to be honest was hoping it was a bigger sales day for you all than it was, I know how hard it can be in a niche business and anything that can lend a hand to keep you all around is appreciated.
Brett | Email | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 11:26 pm | #

Brett - Pal Dorian (when he worked with me) and I always went through great efforts to make sure the books were divided up into age-appropriate packages (kids, teens, and adults) that we handed out to our customers. We paid close attention to who got what!
Mikester | Homepage | 05.07.06 - 11:38 pm | #

To answer some questions... This is not the first time my store has participated in FCBD, nor is it the first time I've seen awful behavior. I have no say in the matter of wether we participate or not, because I am not the owner. I would love it if a lot of kids came in, but sadly that's not the case in my store. It could be because we're in "the city", although Harvard Square is hardly a city, or it could be that there wasn't enough promotion on our part, so only adults who are on the interweb find out. I would also love to do more promotion, but that costs money, and our store is barely hanging on as it is. I don't want to come across as an "angry comic book guy" type that doesn't want to give away anything for free, because that's not true. I have often given issues of series away to customers, both kids and adults, to get them into comics because I know that they'll be back to buy more. But FCBD doesn't really work like that. There seems to be a disconnect between what the publishers offer on FCBD, and what will hook readers into coming back month after month. If DC put out a preview of Planetary or if Marvel put out a Civil War preview, that might be effective, (these are just a few examples.) but the stuff they put out are not addictive, so people just come in for the free stuff and never return. There's an old drug dealer saying "the first one's free" and comics should be no exception. Comics are an addiction, but you have to get them hooked first, and FCBD doesn't do that. They may get people addicted to the idea of getting free stuff or on getting ALL of the free comics, but not on getting hooked into a story. And that's where FCBD fails, in my opinion.
Jamie | Email | 05.08.06 - 11:27 am | #

Jamie, just out of curiosity, do you work at NEC or Million Year Picnic? Or is there a third comic shop in the Harvard Square area?
Bill Doughty | Email | Homepage | 05.08.06 - 2:26 pm | #

Hey folks,

I am the guilty guy in Texas who tried ordering Back Issue 10. I followed the link on your page to get to their order page, and it showed some address I didn't recognize in the 'send to' box. I typed over it with mine.

I don't know how it happened. Is it possible that link you posted referred to your specific order somehow? And that's why I got your address? The link now just goes to a "product was not found" page.

Hope I didn't screw us both out of free copies of Back Issue.
Randy | Email | 05.08.06 - 8:12 pm | #

Randy - No, that link just went directly to the "pick a free mag" page...I posted the link on my site before I ever entered my information.

However, I did get a response from a real live person at Twomorrows who thanked me for the notice and said he'd look into it, so hopefully it'll be taken care of.
Mikester | Homepage | 05.08.06 - 10:32 pm | #

Hey Jamie--thanks for the response on my question.

I've gto to say I agree with you: little or no effort is made by the publishers to make FCBD a gateway event instead of a giveaway day. As I'm obsessed with "why can't the industry figure out how to get the next generation of fans on board," I'd love to see the free comics be designed to lead into a weekly or even occasional habit of comic buying rather than just self-promotional one-offs. That doesn't mean the free comic book should be "Part Zero of Fifteen" or that you don't get a full story...but that there should be some sort of the energy and enthusiasm of FCBD into an organized campaign to shop at your LCBS weekly. Once-a-year freebie grabbers do nothing to improve the industry, and FCBD has gotten old enough that the media is no longer paying it the major attention it did its first year, so now, for 2007, what's the next step?

I know some stores are doing things along this line, but this should also be taken up on the publishers' side as well, which is going to be unlikely because the FCBD books have just evolved into self-promotion of their characters rather than the habit of regularly buying and reading comic books. I'm not a marketing bull, but how about (say) some sort of publisher-sponsored incentive to come in next week and pick up Civil War or 52 #1 with a buck-off coupon? Or some tie-in to Superman Returns that rewards a return visitor after the movie comes out? (Carefully engineered of course to not cause more work, trouble or profit loss for guys like you and Mike who work in stores, which also seems unlikely given the lack of vision and support on the big publishers' sides).

I dunno. I'm a (book) sales bull, not a comic marketing bull. But there must be a way of marketing the idea of a comic book store and not just free comics. There's a lot that's wrong with the industry as a whole and you can't entirely blame that on what's between the covers of the comics themselves, Superboy-punching action aside. May I say I have appreciation for the great comic stores I shop at, admiration and respect for the men and women who work in them among nonsense like your FCBD horror stories. Comics oughta be fun, but they're also a business. I wish that the publishers would realize that instead of treating the comics market as an afterthought or dumping ground. (And yes, I'm painting in broad strokes here.)
Bully | Email | Homepage | 05.09.06 - 5:49 am | #