I’m a little late to the party on this one (Shane beat me to it), but I wanted to get in a link to Johanna’s recent item about Free Comic Book Day. She includes a number of quotes from retailers who posted on the Comic Book Industry Alliance Forum, voicing their concerns about the upcoming event, namely that there are too many “Silver” titles that cost too much. Here’sRobert Scott, owner of San Diego’s Comickaze:
A handful of you got zero orders from me. Those that did had books with prices at $0.35+. Actually this really goes out to any publisher over $0.20 too. These were, for the most part, ordered but capped at no more than 100 copies.
Sorry, I just can’t afford to buy these books to give away. Unfortunately, most of you are marginal sellers for us and need all the eyeballs you can get but as much as I’d like to help, I can’t afford to. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I have to pass entirely on your books, rather than placing a token order, so that you will take my position seriously.
A few folks have offered their thoughts on the matter since then. Dirk and Tom of course, but also MacGuffin retailer Sam Hobart, who’s got some interesting breakdown in prices for this year’s books and a look at what he thinks will be the titles worth checking out.
So what do you think?
