My weekly snippets on NEW RELEASES.

1-14-2005

We have a FREE weekly e-mail that we send out to anyone interested. (see bottom left side of screen).  If you subscribe to this e-mail, you'll get a listing of the books due out on Wednesday for the following week.   I consider this a convenient service for most people, as it can help you decide how much you're going to buy on the coming week or if it's even worth coming in.

   In addition to listing the new releases, we offer occasional coupons for savings on the site, notifications of SALES in the stores plus WEEKLY ON-LINE specials and ocassionaly I'll make a few comments on books due out that week.  Not full fledged reviews, but little snippets containing either positive or negative comments on the books.

  In response to those 'snippets' of opinion, each month I tend to receive angry e-mails from customers.   Overall I consider this a good thing.  If someone is passionate enough to write to me about my misguided opinion of their favorite book, it tells me there really are people out there who do deeply care and aren't buying "investments" or buying out of habit.  I'm glad to see this and am happy to be taken to task for having a "wrong" opinion.  I like books from just about every publisher, and am open to posting other peoples counterpoints if they have one.

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   There's numerous sites out there that 'review' comics, and there's plenty of companies that include reviews with their e-mail newsletters.  What I tended to find 99% of the time was that they either:
     A) Simply cut & paste solicitation information out of the Diamond catalog, which does no one any kind of service. 
   or
     B) Blew sunshine up the skirts of every comic being published.  It never seems to strike them as odd that every comic is a BLOCKBUSTER EVENT not to be missed!  What are the odds?

   If a company can't honestly tell you that some feel comics might be a complete waste of your time and money then their opinion of when something is 'terrific' is suddenly not worth a whole heck of a lot. 

   When a customer comes up to the counter and asks us if a comic that we personally consider to be utter crap is worth buying, we will be honest and tell them not to bother buying it.  This is our company policy.  We do not hide behind disclaimers, we do not look to make a quick buck and dump crap product like most short sighted retailers.  I want someone who enjoys reading comics to continue enjoying them for years to come.  Continually selling them product that fails to entertain is the best way to lose them as a customer.

     Back when I managed one of our stores full time, the regular customers that I lost (with the exception of moving away or losing their job type situations), were usually lost because of me.  Not to say that I don't shower and they simply got fed up with my foul smell.  No, I tended to lose them because I failed to pay attention to what they were buying.  Comic collectors tend to buy out of habit, and after a few years they can end up with a huge pull list of titles they lost interest in years ago but simply continue to buy because "I've always bought tile X".  Next thing you know they've got a giant stack laying at their house that they simply can't find the energy to pick up and catch up on.  They're now almost a year behind and simply quit rather than trim their title list, or ask for recommendations to titles that might excite them again, and instead opt to simply quit an entire form of entertainment.  If I had made the effort to make sure they were still enjoying the titles they were getting or pointing them in the direction of the ones that I thought were exceptional.  They might have continued reading.

    Chicago manager Patrick Brower pointed out this oddity of our industry to me.  Ever hear anyone say "I can't keep up with all these new releases that Hollywood's putting out.  I'm quitting movies".  or "There's just too many shows on TV, I'm quitting TV for good." and yet, people will give up on comics.  I've heard it many times "I'm quitting comics".  And this isn't coming from people working in the industry, these are readers.  They just quit.  It becomes too much expense and time and the bottom line is that the entertainment return isn't there.  I'm not faulting the publishers, or even the price points.  The problem is getting the right books into the hands of people who will enjoy them.

   That said, my 'snippets on this weeks books' are simply opinions.  Sometimes I'm wrong and not being fair to a book, but I do try to be as fair as I can.  So when I love a book and push it, it's because I honestly enjoyed that book and want others to enjoy it as well.  If I disliked a book, well take a look as to why I'm saying it sucked - do you love the artist that I'm saying can't draw worth crap?  If so my opinion is then worthless to you on that book.  Hopefully these quick comments will help you steer through the mountain of new releases a little more easily. That's the main point of them.

    Thanks for your time, and if there's ever anything we can do to make our stores or site better, feel free to drop us a line!


--John Robinson
 not so irritated this time