For all the problems I mentioned last week in regards to your local comic shop, I must confess that they’re a lot better than the alternative. Comic shops have their problems admittedly, problems that sorely need to be addressed, but I’d much rather have them than do without. Worse yet, the troubles concerning comic shops pale in comparison to those that plague the chain bookstore with a graphic novel section.
I’ve written in the past about what I perceive to be the evils of the chain bookstore from the perspective of small business vs. big business (see my past column “Your Friendly Neighborhood Comic Shop” for details). Basically, my position is that it is better to support the homegrown small store than the impersonal large corporation, because the small store sees you as a person and the corporation sees you as a dollar sign.
Sometimes I get accused of simply being anti-corporation, and I must admit this is true. It’s the socialist in me that hates big businesses so. But apart from calling me a commie bastard, people who disagree with my position on chains bring up two points in argument against the local shop.
The first drawback these people see in regards to comic shops involves inaccessibility. These are the people who read my column last week and nodded in agreement, basically. They think chain bookstores have already dealt with all the problems I mentioned last week; a chain bookstore is already clean, organized, and populated with employees willing to help you. I obviously can see the point here, since last week I was advocating that comic shop customers and retailers try to change their behavior to correct this image problem and hopefully attract new customers.
The second reason people give me for supporting chains is that they make comics available to a wider audience than the comic shop is able to. More people go into a Borders in one day than go into most comic shops in a week, and so, yes, the presence of comics in bookstores does make us more broadly known and helps increase sales figures across the industry. Increased exposure is definitely a good aspect of the graphic novel section there, and more money flowing into the publishers means more opportunities for other books to be produced, which is always a good thing.
But the presence of comics in chain bookstores is a double-edged sword. Despite these advantages, there is the potential for many more disadvantages. In the end, chain bookstores could do more harm than good to the industry.
Most of these potential weaknesses are due to the fact that comics are not their specialty. For example, at a chain bookstore there is not a coming together of like-minded people that can be seen in comic shops. One of the few good things I mentioned about local shops last week was that they became a haven for comics readers, a place where they felt at home. At a chain bookstore, no matter how many comfy chairs they set up, there’s just not a sense of community. In the end, wouldn’t you rather give your money to a friendly face, who accepts you as a person and likes the same kinds of things you do, than an impersonal teller?
Similarly, because chain bookstores have a little bit of everything there, the employees have no specialized knowledge of the products they offer. Most of the time when you ask for a certain title at a chain bookstore (be it graphic novel, cookbook, or poetry anthology), they won’t have any idea what you’re talking about and can only direct you to a section of the store. Many of the employees will be clueless as to what a graphic novel is, and they might direct you to anything from sex and sexuality to art to science fiction. This is often a problem with those who stock the shelves too, and you might end up having to search in multiple places for the books you want, not to mention that serious comics might get shelved in the literature section if they don’t “look like a comic” (read: “have a superhero on the cover”).
Once you get to the graphic novel section, finding the book you want might be difficult if this chain bookstore chooses to shelve their graphic novels face forward at random, as many chains do. If the book you want isn’t there, ordering it will be a chore, and if the clerk doesn’t know what you mean, you could end up either ordering the wrong thing or being told the book doesn’t exist when it clearly does. Wouldn’t you rather give your money to someone who knows what you’re buying?
Because comics aren’t their specialty, they don’t put much thought into keeping the section stocked with “good” comics. More important to the chain is that they stock “best-selling” comics. They don’t care; they’re in it just for the money. Whatever sells makes them happy. So sure the chain bookstore might have more graphic novels in stock than your average shop, but it’s almost all the same stuff, the stuff they know they can get rid of. When I’ve been to chain bookstores lately and looked at their comics sections, I saw a lot of Marvel, a lot of manga, and a few odds and ends. Now I don’t hold it against a chain for trying to make a buck; they are a business, after all. But when stores (big or small) put sales over quality, it really irks me.
Also, in Reinventing Comics Scott McCloud details how this situation could end up eliminating any kind of diversity in comics. With there being a limited amount of stock a bookstore can keep on the shelves, it does not seem likely that they will use that space for all kinds of things that might or might not sell. No, they are apt to stock it with what’s guaranteed to sell, even if it means it’s all one kind of book. It’s a slippery slope from there to a situation like the one McCloud details: “When combined with [a] struggling business environment and limited shelf space … an entire art form’s public face can be reduced in time to a single genre” (McCloud 121).
You see, once the bookstores start shelving one type of book in greater quantities than all others, publishers begin to lean more and more towards publishing only that one kind of book. As McCloud states, “the high craft impelled by the market machine hides the ever-narrower range of styles, subject matter and themes allowed” (McCloud 73). In other words, because publishers will only be willing to publish one kind of thing, creators will have to choose between bending their creative vision to their rules or never having that vision heard at all.
Even if there are other genres available, even if the publishers do choose to take a chance on something else, these books are seen by fewer people. If the graphic novel section has a reputation for carrying one type of story, then people won’t go there looking for something else. Those few odds and ends I mentioned will only be seen by people already looking for manga or Marvel stuff, people who probably aren’t interested in something different anyway.
If you don’t think this could happen, then you haven’t looked at any reports on the industry in the past year. Look at the Tsunami books Marvel’s putting out, which are openly imitative of the manga style which is selling so well currently. Look at the new books DC is trying like Fallen Angel and Bad Girls, their answer to Tsunami. Look at what Warren Ellis has recently reported about DC’s trade paperback system, that they’re only going to reprint books with certain page counts because they sell better in the book market. Look at how Crossgen has started publishing “traveler” editions of their books so that it coincides more with the manga format.
In all of these cases, we see a publisher following an established trend in hope of better sales. That’s completely understandable, as they too are in this for the money. But at the same time it focuses more on comics as commerce than as a creative endeavor. As a comics advocate, the idea that artistic expression could be squelched in pursuit of the almighty dollar is my worst nightmare.
Essentially I’m against comics in chain bookstores because they are a business, not an outlet for creativity. A chain bookstore is not a tool for advocating comics. While it widens availability and makes us visible to more people, it sacrifices diversity for the sake of marketability. If you ask me, that’s too high a price to pay.
References:
McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
