Rocket Bomber - commentary

Once again, while looking at the New York Times comic chart, I’m struck by their choice of language.

If I didn’t know any better, if I were an average reader with an average [non-existent] knowledge of sequential art employed in long-form storytelling, I might see a “Graphic Books” Chart tucked in at the end of other bestseller lists and assume that Graphic meant something else.

Like gory. or violent.

English is a marvellously flexible language, and new words get coined all the time, and old words are dusted off and forced to pull double (and triple) duty.

Take ‘novel’. It used to mean ‘new’. It was applied to a new form of literature, several centuries back, but now very few of us think of [or know about] this double meaning of the word ‘novel’ when we talk about books, even while the meaning of ‘novel’ as new is still current and in currency. In fact, it’s not so far out of the pale to imagine a reviewer discussing a novel novel, though most would balk at that construction.

‘Comic’ used to mean ‘funny’ – and still means funny when we talk of the people who engage in funny as a profession, especially those determined to do so in live performance venues. But for most of a century, ‘comic’ has also been applied to the funny-pages, a shorthand for a whole class of graphic arts that once started with ‘comic strips’ but now encompasses a Whole World of Art, some of it dark, some of it ‘graphic’ in the splattery-gory-sense-of-the-word-graphic; some of it dramatic and weepy; some of it experimental and edgy and expanding the form; and occasionally some of it also quite funny.

The fact that ‘comic’ once only referred to funny, or it’s continued utility in that role shouldn’t automatically preclude it’s new use-and-meaning as a shorthand for sequential art. Just as a ‘novel’ is hardly new these days but is the accepted term for a lengthy work of fiction, ‘comic’ should be good enough as the accepted term for a lengthy work that combines integrated pictures and words in the service of a narrative.

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Graph as a Greek-derived English word-root is slippery, but almost always comes back to the verb ‘to write’. We can gerund that verb to a noun: “writing” — which is the meaning employed in things like Telegraphs, Photographs, and Spirographs (which are more properly known in mathematics as epicycloids).

Over time, the act of writing and it’s descriptive qualities espoused a new meaning for graph — anything that adequately described something might then be called a ‘graph’ – from pie charts and tables to epigraphs, graphemes, and eventually, the graphic arts.

yes, all this has to do with ‘writing’, in as much as we are still putting marks down to represent ideas, but the meaning of ‘graphic’ doesn’t gain from it’s long history, and only takes us farther away from the unique artistic forms developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

And ‘graphic’ as an adjective has also picked up the meaning of ‘vividly and plainly shown’ — which is a complement, until one begins to talk about graphic sex and graphic violence. Indeed, given how quickly most of us resort to thoughts of sex and violence, most casual references to the term ‘graphic’ will never be considered outside of that sordid application.

So when I see a bestseller list of Graphic Books on the New York Times website, comics are the furthest thing from my mind.

Oh, I know what the Times means; and I get that they would desperately love to have been the ones to coin the term that defines a whole medium of human expression [who wouldn’t?] but “Graphic Books” they ain’t.

“Graphic Books” conjures up images of noir & splatter & loose women and looser men and No Details Left Out — and, honestly, I’m up for that — but I’m not sure what that has to do with comics. And if one cared to scratch even a millimetre into the etymology of ‘graph’ calling something a Graphic Book is like saying it’s a ‘written book’ and all books are written down, no? might as well call them book books, or recorded stories. “Graphic” means nothing, or at least nothing special in this context.

Yes, I know, I’m nitpicking and cherry-picking when it comes to definitions of Comics — and I’ll concede that “Graphic books” is a neologism adapted from “Graphic novels” — and I appreciate the time and effort the Times invests in tracking comics, which are a growing but still very small percentage of publishing overall.

I just personally dislike that label, ‘graphic’ books. In either case, we’re re-purposing an old term for a new form, and if it is impossible to use Eisner’s term, Sequential Art, then my preference would be to call the whole mess Comics.

Yesterday I posted a wall-o-text about books & bookselling, and I know a lot of you [the comics folks] could care less about retail and the rest of you [the retail folks] could give a rat’s ass about my philosopical musings on the future of print in the larger context of the present and continued transmission of culture, and that even if you like the bullshit philosophical musings you honestly would prefer I not drink so much, so the points made could be more clearly, and concisely, expressed.

I fully admit my shortcomings. Among other things, I like web traffic for this poor blog. Kinda an attention whore that way.

So in an effort to both increase traffic and direct even more of you to the original essay, while making it more accessible, let me take a single, favourite assertion from yesterday’s post and expand on it, briefly, today:

Bookstores may be grossly inefficient compared to e-books and web sites and all that crap, but sex is also grossly inefficient if the only goal you consider is insemination. Sometimes inefficiencies are a good thing. Sometimes they have a value, even an economic value, well beyond what is most expedient or cost-effective.

Yes, if all you want is a book, you can log onto a web site, spend less than 3 minutes, order exactly what you want, wait the pre-determined time period, and soon you will be surprised with a tiny packet of joy, delivered to you via the offices of professionals who specialize in that sort of thing.

Seems ideal, right? let me replace one word

Yes, if all you want is a baby, you can log in, spend less than three minutes in the process to effect that end, wait the pre-determined time period, and soon you will be surprised with a tiny packet of joy, delivered to you via the offices of professionals who specialize in that sort of thing.

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Obviously, there are occasional inefficiencies in any process that have little to do with the end result but that we engage in anyway.

One can drink absinthe without a louche and flaming sugar cubes and all of that, but the process is often the point of consumption. One can buy a burger without making reservations, meeting before-hand for drinks and conversation with friends, ordering the appetizer, and later dessert, and much later coffee or port while lounging with said friends in the restaurant’s bar. One can see the Mona Lisa without looking at a single other painting in the Louvre, or visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris and Shakespeare & Co. or walking the banks of the Seine under lamplight and moonlight arm in arm with a smiling, laughing companion.

One can engage in the process of insemination without courtship, chaste hand-holding; the uncertain, halting, almost orgasmic first kiss; shared special memories of that night or this place; the arguments, the breakups, the forgiveness, the make-up sex; without foreplay and caresses and knowing that if I blow just so behind your ear I can feel the shudder at the base of your spine through my hand placed just at the top of the curve of your ass, and long sweaty nights and slow, leisurely sunday mornings and that quickie on the floor right before we go to your college-BFF’s wedding. Or the Valentine’s day right after our first anniversary. Or breakfast in bed on your birthday that ended up with me meeting the pizza guy wearing only a sheet because neither of us could be bothered to cook (or even get out of bed) all day and by 4pm we were starving.

Indeed, if one focuses only on the goal, there are many, enjoyable parts of the process that might be missed. And occasionally the process is a lot of fun in it’s own right, and the eventual goal might be a bit of a let-down, or undesired, or impossible to begin with.

Yes, one can easily buy a book online. Click, click, click: we’re done.

Bookstores aren’t about the quick sale of a book [though we’re up for a quickie if that’s all you have time for]

Bookstores are about inefficiency and the grand glorious meandering search, falling in love, and those rapturous perfect moments of book discovery — after a relationship that has lasted for years, a partnership you’re comfortable with, an easy familiarity that you fall into whenever you walk through the door. Those ‘perfect’ book moments may only come once a month, or once a week, if that’s all you can make time for. They can come as often as once a day [or multiple times a day] though it’ll take more of your time and quite a bit more effort on our part, as booksellers.

yes, Amazon and other web sites will satisfy that book jones in scant seconds — coldly, mechanically, and without the personal touch a patient, knowledgeable lover bookseller can provide.

Some days you know exactly what you want. And we’ll humbly provide that.

But we’re also open, ready, and willing to take you by the hand any other day of the week, and walk down those tempting aisles and through the grubby stacks packed from one end to the other with sexy, sexy books. Whether you only want to watch browse, or maybe just dip a toe into ocean of pleasures that books can provide, we’re here for you. And when you’re ready to take the plunge, we’ll be right by your side.

Yes. Bookstores are inefficient. So is really enjoying a meal, or talking to and meeting with friends in person, or travelling the world to see the major cities and centres of culture with your own eyes. So is sex.

Inefficiencies are Great. Love ‘em.

And I hope bookselling remains inefficient for centuries to come.

So, if you happened to join the discussion on RocketBomber just a couple of weeks ago and were under the impression that the blog is just about business analysis with the occasional odd word on retail: thank you. Skip this post, and I won’t have to excuse or explain anything further.

If you’re still with me: I’m about to eat some red meat and swill some beer and get my umbrage out of the storage case – and really rant a bit.

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[links below represent, and largely repeat verbatim, posts I made to my twitter account]

I wish there were 3 separate, concise terms for fans-who-like-stuff, fans-who-BUY-stuff, and “fans”-who-STEAL-stuff .

See, a fan or “fanatic” really, really likes something. That is not only their defining characteristic, it’s the only requirement for membership in the fan base.

Some fans watch the show on ‘free’ [ad-supported] network TV or ‘free’ [subscription-and-ad-supported] cable TV, and wonder why, since they saw it for free once, why the DVDs cost so much, or why CN cancelled it, or why Nick only shows it on the Nickelodeon-in-the-high-hundreds distaff sub-network, or why they have to stay up until 1AM (or the ultimate hardship of having to set one’s TiVo) to watch this ‘free’ program.

See, there? “Free” things have costs. All things have costs. Some are dollar costs, some are opportunity costs, some are travel and transportation costs, some are insubstantial: the costs/time required to find it online, the costs/time to educate yourself about the industry, and creators, and the history of manga, anime, cartooning, animated film, animated film brought to television, comics as both an art form and a mass produced consumer product, or the costs/time spent learning the names and relative merits of all 493 Pokémon.

And while “time equals money”, your time spent acquiring knowledge means nothing, it’s only your money that communicates things outside of the internet and across oceans to the creators who are starving in Japan (and, well, subcontractors in S. Korea and China and who knows where next) (and I’ve yet to hear the impassioned call from any fan that they stop exploiting cheap labour from third countries, pay animators a living wage in Japan and elsewhere, and support both artistic integrity and basic production standards because our love of anime will support the higher costs.) (…just sayin’)

If you like it, buy it. It’s that simple.

If you can’t buy it: then you can’t have it.

You know where people get things only because they really, really want them? That’s communism, son. We don’t do communism.

And a whole internet is waiting in the wings with their very own, “Yes, I know, but…“

Save it.

Say, you know where people provide goods to those willing to pay money – enough money to cover costs (& with a profit to the seller?) That’s America!

Or more broadly, capitalism. Or even more broadly — for hybrid systems that provide education, health care, and basic needs under a European-style-socialist-safety-net with free trade and capitalist markets for luxuries and other goods, or even nominal-communist countries that still have active smuggling, pirating, and foreign-currency transactions — that’s The Market.

Even in places without “free” markets, there are black and grey markets — where the demand for goods overcomes ideology, philosophy, best intentions — and Marx, Lenin, Mao, Keynes, Friedman, Hayek and all the rest; Economics as a discipline, and as an academic study — are all subject to the universal truth that if I have something you want & I’m willing to part with it, you’re going to have to ‘pay’ for it one way or another.

Ad-supported models spring immediately to mind for the so-called-‘free’ internet: your attention is being sold; even if you don’t value it, there is money to made there.

Mutual exchange models used to proliferate, back in the earliest days: I have video tape X, you have video tape Y & we trade — and when fandoms were still courteous, polite affairs, I might extend something ‘free’ in the name of friendship (a history of past fair dealings) knowing that when you get something new, I’ll be the first person you think of.

A lot of “fans” complain that not enough is being done to specifically cater to their “fandom”, without defining terms or putting a price tag on it.

Oh sure, the only manga that you’d ever consider spending money on is so far out of the mainstream that there’s no way it’d ever be available for sale in a bookstore. Um. Well.

Inubaka? Freakin’ Dog Manga? Viz.

Cooking manga? Viz, Viz Signature, Del Rey — Iron Wok Jan was ComicsOne and when they went out of business it was rescued by DrMaster.

Maids? CMX, Seven Seas, Tokyopop.

Robots? Maid Robots? Butlers? Supernatural possibly-demonic Butlers?

Idols, Pop Stars, Rock Stars, Actors, washed-up idols mentoring ingenues, highschoolers working as managers for other highschoolers who have to cross-dress while not performing to hide the fact that they are entertainment superstars?

Ninja, Wizards & Witches, Guns, School Girls, School Girls with Guns — Eastern-myth influenced, Western-myth influenced, at least five takes on Journey to the West (with both monkey-boy shonen action heroes and bishonen angsty drama included) — Ukes and Semes — Fanboys, Otaku, Fujoshi — budding artists and cute art school students — female shogun and male debutantes — sci-fi of all stripes and a whole load of epic fantasy, reverse vampires, paper masters, time travel, time-travel-romance where our heroine is dislocated to a fantasy/medieval realm where only she can tame the wild warrior(s) and bring peace to either the past, the present, or both?

Blue Space Vampires from Beyond the Moon, replaying 18th century French drama with the barest gloss of futuristic overlay? Sci-fi adaptations of Shakespeare with flying horses, the heroine as an underground freedom fighter and the ruling duke re-imagined as a sentient tree with Ophelia borrowed from Hamlet to serve as high priestess? Space Garbagemen? A Photographer who blows things up when he takes their picture?

I’m not even digging all that deep here. Just some stuff I happen to have on the shelf (plus RomeoxJuliet, which I don’t own but soon will). And I haven’t even mentioned [yet] Afterschool Nightmare, Aqua/Aria, Crest/Banner of the Stars, Kashimashi, Shugo Chara, Someday’s Dreamers, Sundome, VB Rose, Yotsuba&!, Yubisaki Milk Tea or other personal favourites yet.

Dude. Dude. Dude. To claim that, well, “the titles I like just aren’t getting licensed” is to ignore A Freakin’ Bookstore full of licensed, translated manga, and a lot of it is really good, and really-weird-but-really-good, and creepy, and disturbing, and fun (and some of it is bland, and routine, and predictable but still worth reading in some ways) and it’s a lot like any other genre and/or format of books: there’s stuff you really should buy, and stuff publishers would like you to buy, and stuff you almost bought but didn’t [the marketing was off, or it just wasn’t popular, but then when more volumes come out you really wish you’d started buying it earlier]

And then there’s the MMF, where a round dozen reviewers [plus new participants] are telling you each month about a great title (with multiple volumes) that you previously missed, or ignored,

and then there’s the crap:

95% of everything is crap. Of Everything. 95% of the crap you download is crap, except you ignore it because it was free crap, and yet you insist that the market is failing because first, it served up crap for you to pirate (for free, even though others are paying for that crap and you insist that it’s still crap even as you download it) and second, because your highly-trained crap filter is about to overload from all the crap, even though the crap is free and you can’t be bothered to think about your free manga & anime past the reflex response to call it all crap (even though you download it all anyway) and what you call “crap” may in fact be my much beloved Full Moon O Sagashite and who the eff are you to call it crap?

I make fun because I care.

There is an awful lot of passive/aggressive resentment directed at manga/anime [especially the corporate producers] about how it all sucks — and yet they [said fans] compulsively consume everything and also point to how their compulsive consumption somehow makes them *experts*.

If it sucks so bad, why are you arguing with me on news sites, blogs, forums, and occasionally even in the comments on this very [poorly-trafficked] blog?

Why the passion? Whence the passion?

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I know the answer already: Manga and Anime are Just That Good.

but you can’t always pay for it. Not what it deserves anyway. and your frustration leads you to blame not your own poverty, or the disconnect between what you can afford and what you want —

but to instead blame the whole ‘problem’ [which isn’t a problem, unless you can’t afford licensed content] on the greed of licensees, or the ignorance of the ‘buying’ public [who pay for things, but for the wrong things, in your book] or on “censorous” American publishers who “butcher” your books and censor things outside of the ‘artist’s original intent’

[and actually that’s a fine argument but doesn’t excuse, explain, or exempt piracy]

And really, even before you began reading this post or I began writing it, you already have a position and my attempts at logic or persuasion are for naught:

Either You Are With Us, and you believe buying licensed manga is the best way to not only support the industry but also communicate what we like [through dollars spent] to licensees, licensors, and major publishing companies…

Or you imagine the real world doesn’t run on dollars, but rather some odd construct where desire, good will, unspoken intent, and hit counts on online sites amount to “sales” [no, they don’t] or that enthusiasm and a sheer number of posts about a property contribute to that property’s success [no, it doesn’t] or that your love, a Love so great it compels you to actively campaign against the financial interests of the people who produce your anime & manga, and who do so on the very barest of profit margins, because they happen to crassly ask for money (or who made minor compromises in their pursuit of major market acceptance) (or even just to make a few bucks off of TV) (and which is then a ‘major betrayal’ of the fanbase)

Pray tell: exactly what odd fandom you personally are so ever-loving loyal to that you can’t find anything else to financially support in the wide, wild market?

Really? Yeah, I get that you like things, even things that aren’t translated, but that automatically precludes you liking everything else? Wholly Effin Shiznats, I mean, everything?

One can only defend piracy if the government is specifically censoring the manga you want to read [and not the market, which determines what will sell, but the government, which censors things you want to buy but can’t because otherwise you’ll go to jail]

The fact that some manga are economically unfeasible is a fact of life, and regrettable, but not actionable. The unavailability of some manga is a fact of life, and while you’re welcome to pirate them [if one must read them] that doesn’t translate into an inalienable right and certainly isn’t an excuse. If you chose to obtain these from the Black and Grey markets, recognise you’re breaking the law and do so quietly; don’t make a fuss and be happy you were able to skate underneath the law.

Dear Manga & Anime “Fans”: What, are you communists? Front some $$ or sit down and STFU. — and you’re not fans, you’re whiny, entitled children

I buy a lot. I work at a job where I sell books, and at least in theory, sell manga [though at least a third of all manga sold through my store is just me ‘selling’ books to myself]

Honestly, I don’t want to read a single argument about manga piracy unless the author reveals just how much money they spend annually on manga, and if they don’t, just how they expect the industry to continue while they not only don’t support it but are actively killing it.

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Last year I spent $4895 on manga. [just manga]

You don’t have to beat me to have an opinion. but if you’re about to bring up a “I download scalations because the type of manga I like just doesn’t get published” I’m going to require a listing of all the unlicensed manga to which you refer, at least a cursory argument on why currently available licensed [LEGAL] manga doesn’t suit your particular kink, and [at best] a listing of untranslated manga you’ve bought via alternate channels [amazon.jp, for a start] because your love of the art is sufficient to prompt purchases of the manga even if you can’t read it. [yet. one also hopes you’re learning Japanese if you ‘love’ the manga this much]

What? I’m demanding too much?

Honestly, I’m only asking you to pay your way. I’m pointing out that there are legal alternatives. I’m stressing that in the lack of legal alternatives there is still no excuse for stealing. If you want to be an uncaring bastard and pirate content anyway, that’s certainly an option that is available but don’t excuse it, and most certain don’t try to pitch it as either noble or justified, ‘just because you’re a fan’

Don’t give me general arguments about why you pirate manga because it’s ‘not available’. Tokyopop just announced Hetalia Axis Powers — All I need is a Saint Young Men announcement, and I can claim there’s nothing to stop licensees, past money, and market demand.

Bah. I’m getting tired of talking about e-books. I think we all know which side of that debate I’m coming down on — even if you haven’t been reading my blog for years and only picked it up last week.

So, let’s assume for a moment that Jobs and Bezos sign a non-aggresion pact, divy up book retail, distribution, and publishing like so many polands, and as a bookseller I’m shipped off to a “retirement farm” or re-education camp [with a free iKindle, a pacifier to keep me quiet] — or if I decline, forced to fight on as a guerilla bookseller, part of a small, scrappy resistance facing insurmountable odds and a quixotic fight against not just big corporations but also my former customers (who no longer have need for a ‘bookstore’ in the 20th-century-sense. That’s so… last millennium.)

But so long as hot blood and cold beer still run through my veins, I will be a bookseller, and I can harness creative self-delusion, technical prowess, and years of experience to aid me.
“Vive la Résistance! ¡Por Cuba Libre! Free Tibet!”

…actually, I could go for a Cuba Libre right now… I wonder if we have any rum…

[image credit, Iliad Bookshop, North Hollywood, by Zach Schrock http://balcony-smoker.tumblr.com/post/59996549/zach-schrock]

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Rethinking the Box is a collection of ruminations on retail & bookselling, with an eye towards comics (as one goal of the exercise is to guage the viability of a graphic novel superstore).

Previously:
Study your History. Recognise your Motives. Location, Location, Location. Know your Customer Base, and your Staff. Find your Niche. Consider your Product Lines, Stock Your Shelves, Set your main-aisle displays, consider Alternative display strategies, take a second look at What the Customers Want and Why Even Annoying Customers are Important. Answer for yourself whether raw dollars or customer service is more important to your store, and its future. Stare again in dismay at the Profit Margins. Try calculating your upper-limit affordable rent and affordable salaries along with revenue from inventory (with a side of coffee) and compare your numbers to average industry per-storefront sales.

Chronologically: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15 – 16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24

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So, while not part of the Rethinking the Box column proper, I’ve written quite a bit about the book-as-form, book-as-object, publishing history, and with glancing blows at piracy and some random thoughts on how it might affect retail:

17 Nov ’09: Form, Content, Copies, Rights, and Plato
22 Nov ’09: Same story, different perspective — which links to this post by Clay Shirky [see also]
15 Dec ’09: The Other Shoe: Borders partners with Indigo’s Shortcovers for E-Books
4 Apr ’10: The iPad is merely incidental to the rest of the ongoing discussion
4 Jun ’10: Publishing Buggywhips
and most recently, 7 Jun ’10, E-books, retail, publishing: One More Time

It was the ‘buggywhips’ thought-piece where I half-promised, half-threatened to write a post explaining why “[in a thread I’ll pick up on in the next rethinking the box column] there is still a place for bookstores: there is still expertise, and enthusiasm, and atmosphere, and experiences to be had, even in a world without ‘books’”.

In a post-Amazon, post-Kindle, post-iPad, post-Nook world (yes, even my employer has abandoned me) what use is there for a bookstore, or a bookseller? What the heck does a bookseller really do, anyway?

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As a practical matter, day-to-day, we spend quite a bit of time cleaning, straightening, re-organizing. From coffee cups to soda cans, discarded food containers, chicken bones, used tissues, abandoned clothing — and occassionally, human waste (the way you people treat public restrooms is appalling, really beyond the pale) — there are also the stacks of magazines and half-read books left in piles all over the store.

Dude. It’s not enough you destroy the product while you ‘browse’ it; it’s not the way customers unpack and totally camp out, stealing electricity and clogging up tables that might have been used (ever so briefly) by a paying customer with a legitimate need to look through a stack of [$60 and up, large-format art] books — it’s not the folks stretching out in the aisles, taking their shoes off and literally laying down while they read a book — a book they have no intention of buying, more often than not…

I’ve been a bookseller for a decade. I have seen and mostly understand all of this. But:

It’s the damn sense of entitlement, of ownership over the bookstore, most especially from those who spend absolutely no money that might lend even a thin veneer of truth to either assumption. Good Gods Damn, People — what do you think a bookstore is? A public reading room with a public bathroom and free wi-fi? Even a library gets more respect.

Here’s the short course: At a book store, we sell books — shocking, I know — and we also sell the magazines you love to read for free, and newspapers, and the bibles you love to steal [book retail trivia: #3 most-stolen items? Bibles. Yep, ‘struth. Think about it…] and the computer books that no one buys because they’re cheaper online but that everyone expects us to have, in stock, today no matter how obscure the topic and that get stolen anyway. [book retail trivia: #2 most-stolen items? Computer Books. Even though everyone says our selection is crappy, somebody is still stealing ‘em.]

Apparently, if I were to really listen to my ‘customers’, the bookstore would be a library that stocks everything but where you don’t have to bother to check anything out, just walk home with it, where we supply both device recharging though multiple outlets placed every two feet on every available wall (and some just randomly in the middle of the floor) & free wifi that is faster than your broadband or cable connection at home, and where we don’t hassle anyone about how much all this costs or try to guilt anyone into actually buying anything unless they really need a copy or just happened to be feeling charitable.

In the face of all this… an uncaring, downright abusive public who positively delight in telling me daily how much cheaper Amazon is while completely discounting the things we do that Amazon can’t (and taking advantage of all of it either unknowingly, apathetically, or callously) and with a casual disregard for both the expertise of veteran booksellers, or even the basic respect due a fellow human being —

[it’s not always that bad, all the time… Decembers are brutal, tho]

Despite all this I still love books, and I still love bookstores, and it may be hard to believe but I Love My Job. After 40+ hours a week, I still think obsessively about my employment and employer, and blog about how we can do it better — what more can I say?

Dear Customers: even though your demands are unreasonable and unprofitable [for me, as a bookseller] I’m still willing to work with you, compromise, meet you half-way on some points, and totally capitulate others. You win. Take full advantage.

The only thing I ask (and what will keep the store open, in a post-book era) is that you recognise what a bookstore is and what it does. A little respect, some props. Least you can do while you put me out of business.

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Yeah, the web is great. Cheap. Fast. All of that.

If you know what you want then you can order it on the web within minutes of thinking of it. You don’t even have to call my store to bug me about it. Just order it online already. Sure, if you want to come in and see if we have it, that’s great too. Buy a cup of coffee, ask us about it, maybe browse the store, maybe buy something. But the phone calls? Just a waste of my time. [I’ve noted previously, this is a good problem to have but to go through all the work just to have someone say, 9 times out of 10, “nah, I’ll just order it online” — dude: you could have done that before you wasted my booksellers’ time.]

If you kinda-sorta know what you want, sure, come on into the store: we’ll try to help. If you can’t find it in an internet search, well, we’ll try, but Google is pretty damn good and while I’m better than the average bear at gaming an internet search, I’m only as good as my inputs. I can’t spin half remembered compost-fodder into gold no matter how much faith you have in me. But we’ll try, and please, come on into the store: this kind of thing is so much easier face-to-face, where I can turn the screen around to show you the search results; maybe you see something that prompts further recollection, & together we refine the results, in steps, down to what you’re looking for. Once again, this is hard to do over the phone no matter how earnestly you’d like to think I can read your mind over 19th-century-era copper wire.

If you have only the vaguest memory and just one applicable clue (“the cover is red”) I really wish you’d just forget about the whole thing and move on. Still, as a business, and in the business of customer service, I have to pretend I can help and must feign surprise when searches of ‘the red book’ only pull up $150 dream journals by Carl Jung

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The internet is great and grand. Everything and anything, so long as you know what to look for.

but: what if you could find something you didn’t even know you wanted yet?

What if there was a website where books were presented with expert reviews and recommendations, and available for immediate purchase? Hell, what if most of those books were in stock at a nearby physical storefront, to take home today?

Maybe, between expertise and depth of selection, we’ve discovered one thing a bookstore could do better than a website. Or: I’ve identified a role for a unified blog-and-bookstore where the booksellers are paid to post reviews and previews to the web. An Amazon where product reviews aren’t written by sarcastic/ironic/sardonic hipsters, or the clueless but earnest, or the haters who couldn’t even finish the book — but instead were all written by booksellers.

##

- Let’s say I win the lottery, not only enough to pay my debts and start up a scrappy new manga publisher, but with enough left over to buy a building, $5 Million in inventory and set up my dreamland, destination bookstore (with a pub in it, alongside the coffee shop). Who do I hire to staff it?

Fans.

I’ll pay them to work the bookfloor 4 hours a day, I’ll pay them to read at work for at least an hour a day and I’ll buy them a laptop but I expect them to blog (for me) for an hour each day. [35 hour work week for my full-timers; I’m progressive like that — and we can work out a 4-day or 5-day work-week from these basic expectations]

So, my ideal bookseller is also a blogger, posting reviews or business analysis or thought pieces, or WTF else – I don’t care. So long as it’s on-topic and on-schedule it helps. I’m not just starting a bookstore, I need a search-engine-ready social-media-footprint & continuous online presence. “oh ho!” you say, “The brave bookstore advocate is finally admitting he is beat, and wants to hedge his bets, starting a web site just like Amazon [*knowing smirk*]” – Of course I’m beat. The web in general has me beat on price, to the tune of at least 10% and often 40-50% (my entire profit margin on a book) and sometimes even deeper, if we consider used offerings. But my group blog would not be a sales site. In fact, hell, we could sign the whole thing up as an Amazon affiliate, let them worry about procurement & shipping & margin, and just take our cut from the internet sale. I don’t need a warehouse and fulfillment protocols for millions of titles if I can get Amazon to do that for me — I’ll take the booksellers, thanks, the ones who know and love the product, and we’ll do just fine.

So why bother with a bookstore at all, if I have this shiny new books blog with it’s own business model, marketable moniker, much lower overhead, and humongous potential employee pool?

The largest part of that is going to the “bookstore” part. No matter how much you think you know or how closely you follow the publishers’ web sites, the Times’ book review & The New York Review of Books (or Otaku USA, depending on your preferences), and no matter how ‘plugged-in’ to the market you feel, nothing beats the awe and wonder of taking something out of the box on the day it comes out, or finding a hidden gem tucked away on a bookshelf. We need a physical bookstore for that.

We need the ‘hook’. Beautiful photos of books on shelves, Author signings, book clubs, writing workshops and in-store events — we need a bookstore. It may just be a 7 million dollar prop, but 75% of that is inventory ($5 mil would be ~350,000 books on shelves: I dream big and this is already a “what if I won the lottery” piece) and there is nothing in the world quite like a bookstore.

We need the workplace. Online communities are great, but bloggers write better when they can meet face to face, and are more productive when they go to an office. “The office” in this case is a bookstore and coffee shop — but that makes it that much better.

And we need customers, and customer interaction. Nothing has taught me more about books (or life, or anything) than working in a bookstore. Every day, people ask me questions and I discover titles I would never have thought of or even thought to look for. A job in a bookstore is an education in itself. Yes, customers are frustrating — but that’s because they are people (& needy people at that).

Who do you trust?

The averred conclusions of an algorithm that “customers who bought this also liked…” or the opinion of an Actual Human Being who can point you to books & series that are similar but only tangentially related to your current favs? Do you buy based on categories and tags, or on the recommendation of someone who’s actually read the damn thing? Bookselllers have an expertise not found at Amazon or other on-line sales sites: we love and read books. “Love” doesn’t have an algorithm yet.

Can I beat Amazon at it’s own game? No. That battle is lost.

Can I game Amazon and make money at what I do best? – Oh, hell yes. (If I weren’t hung up on the ‘bookstore’ thing I could probably launch that review site in two weeks.)

##

So.

Post-book era.

Everything is E-

Nothing is print.

How does a bookstore work?

—

Here’s what the bookstore can do:

• We can sell books, in the exchanging-money-for-goods meaning of the word ‘sell’
• we can sell books, in the telling-you-what-is-fantastic-about-this-book meaning of the word ‘sell’ — and honestly, that’s what we do best, and it’s something Amazon can’t do yet.
• we can use the internet for you. No, honestly: for the most obscure title requests, or the searches based on incomplete information this is exactly what I do 10 times an hour (when I don’t just happen to know the answer off the top of my head, which only happens once a day or so but you should see the look on the customer’s face when it does).
• we can order, ship, receive, and hold for pick-up any title in our database. It’s not fancy, but it’s what we do everyday. For some, the convenience of pick-up (as opposed to UPS or Fed-Ex just leaving packages on the doorstep) is a service worth paying a little more for.
• we stock thousands (~100,000+ at my branch, other stores have more) on shelves for purchase today. It’s not much, actually, given the embarrassment of riches available, but we try to guess what’s going to be popular, and stock bestsellers in fiction & biography, at a minimum, and in as many other categories as we can manage.
• we try to hire book-lovers with years of experience, decades of personal reading history, and steel-trap memories that allow them to recall, with the fewest actual facts, the books they’ve read (or browsed, or read reviews or even just the jacket-copy on) and we try to keep them at the information desk for as many hours a day as possible, given that most of the work in the bookstore is, as previously cited, cleaning up after your lazy ass and the sisyphean task of keeping the stacks in any sort of proper order.
• past that: we can keep the doors open — for you to hang out, arrange meetings with friends, kill time, read books, nap, log onto and browse the internet, blog, write, research, collaborate, network, tutor, learn, connect, launch a business or idea, and recoup after a long day of doing all of the above with a slice of cheesecake and a latte.

[If I have my druthers, you’d also be able to do all this with a pint of Guinness or a glass of port, as I’d love to run a bookstore with a pub on the bottom floor. I am a visionary. I dream Big.]

Say people stop buying ‘paper’ books entirely:

What is my raison d‘être?

Experience, expertise, product knowledge, and internet savvy. And a love of books.

No matter what the format, I am a bookseller. E-books complicates the whole mess but doesn’t change my goals:

I Am A Bookseller. And I have a backup plan: I’ll blog about and sell you e-Books, if that is my last option, though I hold a special place in my heart for the physical books printed on dead trees. But I plan to keep the doors open as long as I can, for all those non-book uses for a bookstore that everyone loves but nobody pays for.

From Wikipedia: Buggy Whips

A buggy whip is a horsewhip with a long stiff shaft and a relatively short lash used for driving a horse harnessed to a buggy or other small open carriage. A coachwhip, usually provided with a long lash, is used in driving a coach with horses in front of other horses. Though similar whips are still manufactured for limited purposes, the buggy whip industry as a major economic entity ceased to exist with the introduction of the automobile, and is cited in economics and marketing as an example of an industry ceasing to exist because its market niche, and the need for its product, disappears. In discussing market regulation, it is often held that the economy would be disadvantaged as a whole if the automobile had been banned to protect the buggy-whip industry.

Buggy whips are not entirely gone. A resurgence of interest in the international sport of combined driving and historical carriage driving, sports enjoyed by people of all ages, has allowed some buggy whip manufacturers to stay in business, serving this specialty niche market. Foremost among these is a company in Westfield, Massachusetts.

##

When the motor car (the automobile, the self-powered quadricycle, the horseless carriage, by whatever name) got an internal combustion engine, the game changed almost overnight.

Suddenly we could go further, faster, and without leaving dung in the roadways. It was a revolution in transportation technology. Several interdependent industries and networks developed to both support and take advantage of the car (not just car manufacturers: rubber & tire production, the transition of the oil companies from lamp oil to gasoline and the retail network that followed, car sales, and service stations) and our underlying social infrastructure was also forever changed: drive-ins, drive-thrus, motels, interstate highways, suburbs, exurbs, and sprawl — to say nothing of taking a date to a secluded spot, parking, and making out in the back seat.

The Car Changed Everything.

And no doubt, sometime between 1895 and 1910, some internet pundit was immediately on his telegraph key to broadcast to the web (such as it was, at the time) that the Day of the Horse was over, and the Age of Automobile had arrived.

Of course, this is a gross simplification of economic models, as the horse-as-transport is just one aspect of overall animal domestication [food being primary, then and now] and the horse was much more important in that day and age as the horsepower that drove agriculture — interstate commerce was largely done by rail (and rail continued to be important until the 50s, when Eisenhower lobbied for—and eventually signed—the legislation that would found and fund the US interstate system) and personal transport, back in the day, was trolley car, subway (what little mass transit there was at the time) — or shoe leather. Most commuters, as we now understand the term, wouldn’t be able to afford a horse — let alone a pair or team of horses & a carriage, to say nothing of the driver and footmen and grooms and stablehands, and feed and fodder and saddle and tack or harness — this was a major production, getting around by horse.

…which of course is why the car took off, after Mr. Ford manufactured ‘em in quantity and proved the business model and made the car affordable (after a fashion; a single horse was probably still cheaper but it didn’t seat four) — and hired assembly line workers and actually paid them enough to afford the machines they assembled. (Fair wages are Ford’s legacy, more than Model T’s and assembly-line-methods. Ford realized the first customers for his product should be the people working for Ford.)

The introduction of specialized tractors and combines for agriculture has done more than the car ever did to improve your daily lot in life — and did more to change our world — but this idea of car-replacing-horse has made itself a home in the public’s collective memory, and of course more people drive cars every day, as opposed to taking the train (to say nothing of riding a tractor to work)

In areas where dense urban centers had already formed, the impact of the car was lessened (while traffic became even more of a headache, the car was not an engine of geographic destruction) but for much of 50s America, booming with babies and with cheap money for new mortgages via VA Loans and cheap cars rolling off of the same assembly lines that had recently built jeeps and bombers, the modern suburb in all of its ugly glory was born.

##

I know I’m the only manga (or comic, or even book) blogger who gives a crap about urban planning and the future of our cities, so I’ll just have to ask that you forgive that last digression. But I do have a point, dragging a dead horse into a editorial on publishing [to be flogged, yet again, only this time not metaphorically]:

The car replaced the horse. Given.

So, all of our horses were converted into baseballs, glue, hamburgers, and fry oil decades ago and the only horses left are in zoos and [mounted and stuffed] in private collections? right?

Actually, no.

Between 59 and 100 Million horses are still employed daily: in sport, recreation, and yes, farm work [the number varies depending on which actual, quoted figure on horses you’d care to believe from the same damn wikipedia article, about six paragraphs apart]

Some people still own horses because they are the best way to do a particular job, even given all other options. Some own horses out of a sense of tradition. Some own them for sport or hobbies. Some own them because horses are beautiful, and there is a bond between us and horses that nothing else can replace.

There may be “better” solution out there, for most needs (but not all) —

but for those who value historical models, or who just aren’t on this tech track just yet, or for whom a technologic-one-size-fits-all solution still doesn’t quite fit: There is still some value in a horse. And it would seem that the Amish may provide a new model for publishing — just because we hadn’t thought about books in quite this way yet.

##

50 years from now, Steve Jobs has had his way, and was elected to 2 [non-consectutive] terms as US President and later appointed as Chief Justice to the US Supreme Court. Apple is the new default format; everything and I mean everything is available from the iWhatever store, we only get dissenting news via our inboxes or from RSS feeds, and the wild internets fills in whatever gaps might be left over from your corporate-government-Apple-spoonfed-feed.

The e-book will replace the book. Again, I’ll accept that as a given.

And again I have to say, yes… but no. There will still books.

A book requires no power, no backup, and no support past light enough to read by. There will always be situations where what you need is a book.

And in much the same way that the horse is still used in sport, Books will still be used as a way to convey Art. There may be a billion e-books, and only a scant hundred thousand books, published each year — but each and every one of those books will be worth something. Books will populate many private collections, as some books have intrinsic worth for what they are, and others are just a valuable for what they contain —

##

The e-book will replace the book, in the same way that the car replaced the horse.

Sure, if you want to phrase it that way.

But I also hope that even the most fervent e-book advocate will admit that there is still a value in some physical books. If nothing else, the last books will be much like Gutenberg’s first: a bible. No getting around that, no matter how pro-technology you are.

I can see moving almost all of my collection to an e-book format, if and when those volumes become available. Some things (newspapers, magazines) have already been handily supplanted by open web standards and the wealth of information available on the internet. Unless it takes hours to read, we’ve already moved past the printed page. And in time, I could adjust, from reading a page to reading a screen, if the user interface and display technology catch up just a bit more.

I might not miss physical books, just like currently I don’t necessarily miss horseback riding.

But the two experiences are not identical: e-books aren’t books. Riding in a car is no where near the experience of riding on a horse.

This is where publishing will go: the experience that can not be had on a screen.

##

And [in a thread I’ll pick up on in the next rethinking the box column] there is still a place for bookstores: there is still expertise, and enthusiasm, and atmosphere, and experiences to be had, even in a world without “books”

So, DC: I’d like to ask –

how much did you recently spend on plastic rings as opposed to, oh, say, the now-past 5-year marketing budget for now-defunct [alas] critically-acclaimed manga publisher CMX?

No, honestly: how much did you spend on trinkets—ephemeral souvenirs—and how much did you dedicate to the hard-working localizers who were slowly building a critical acclaim you didn’t even deign to recognize? CMX was too good for you; you employed staff that handily exceeded the goals set for it — ‘you’ (via your agents) licensed titles so good that fans drooled, and yet even with that beach-head and head-start, you failed them in your execution. And You Did This For Five Years.

Dude.

It was free money. Just sitting there. We can’t hand you a better deal. DC, you bungled it.

If I had the money, I’d buy up everything and everyone involved with CMX and prove to you just how badly you botched this. Dear DC: Is the focus on summer tent-pole movies [not that you have one] and easily-licensed third-party crap, really more important than quality comics?

Oh, I already know the answer – I just wanted to get the uncaring, corporate, anti-fan bastards on record, saying the actual product counts for crap and the only thing that matters is making money on the hard work of artists. Dear DC: fuck you.

updates 9 May, 10am: added RBGSX chart and reporting to the news coverage originally posted Friday night

Lead Story:

Apple sells one million iPads. [link]

oooo…. [dr.evil] One Million iPads [/dr.evil]

[Geek Biz Editorial]

Perspective: a scant million is between the total metro populations of Tulsa, OK and Tuscon, AZ — and only half the populations of Vegas, Kansas City, Orlando, San Antonio, or Cleveland. (that is to say, still half as small of any of the five, let alone considering the combined population of 10 Million in the 5 cities cited)

Yeah, yeah, a million is a big number but it doesn’t light me on fire yet — imagine the press release: “Apple sells iPads to just under half of Cleveland, OH”

Internationally, 1 mil is one person in 12 in Beijing or London, one person in 15 in L.A. or Hong Kong, one in 20 in New York, Seoul, or Mexico City, and just one person in 32 in Tokyo.

Dude. iPad hasn’t even cracked local Tokyo fandom numbers yet. More people watch K-On in its native language than own an iPad. The market for Yui, Mio, & Asuza figures is bigger than the whole iPad App marketplace.

Don’t let 6 zeroes distract you. One Million is nothing. An extremely profitable nothing, but the iPad user base is half the size of Cleveland. There’s an Ohio Wal-Mart out there with a larger potential ‘user-base’

##

more trashing the iPad:

Disney Says IPad Owners Played 1.5 Million ABC Shows – translation: toy owners use toy to watch TV. Is this news? What else are they going to use the damn thing for, compiling spreadsheets?

Dude, these aren’t computers. They may be better than computers, for what their target market wants, and I stress again, they will likely prove extremely profitable for Apple, but it seems like people want to slot the iPad into categories where it just doesn’t belong.

I’m calling it: the iPad is the first ‘smart TV’ — it does stuff other TVs don’t, & it’s portable. Bully for Apple. But this is an old market segment: popular entertainment platforms. The iPad isn’t even a netbook, or a gimped computer, or a super smart phone: it’s just a fancy TV. It doesn’t do anything more or less than an internet-linked Wii, PSP or X-Box attached to a normal TV (or even a regular cable box attached to same).

The iPad isn’t a revolution in computers, it’s a revolution in entertainment. Dell shouldn’t be worried; Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, and Charter should be. If Apple announces tomorrow that they’re buying Netflix or Hulu (note: not gonna happen, but if) then your backlist-movie, re-run watching ass is pwned. This isn’t a battle for tech dominance, it’s a new struggle for who has the rights to feed you couch potatoes reruns of Lost and Gilligan’s Island (if the two are, in fact, distinct shows and not just reiterations of the same damn thing)

The sooner we all realize that, the sooner we can move the iPad buzz to TV Guide, where it belongs — and then dedicated Games sites, Tech sites, Book sites, Biz sites, and Geek sites can get back to content — the actual stuff that makes the rest exciting — with only cursory mentions of Jobs’s new TV Walkman.*

* yes, Walkman is a Sony trademark, which only shows that even with a 30-year head start, Sony still managed to drop the ball.
[/editorial]

► Speaking of popular entertainment: One Million Wii users stream Netflix. See? One million isn’t a hard number to get to.

► Gamasutra in depth on GameStop: part one; part two

I’d like to point out that GameStop, before its IPO, was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. One could argue that without the influx of outside cash (or Len Riggio’s initial buy-out) they wouldn’t have been able to buy up all their competition & expand internatonally. Which is fair. But there is also an alternate universe where B&N supplimented their music & DVD sales with in-store GameStops (honestly, these things take up ridiculously little square footage) and ended up more like a MediaPlay — except, you know, profitable and less likely to go out of business.

I get the warm fuzzies when I imagine either Riggio waking up in a cold sweat over lost opportunities — at it’s Jan. 2008 peak it was trading at 8 times it’s avg. 2003 price. Of course, the 2004 and 2009 paychecks Riggio got out of the deal certainly means he sleeps quite well. Note, currently [at least according to MSN Money] no one person or entity owns more than 5% of GameStop, so it really is a publically traded company now.

disclaimer: B&N signs my paychecks. But my blogging is neither paid nor authorised by my employer, and in fact is probably a bad idea.

speaking of B&N:

► Ron Burkle sues B&N over dick-move to keep Riggios et al. in control. My gloss on the headline reveals my opinion on the ‘poison-pill’ provision; while I actually appreciate the lack of ‘corporate’ interference in day-to-day operations, and a new profit-minded corporate overlord is just going to make the situation worse, I harbor some animosity toward both Len & Steve Riggio (who still run the company, despite recent cosmetic changes) and change would be good at the ol’ employer. If the fact that B&N signs my paycheck makes you feel I’m biased, you’re welcome to take the above statements in that light.

► News Corporation Reports Third Quarter Revenue Growth of 19% Generating Net Income of $839 Million; $0.32 Per Share. not much to add. The HarperCollins chunk of that is also up.

► Time Warner, home of DC Entertainment [neé DC Comics] also reported quarterly earnings; the “Highest Quarterly Profits in Company History” — all without mentioning anything about either comics or comics-based movies.

Not even Batman. yep.

► CBS also reports quarterly earnings, with a more human touch, “‘I could not be more pleased with how CBS performed in the first quarter of this year, and I’m confident that Leslie and his management team will build on this success as the economy continues to recover,’ said Sumner Redstone, Executive Chairman, CBS Corporation.”

PW has an update on the publishing chunk of that, A slight decline at Simon & Schuster

► Time Warner, CBS, and News Corp. all benefit from a rebound in the advertising market.

► FBI can act like a hero because publishers, finally, ask them to. – Every comic, manga, & anime blogger is all over this story, and you might think I’d chime in with an editorial, but no: neither of my two editorials this week are on the HTML Comics bust. It is what it is. As an isolated incident I don’t think I can label this as either a precedent or as a seed to a trend.

► Dark Crystal gets a sequel. Go Henson

► Seth Godin wants you to rethink your blog as a ‘micro-magazine’. Actually, he said no such thing, but I’m reading between the lines, and thinking there are at least 10 ‘blogs’ I follow that could make that leap, if they wanted to.

► Activision Blizzard is also doing the happy dance

► Borders is soon to launch Kobo Actually, the web site is up, and they’re taking pre-orders for the device itself. This puts them about 6 months behind B&N, and 3 years behind Amazon and its Kindle. Is this too late? Well, the $149 price-point ($110 less than nook and kindle) is certainly a wedge to drive into the market…

But can it also compete with the iPad? You see, even in 6 months the whole market has changed.

Via Publishers Weekly: BISG all gloom-and-doom this year

We’ve been predicting the end of publishing, and by extension book retail, since Gutenburg’s second book
(“well, it certainly didn’t sell as well as the bible. I don’t see this technology going anywhere.”)

[Geek Biz Editorial]

Bookstores don’t sell books anymore [alas]

We sell atmosphere, we provide a commnunity center, a Third Place. We’ve absorbed and subsumed the role of the newstand, the music store, & the coffee shop (though Coffee Shops and even the Diner are still extant and still operate — we demand sweets, grease, and caffeine at a much greater rate than we consume books & other print; our appetite for information isn’t any less voracious, but the internet serves the ‘fast food’-style information needs quite readily. Rarely do most of us feel the need for more substantial books and magazines; and yet the underlying need is still there, and fine, white-table-cloth dining still exists even in an overwhelming world of fast food options.)

The physicallity of a bookstore is in fact something Amazon covets, and has attempted to patent — good luck with that, and of course your not only wrong but *centuries* too late to claim this as an “original invention” — and the actual bookstore — bricks, mortar, coffee, tables, comfy chairs, and books-on-shelves — when taken as a whole is the one thing that can not be pushed to a web site. You might as well think the internet will replace concert halls or sports stadia — yes, for some users, for some uses, a web site is better, but Real Life wins out in almost all cases.

E-books are fine. MP3s are fine. Everything can be had online, more conveniently, more rapidly, more often — and all that is fine. The internet has been around for 30 years, Powell’s & Amazon have been online for 15 years — and all that is fine.

And yet you still come into the bookstore, and no matter what your options, you always will. Yeah, sure, you can buy that on Amazon. But when you can’t even find it on Amazon, where do you go?

You bug me. At your local bookstore.

This is a dynamic even more potent than ‘one-click shopping’ — I just need to sell you a coffee before you leave the storefront to go order it on Amazon, because that’s the only way I will get anything out of you leeches who value a $.56 discount over expertise, knowledge, and enthusiasm for books. Customers suck.

And please, buy a scone with you coffee. It’s the only money we see these days.
[/editorial]

► last note, via the Orange County Local News Network, Comic Con Cage Match, local news edition:

[Geek Biz Editorial]

Most of us don’t care if “San Diego” stays in San Diego, because we can’t afford the badges, travel costs, hotel costs, or (in some cases) can’t even line up five days off in a row because we work for a living

Comic Con International might as well be held in orbit, at L5, and for 99% of the people who read your con reports online, hell, it is held in orbit for all we know. We read about it, we see the pictures, ass else.

It’s not about economic impact, but marketing your city/convention center, and of course, bragging rights. Even if we consider CCI as more of a break-even prospect for the host city for the actual weekend, Comic Con has a business value that extends beyond the con:

“If you can do Comic-Con, you can do the next largest meeting that comes along,” [Charles Ahlers, president of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau] said. “It becomes a marquee event.”

This talk of restaurants and hotels and local support is nice I guess, but only pertains to the actual folks who can attend. One eighth of iPad owners, if I can tie the first editorial into the third — and permanently fixed at a mere one eighth of a million so long as the CCI is stuck in San Diego — get to attend the grand geek prom and the rest of us just read about it on the internet.

Once again: 8 times as many people now own an iPad, as opposed to the scant 125,000 who attended last years CCI. Dude.

[/editorial]

##

Aggregate prices on the Rocket Bomber Geek Stock Index fell 94.57 points (9.18%) – Despite several major firms all reporting record (or at least, quite profitable) results from the past three months. Fears over Greek Debt, Gulf oil slicks, and just the usual lizard-brain reactions of the market are to blame.

Rolling 10-week RBGSX Aggregate Price

Value at close of markets Friday 7 May 2010: $936.06

& the 25 stocks: CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS), The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), News Corporation (NASDAQ:NWSA), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA), Wiley John & Sons Inc. (NYSE:JW.A), The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE:MHP), Lagardere SCA (EPA:MMB), Pearson PLC (NYSE:PSO), Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ:SCHL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Books-A-Million, Inc. (NASDAQ:BAMM), Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP), Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), Hastings Entertainment, Inc (NASDAQ:HAST), Indigo Books & Music Inc. (TSE:IDG), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), Navarre Corporation (NASDAQ:NAVR), Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME), Nintendo Co., Ltd (OTC:NTDOY), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Please note: nothing here is investment advice. full disclaimer

Level I: Obscure Fandoms

definition: there are too many obscure fandoms to count — as many as stars in the sky, books in the bookstore, or videos at the near-extinct local rental place.

poster boy: To pick my own? Atlanta’s now defunct Beer Garten (not a typo, and not the proper-Deutsch “Atlanta Bier Garten” or proper-English “Atlanta Beer Garden” but the-owners-obviously-don’t-know-German-but-they-might-have-seen-it-once “Beer Garten”) (and link – “I will likely mourn the Beer Garten until the day I die.”)

- the thing about level 1 fandoms is that no one has ever really heard of them, past a very small handful of fans. This is, in fact, their defining characteristic. This does not make these fandoms any less rabid.

Level II: One-Shot Fandoms

definition: we’ve all heard of it, it was kind-of-a-big-thing once but then died six months later.

poster boy: The Black Hole

- at level 2, the property gets nation-wide exposure, a big budget, and a major push by a corporation, and usually makes quite a bit of money. The memories linger long after the project leaves the limelight — or really, any kind of relevancy — eventually it becomes just another component of the overall nostalgia-compost of a generation’s collective memory.

Level III: Wholly Owned Fandoms

definition: you know that one movie, with the sequels? an established corporate-owned property that is popular, and has ‘fans’, but doesn’t inspire or encourage fan participation or secondary works

poster boy: The Mighty Ducks

- obviously, I’m being hipster-ironic when I pick the Mighty Ducks as a fandom — but there are always the Anaheim Ducks — I’ll remind you, an actual NHL franchise — to prove that some ‘jokes’ get deadly serious before you can even finish off your PBR Tallboy. The actual level of fan ‘participation’ in level 3 fandoms is questionable, but someone, somewhere with a PR budget is still pushing this thing. That is not to say that if you happen to like a wholly-owned fandom, you’re in the wrong; obviously, someone has to like it or the whole thing fails.

Level IV: Established Fandoms

definition: A solid property that is enjoyed by many; one with a long half-life that takes quite some time to taper off, and that merits and survives the occasional reboot.

poster boys: James Bond, Dr. Who

- there are a number of properties that are popular, well known, and when the owners deign to make new product, manage to capture both the media spotlight and enthusiasm of the established fan base. We all enjoy the occasional Bond film, but there isn’t a large fanbase writing Bond fanfic. (Please don’t mention Dr. Who fanfic) (I asked nicely. please)

Established fandoms usually rule a given media (TV or Film) without necessarily making the jump to others — there are derivative works, but these are usually considered inferior or lacking in some way, and fans revert to the original medium – especially when the designated corporate parent releases a new version of the same old show an exciting ‘reboot’ of the property in it’s original medium.

Tron, with the new ‘Legacy’ release, is graduating from a level 2 direct to a level 4. (And I can’t wait for the new movie)

Level V: Massively Popular Established Fandoms

definition: A property that manages to be successful across multiple media, while also engendering massive fan participation. Please note: sometimes a level 4 is more successful, financially, than a level 5 — but while we merely consume the former, we obsess over the latter.

Poster boy: Joss Whedon

- Kevin Smith might merit a 4.5: we like his movies and forgive the rest, or we follow his comics writing career because, hey, he made those Jay & Silent Bob movies (and there’s all that comic stuff in Chasing Amy) — but there was never a synergy between the two to set his fandom on fire.

Joss exceeds level 4; not just because he’s done movies, comics, and TV – but beacuse he inspires buffistas, whedonites, and browncoats… and he can do musicals, too. All That, And Yet: Whedon isn’t Rowling, or even Lucas. I couldn’t even say authoritatively that everyone knows his name. It’s a big niche, but still a niche

Level VI: Corporate Fandoms

definition: typically founded in the 60s or 70s (or a legacy property from the 20s or 30s) it’s an iconic character we all know, and often love, but which for whatever reason never quite lives up to its full potential

Poster boy: Superman

- these get by and coast (often for years) on the strength of their history and the decades-long library. Eventually, someone at corporate remembers they own the damn thing, and they think to reintroduce it to new audiences while simultaneously tapping the established fanbase and soaking them for a few bucks.

With a little work, it’s possible to push a level 6 to a level 7 — for a time. Superman did that in the 80s, following the 1978 film (and at least two sequels; yeah there were others but after Sup3 did you really care?) and maybe building up to the ‘Death of Superman’ arc in the DC comics in what, 1992? [I forget the exact year] but Supes was a thing and then over. [Smallville was it’s own thing and is also now, largely over]

Obviously the charater and property remain, but it’s hard to keep this going at higher levels no matter how ‘popular’ the character. Eventually, you lose steam and some other property comes along to capture the imagination of the general public.

We know the official product and look forward to new instalments, but we know each chapter might in fact be the last — and if it is, well, the corpus stands as a complete work.

Level VII: Corporate Tent-Pole Fandoms

definition: It’s the big summer movie event, or the one show everyone watches on Friday night.

Poster boy: Iron Man

- In 2009, Watchmen managed to vault from a level 2 fandom all the way up to level seven, based on a movie trailer shown at San Diego CCI and the collective nerdgasm that followed on the web. Level 7 is a transitory state; either a property peaks here before falling back into relative-fan-obscurity, or this is just a stepping stone on the way up to greater things. And it’s odd: this is almost always related to a big summer movie release — one could argue that X-Files, Buffy, and the new Battlestar Galactica hit level 7 based on their respective TV shows [in the early 90s, late 90s, and aughts, respectively] so the movies aren’t the only route to level 7 status — but a big-budget Hollywood movie really helps.

The vast majority of tent-pole fans are as ephemeral as the morning fog. They gather around a major release because it’s new and shiny, but they aren’t the sort who hang around for years, waiting for the next instalment in the franchise. They will have already moved on.

Level VIII: Corporate Wet-Dream Fandoms

definition: An established series in one medium which spawns multiple spin-offs in other media, plus licensing for toys, t-shirts, crappy board games, lunch boxes, and a world of other, cheap, imported crap.

Poster boys: Pokemon, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and—at least for now—Batman, Spider-man, and [*sigh*] Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books —and in a large sense, the DC and Marvel universes when taken as a whole moreso than the sum of their parts.

- these series pay the bills. It’s like winning the lottery for some companies/creators: milk it for all it’s worth, occasonally repackage it, and ride the gravy train for life. Yes, we’re looking at you, Lucas.

A solid, established level 8 will even survive poorly-conceived and badly executed extensions of the brand [once again, we’re looking at you, George] The thing is, there is enough other stuff involved that the series will continue on, and even the bad decisions and awkward story choices can be made to fit, and occasionally, be made to shine.

I don’t know if corporations employ professional turd-polishers or if turd-polishing is just another function of writers and editorial — but rather than refute anything or admit any past mistake, they’ll take the most convoluted premises or basically bad writing and somehow work it into continuity, lest the admission of a mis-step somehow devalue the whole franchise.

[and yes, I was also thinking of Marvel & DC, but mostly Marvel, when I wrote that last sentence]

Level IX: Permafandoms.

definition: At some point, your back catalog is so good that you can stop making anything new — or you can even make derivative things that detract from the original, and the fans don’t care.

poster boy: Mickey Mouse, Mario. Star Wars and Star Trek are so close, but not quite here yet. Some comic book characters/franchises might also rate a level 9, if they weren’t continuously retconned and rebooted; it’s hard to know which version we’re talking about so there isn’t a single ‘comic’ to talk about.

- no, really, what was the last good ‘Mickey’ — I’m thinking the Sorcerer’s Apprentice short in Fantasia and that was in 1940, dammit and honestly, the Disney shorts with Mick aren’t that good — so, um, Walt was the best salesman ever? Or we just give Walt & Mick a pass because it’s Disney and he was one of the first things on TV? Is that all it takes? Are we so enamored of the theme parks? …damn.

Other properties spike at level 9, but don’t stay long: Christopher Reeve’s Superman; Tim Burton’s Batman (with Jack Nicholson’s Joker); or Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight.

If you consider a single week, one news cycle, hell: a lot of properties seem to hit level 9 and all claim they’ll stay there, but it never quite works out that way. The vast majority of fans have too short an attention span.

Level X. Myth and Legend.

defintion: see appropriate academic resources.

poster boy: Homer. Virgil. Dante. Shakespeare. Dickens. Twain.

- at this point, your characters are famous world-wide. Their very names can be shorthand for a definining characteristic, or a summary of their major struggles. Everyone knows — but the copyright has expired, so everyone and anyone can propogate, re-write, remix, of otherwise use these iconic characters. This is a good thing, for humanity and the Humanities. This is a bad thing for corporations, as there are few ways to monetize it [though Disney has been appropriating and monetizing the public domain since 1938. bastards]

All companies aspire to properties that are iconic — but stop just short of the ultimate, public-domain, universally known myths, legends, and icons. They’ll make them look just like a level 10, but they don’t really want to be there because level 10 is Greek Myth (or Egyptian, or Mayan, or Norse, or Celtic, or Zoroastrian) and while they’d very much like to take on the trappings of universal myth, they won’t quite go that far as there is no money in it.

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Comics fandom almost always follow the major media release, else it’s just a level 2.

Manga fandom, when we can coat-tail on an anime release, usually peaks at a level 4 (unless it’s Mario or Pokemon or Final Fantasy – which tap the gamer fan base) but is more often just a level 1 fandom. [sucks. I know. I’m right there with you guys.]

Anime fandom defaults at level 2, and seldom rises above level 3 — unless there is a cable broadcast, or a game. We love to consume Japanese content, but games and (occasionally) DVDs are the only major ways we express that love. Pokemon is an obvious outlier.

I think fans were much better about buying DVDs historically than they have been in the last 3 to 5 years. We must remember though: anime, and manga, and to an extent even mainstream games of Japanese origin (Final Fantasy included) are just a niche in the overall American market.

Obviously, something like Pokemon or whatever is on prime time cable or Saturday morning network TV & is going to get a boost. In a new digital age, where there is no ‘prime time’ or ‘cable’ or ‘network’ for that matter I’m not sure how we’ll introduce anime to new generations

The trick, if I can call it a trick, is getting even a small percentage to buy, whether they’re at a level one or level seven fandom.

From the Publisher:

Shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze, deadly creatures—mushi—came into terrifying being. They still exist and wreak havoc in the world today. One man with a sardonic smile has the knowledge and skill to save those plagued by mushi.

…

They Have Existed Since The Dawn Of Time

Some live in the deep darkness behind your eyelids. Some eat silence. Some thoughtlessly kill. Some simply drive men mad. Shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze, these deadly creatures, mushi, came into terrifying being. And they still exist and wreak havoc in the world today. Ginko, a young man with a sardonic smile, has the knowledge and skill to save those plagued by mushi… perhaps.

Mushishi is a 10 volume manga series from Yuki Urushibara, who has also written at least one manga short-story collection and is the author of the new ongoing series, Suiiki, which started in November of 2009. Both Mushishi and Suiiki are serialized in Kodansha’s Afternoon. Mushishi won an Excellence Prize at the 2003 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2006 Kodansha Manga Award.

There is a 26-episode anime adaptation by the Artland studio, which ran Oct. ’05 to June ’06 (and which has been licensed and released in the US and Canada by Funimation [flash site]) and a live-action movie, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, originally released 24 March 2007 — and also released in the US by Funimation as a subtitled DVD, which came out Aug. 2009.

[though no official word was found on the Funimation site, a listing on RightStuf points to a new re-release of the Viridian Collection Edition of the full Mushishi anime for just $40 MSRP, timed for early June in advance of the Del Rey release of the vols. 8-10 omnibus in July.]

Mushishi is an episodic manga, and what passes for an ongoing plot are the reveals of the past of our enigmatic protagonist Ginko, the Mushishi or mushi-master of the title. Each chapter is largely self-contained, with a problem presented to Ginko by whatever local mushi might be evident, and then a conclusion: but not always a ‘cure’ or solution. Sometimes the only way to deal with mushi is to find the proper balance, or to more fully accept them; sometimes there isn’t a happy ending, because there can’t be a happy ending.

This mix of conflict and acceptance, redemption and tragedy — and the thick layer of mystical, elemental, primeval mushi that exist just beneath the surface — combined with the dreamlike qualities of the story and the seemingly never-ending series of small, isolated Japanese villages — and the timelessness of the setting (Ginko seems a modern man perpetually wandering a pre-1900 Japanese wilderness) — and it all adds up to a manga that hits emotional notes and spurs intellectual reflection in the reader.

It’s about as far from shojo sparkles and shonen tournaments as we can get.

Not that it’s perfect. In an upcoming series of diary posts (reviewing a volume a week, give or take) I’ll be critically re-reading each volume in turn and I’ll be quite happy to pick nits and to point to flaws. But taken as a whole, Urushibara’s Mushishi is a magical world to get lost in, for an hour or two. Also, each chapter stands alone, so it’s easy to dip in-and-out, say, during lunch breaks or while commuting on the train.

I’m taking the Mushishi MMF as an opportunity; a starting point, not a way to post my final thoughts on the series — and this is only natural, as the series hasn’t ended yet. And depending on how long it takes me to post the seven weekly volume reviews, I might even closely run up into a review of an ARC of vols. 8-10, provided Del Rey can get those out in advance of the 27 July release date.

More than 2 years ago I wrote a review of volume 1. — I’m trying not to think about it much, lest it colour the new review (or about how much I think I’ve improved as a blogger & writer since them) but it does count as record of my introduction to the series.

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The April Manga Moveable Feast is hosted by Ed Sizemore at Manga Worth Reading. Please check out the review index posted there for other views on Mushishi.