A quick post about my experiences during Free Comic Book Day 2011. Just a few thoughts I wanted to write down.
There was a mad rush when the shop opened. Not tons of people but enough to wake you up. Very few people (maybe just a handful) asked for any specific comic, most were happy to take the age appropriate pre-sorted bags Mike had set up prior to Saturday.
There was a nice mix of adults to kids, I would have been disappointed if only adults had shown up. The kids wanted to pick the comics set out while the parents were the ones that pointed out that they could get all the issues by grabbing the bags. Most people were cool about not taking more than they should. We were careful not to leave out too many Hal Jordan HeroClix figures. I don’t know what it is about those small figures but the people who came looking for them wanted more than one.
People came in waves, we were never overwhelmed nor totally empty of customers. Lots stuck around to take advantage of the sales going on in both the comic and gaming departments. By late afternoon (3:30ish) we had gone through most of the popular titles. Don’t get me wrong, Ralph’s Comic Corner ordered LOTS. We just had LOTS of people come in and Ralph and Mike are very generous with the free comics. At this time we started pulling out previous year’s Free Comic Book Day offering to bulk up our selection.
People didn’t seem to mind that the comics weren’t from the current year but, like I mentioned earlier, most didn’t come looking for any specific issue. I’m not sure exactly what this means. Was there no specific issue this year that got people excited? Are these customers not regular readers? We did run out of Green Lantern comics; we had lots of Captain America/Thor issues left (this might also be because we had more Thor issues to begin with).
Most customers were very appreciative, we even got the famous “you mean FREE free? ” question a few times. It’s too bad FCBD doesn’t get more media coverage because I think more people would have loved to get free comics IF THEY JUST KNEW ABOUT FCBD.
I’d like to thank the customers who I got to talk to (and hopefully help) and to Ralph, Mike and Seth at Ralph’s Comic Corner for hosting FCBD. It isn’t cheap for them to buy so many comics but they do it because they love comics and their customers.
Oh! One last thing. I wrote some notes down while working with Mike. Just some nuggets of wisdom about the comic book shop biz. I’d like to share them with you:
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