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Post by jporcellino on Nov 29, 2023 21:20:15 GMT
I do think Amazon has caused problems with how people think of this stuff. A long time ago, if I sent someone $5 cash for a zine and they never ever sent it, after 5 years? Ok, bad. But...once I got sent a zine two years after ordering, and that seemed to be part of the culture. An online shop run by one person is so hard to keep stable, even if you're setting inventory quantities and being really careful. You table at a show, you sell some stuff, you update the quantities but...uh oh, you made one mistake and now here you are writing an email to a customer about a refund. Or, jeez, you're trying to keep the margins right and running the inventory out of a place that can no longer handle the amount of items you have, you know there's a copy of Bubbles #5 around somewhere, but now you've spent an hour looking for it and there are dozens of other orders to pack. Might need to refund that one as well! And, oddly, sometimes it's the same customer who that happens to a few times. Copacetic ran a brick and mortar store as well, it's impossible to keep that stuff straight all the time unless you have a staff, which...I don't think they did in any real sense. Porccellino, who also presumably has (or had) a day job - did a better job than Copacetic, who presumably did nothing but run their store, or an entire warehouse of hippies at Last Gasp. It can be done. Kudos to those like John P who manage it. Trust me, I fuck up plenty. It's one of the main reasons I'm winding down the shop. My diminishing brain power can't handle the complexities of running something like Spit and a Half at the level I have been anymore. Some customers you can tell pore through the online listings looking for all the rare or otherwise long out of print stuff -- and a lot of the time I actually DO have that stuff in stock -- but a lot of the times I get the order and I'm like "What? I haven't had copies of that in ten years..." and I go to the listing and sure enough it shows as available. It kills me to fuck up, but yeah, one guy running something this complex with limited resources (time/space etc), it's gonna happen. And I would imagine Copacetic has way, way more inventory to sift through than I ever had, including a lot of single copies, which are a real headache to manage. |
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Post by dominocorp on Nov 29, 2023 23:01:28 GMT
Mini comics mail order is not THE hardest job in the world, but the margins make it such that you can't really hire help and still have the entire thing function for everyone involved, meaning enough support for yourself to devote the right amount of time/paying people what they're owed in a dependable on time way. I am seriously considering putting Domino on a 6 month hiatus in January, which for a long time I thought I'd never do---but the cycle of packing so many orders every week, keeping up with payments and then the bazillion customer emails is hard to maintain every week for 10+ years...
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Post by owaddled on Nov 29, 2023 23:04:48 GMT
Mini comics mail order is not THE hardest job in the world, but the margins make it such that you can't really hire help and still have the entire thing function for everyone involved, meaning enough support for yourself to devote the right amount of time/paying people what they're owed in a dependable on time way. I am seriously considering putting Domino on a 6 month hiatus in January, which for a long time I thought I'd never do---but the cycle of packing so many orders every week, keeping up with payments and then the bazillion customer emails is hard to maintain every week for 10+ years... Do you think there's a sweet spot in inventory size that would make things more sustainable? Or is that not even the main issue? |
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Post by dominocorp on Nov 29, 2023 23:41:09 GMT
I think a business that can grow and sustain itself as it grows needs some separate capital injected into it at key times, to bridge the growth, which I don't have and most comics people do not have. I suppose one can apply for a loan, which I've considered but also scares the hell out of me because I never want to be in debt for comics. Personally, I'm always interested as to what family money helped small comic concerns become sustainable, not to discredit what they've achieved with that investment (because just being given money doesn't guarantee anything) but just to see if it's possible to build something that keeps going if that kind of support is not and will not be available.
I like posting, at the end of the year when I'm doing tax prep, what the numbers are: what a years worth of postage costs, what the total amount of artists payments is, the amount of money brought in...I think that kind of transparency would be helpful all around, though I get why no one wants to do it.
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Post by wigshop on Nov 29, 2023 23:48:16 GMT
Let out a big shudder over reading through all these familiar shop anxieties! Austin and John P - I'm in awe of the scale you guys manage to maintain.
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Post by pentimento on Nov 30, 2023 0:55:44 GMT
this is so on topic for the "Comic Sale/Deal Thread" Sorry schoolmarm |
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Post by mikesheawright on Nov 30, 2023 21:31:55 GMT
we need some kind of slush fund for distributors. i'd kick in some cash every month to some centralized Paypal or whatever. then contributors can vote on who needs it the most? kind of like a group version of Koyama Provides.
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Post by owaddled on Nov 30, 2023 22:12:58 GMT
we need some kind of slush fund for distributors. i'd kick in some cash every month to some centralized Paypal or whatever. then contributors can vote on who needs it the most? kind of like a group version of Koyama Provides. I'm 1000% down for this cause. Our own endowment for distributors. |
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Post by jporcellino on Dec 1, 2023 14:11:28 GMT
...the margins make it such that you can't really hire help and still have the entire thing function for everyone involved, meaning enough support for yourself to devote the right amount of time/paying people what they're owed in a dependable on time way. ... This is it in a nutshell... the money's there to make it viable for a one-person concern, but beyond that there's not enough cushion to ride out the hiring of additional help. About midway through the 2010s, I made a push with the distro, greatly increased my stock, updated regularly, with the idea that I'd be able to get to the point where I could hire someone part time to help. The work exploded, but it never got to the point where I could realistically take on the added expense of an employee. In a way, that decision really harmed the distro because it put me into an untenable position... It merely added a ton more work to my already-difficult burden, without really changing my day-to-day $$ situation. |
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Post by jporcellino on Dec 1, 2023 14:20:31 GMT
Mini comics mail order is not THE hardest job in the world, but the margins make it such that you can't really hire help and still have the entire thing function for everyone involved, meaning enough support for yourself to devote the right amount of time/paying people what they're owed in a dependable on time way. I am seriously considering putting Domino on a 6 month hiatus in January, which for a long time I thought I'd never do---but the cycle of packing so many orders every week, keeping up with payments and then the bazillion customer emails is hard to maintain every week for 10+ years... Do you think there's a sweet spot in inventory size that would make things more sustainable? Or is that not even the main issue? This is my current plan with Spit and a Half. I don't think I could ever give it up completely. I've been doing this stuff since I was 23, and it's in my blood, too much a part of my identity in comics... but I do want to get it back maybe to where it was in the nineties... a smaller inventory of work by artists who I have close personal relationships with. Back then it was like a family, now, not to say I'm not connected to the folks whose stuff I sell, but it's just so huge. Also, switching from the model of "I'm going to carry everything I can, and like if I sell an artists self-published work, I'll carry their Fanta/D+Q etc work too, even though those books are readily available through mainstream suppliers", and selling everything a small publisher puts out just to support them even if some titles are poor sellers etc; and restocking them endlessly -- to carrying a small, focused selection of titles, and focusing on current things, not backstock. Order a new book, if it sells out quickly, reorder once or twice, but then let it go to make room for the next thing. ie keep a smaller, constantly rotating selection, instead of being a one stop shop for fifteen years worth of books. Spit and a Half stock grew to fill two rooms in our house plus a storage unit. Too much. As I mentioned above, I dreamed for awhile of growing to the point where I could have a dedicated warehouse/workspace, hire a few people etc. And I do think that could work for a group of energized people with capital (as Austin mentioned above). You'd need more money available than the distro itself provides to bridge the growing pains into a sustainable, fully-fledged business. |
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Post by jporcellino on Dec 1, 2023 14:22:59 GMT
we need some kind of slush fund for distributors. i'd kick in some cash every month to some centralized Paypal or whatever. then contributors can vote on who needs it the most? kind of like a group version of Koyama Provides. Not to cry in my coffee, because there are plenty of people who make it clear to me to me how much Spit and a Half means to them, but distro is a kind of invisible part of the comics business. Cool stuff appears on store shelves, or in your mailbox, but really what it takes to make that happen is kind of a mystery or often not even acknowledged or considered. |
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Post by mikesheawright on Dec 6, 2023 23:08:02 GMT
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kevinfong
Full Member
IG - @professorwormington
Posts: 110
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Post by kevinfong on Dec 7, 2023 12:24:36 GMT
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Post by BubblesZine on Dec 7, 2023 12:46:09 GMT
thank you  |
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Post by pentimento on Dec 10, 2023 16:59:21 GMT
What is Utility Sketchbook? The description on Copacetic's sight is an embarrassment - typical inside baseball team comics "If you have to ask, you'll never know" bullshit that is an immediate turnoff, fuck you Mr. Copacetic, how small is your penis? It's listed on PictureBox's site, but has no page or description of its own. |
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