How to Sell Comics to Mainstream Bookbuyers?

By Neal 

Occasional Superheroine blogger Valerie D’Orazio found herself browsing in a B&N comics section recently, and noticed that while manga took up more than half the space, superhero comics were confined to just 7 percent of the territory. And even then, she says, the trade paperbacks had great difficulty standing out from one another. Virgin Comics, for example, “had dazzling covers but completely ignorable thin spines,” a big problem when books are shelved spine-out. On the manga shelves, though, “most books sported white spines with colorful logos and representative art,” she observed. “What you got was a joyous riot of books that fairly begged you to pick them up.”

D’Orazio has some tips for how publishers can improve their presentation, including “reprint[ing] more pages in each volume as to get a bigger book spine” and “[using] more bright colors for your trade spines.” What she can’t say for sure, though, is whether these new techniques would really accelerate sales of superhero books outside the comics shops. I would think there has to be some room for growth, especially given the number of DC and Marvel characters that are being transformed into film franchises these days…