In part one of this particular column, I considered the obstacles preventing publishers from switching to a graphic novel-only format - thereby doing away with single issues - and how those obstacles might be overcome in order to reap the benefits of a burgeoning market.

That was the idealism. So let's now assume this utopia has arrived, and all comics are now published in book form. The reader gets a complete story, and everyone in the industry is making a long-term investment that will reap them greater long-term rewards. In short, everybody's happy. That's how it works, right?

Well, not quite.

The Cynicism: A Glut in the Door

What happens when you move from a largely periodical-based, magazine-like market to one where product is largely permanent and book-size?

Upheaval and not a small amount of disaster, potentially.

'Too many books, and not enough readers with not enough money.' Noted retailer Brian Hibbs (of Comix Experience, San Francisco) raised a good point a few weeks ago. Hibbs doesn't have a small shop, by any means. It's no Borders, but for a comic shop it's on the large side. Brian is also one of those retailers you hear so much about, the ten percent who account for ninety percent of American comics sold. His sales volume is largely based on graphic novels, and he keeps as many books as he can in stock.

But Hibbs has a problem: he's running out of space. There are too many graphic novels for him to carry them all. And he believes that we're heading for a glut - a case of too many books, and not enough readers, with not enough money to buy them all.

It would be easy to discount Hibbs' theory as blind panic, if not for the fact that more than a few other successful retailers share his concerns. Some of them aren't even in America - this isn't a US-only issue.

The problem can be summed up in four words: "shelf space" and "inventory stock".

Inventory stock, to any business, is bad news. It means products sitting on your shelves, not being purchased, and therefore not making money. Instead, they take up valuable space which could be used instead to stock products that do make money.

You can see that this is a problem to anyone not subsidised by a large company. Consequently, it's not restricted to retailers. Publishers and distributors must tackle it, too - especially those not used to carrying this much 'backstock'.

If Marvel decides to print a new IRON MAN graphic novel, it's not worth the publisher's or the printer's time to print less than a certain amount in order to make the printing cost-effective. So let's say they print eight thousand, based on orders of seven thousand. Right off the bat, that's a thousand books that aren't making them any money. Books that have cost them money to produce. And if the book doesn't perform extremely well, retailers may not re-order it for some time. No re-orders from retailers means no re-orders from Diamond. No re-orders from Diamond means a whole load of graphic novels sitting in a warehouse somewhere which aren't making money.

This is the object of 'ideal efficiency,' something which all publishers strive for on their products - a position where the amount left in unsold stock does not immediately harm their cashflow.

Calculating efficiency isn't something just anyone can do. There are people out there whose entire job is to monitor print runs against sales, constantly revising their figures in an attempt to achieve better efficiency for their employers. And they're still in a job, because Joe Public's buying habits are one of the most unpredictable things on this earth.

'What happens when Marvel runs out of the good stuff?' Marvel in particular is going to be one of the more interesting travellers on the road ahead. Historically, its graphic novel line (the great majority of which is trade paperback collections) has performed pretty badly.

Marvel didn't come out of the last 'graphic novel boom' in the late '80s too well - possibly because its line consisted in the main of THOR and SPIDER-MAN collections, and possibly because they notoriously gave many books just one print run, leaving them in-demand but out-of-print.

'New Marvel' says that's changing. 'New Marvel' is producing graphic novels by the truckload, putting collections in stores barely before the original issues have left them. A while back, Marvel announced it would be soliciting ten graphic novels every month, and while on the surface that sounds great, it has a disturbing implication:

What happens when they run out of the good stuff?

When Marvel says 'jump', the majority of this industry says, 'how high?' This has been pretty much proven beyond a doubt over the last eighteen months, a time that has seen Marvel do just about everything possible to sour its public image with both retailers and fans - yet simultaneously posting its best sales figures in years.

So when Marvel runs out of NEW X-MEN, X-FORCE and SPIDER-MAN graphic novels to sell, what will it do next? It's going to start digging through its lesser titles, both old and new - the ones that are having enough trouble selling already. This isn't so much of a problem with comic retailers, who should be wise enough not to over-order such books. But one inevitable side-effect of this 'OGN future' will be an increased presence in your local Borders or Barnes & Noble - and with the best will in the world, most bookstore buyers don't know Jesse Custer from J Jonah Jameson.

So someone who reads a copy of GHOST WORLD and decides that this comics malarkey is actually pretty good is going to wander into a bookstore to buy some more comics... and walk straight into a wall of INCREDIBLE HULK VS THOR. And they're going to walk straight back out again.

Back in the comic stores, retailers are faced with the problem of what to order, and how much of it. They're not going to be able to stock everything, so something has to go. But what?

The glib-but-obvious answer is, "Whatever doesn't sell." But that approach could result in the comics equivalent of a store full of Britney Spears or PEARL HARBOR. And while I'm sure managers of large record stores get down on their knees every morning to thank Britney's navel for their profits, it would be a poor store indeed that didn't also stock at least a couple of CDs by John Lee Hooker or Henry Rollins (Who, on a relative scale, are probably equivalent to something like Rucka and Lieber's WHITEOUT).

Record stores, book stores, even department stores, they 'have it easy.' They can return stock that doesn't sell. If a record store is foolish enough to order John Lee Hooker's new CD in the same quantities as Britney Spears, and is subsequently left with a whole lot of unsold CDs, it can return them to the distributor. The store won't be entirely compensated - there are freight costs, not to mention that those CDs were taking up space that could have stocked product that would sell - but it's more than comic retailers get, thanks to the wonders of the Direct Market system and non-returnability.

The jury, incidentally, is well and truly out on returnability in comics. On the one hand, non-returnability means any retailer who misjudges his customers, and finds himself with 100 unsold copies of PANTS-MAN #56, is stuck with them. Somehow, he has to get rid of them without losing money.

'The reader, ideally, will reap the benefits of such a system.' On the other hand, non-returnability means higher purchasing discounts - and a few percentage points, especially on higher-priced items such as graphic novels, could mean the difference between survival and liquidation for a retailer. Non-returnability in the Direct Market has also allowed small publishers to thrive by knowing exactly how many guaranteed sales (to retailers, not readers) they have before they send the book to the printers.

So the answer would seem to be that comic stores must become more 'rounded' to survive. This future may still seem a fantasy for now, but for retailers like Hibbs it's fast becoming a reality. Stores must adapt to a model more similar to book or record stores, where guaranteed sellers - perennially popular books such as SANDMAN, PREACHER and WATCHMEN, and 'hot new titles' which change every month - subsidise the shelf space devoted to stocking books that any decent store is expected to carry, but may only sell two or three copies of a year.

At the same time, publishers both large and small must perform the same juggling act with their own titles. They must achieve the best efficiency they can, and make hard decisions on which books should go back to print - and which they should let go out of stock. Because every book sitting on a shelf in their warehouse is one more that isn't making them money at that moment.

The reader, ideally, will reap the benefits of such a system; wander into a store to pick up NEW X-MEN, and it's there on the shelf waiting for you in the New Releases section. Look around for a copy of HEAVY LIQUID, and chances are there will be one or two copies sitting on the shelves. If it's a copy of BACCHUS Volume 4 you're after, you'll probably have to order it - but it should arrive within a week or two. Just like a 'proper' book store.

That's the theory, and it's a grand one. But judging this balance is going to be tricky, for both retailers and publishers. And if it all goes wrong, we might just be looking at the worst crash our industry has seen in years.

Antony Johnston is the author of JULIUS, SPOOKED and THE LONG HAUL. His new ongoing series WASTELAND begins in July 2006.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.