Racking. The subject sounds less than inspiring, and of only trivial importance, something that hardly seems worthy of consideration. Yet consider the psychology of shopping. Everything is laid out in a specific manner that is designed to draw the customer in.

Consider bookshops. When you enter the shop, you have several choices of department, usually Crime, Horror, Science Fiction, Romance, and a general fiction department, along with many other departments that may vary from shop to shop. Within these departments the books are usually arranged alphabetically by author, not by title. When you bought the last Will Self novel did you look for HOW THE DEAD LIVE or the 'S' section?

Now go into a comic shop. The majority of stores rack their comics alphabetically by title, with no consideration for genre or creators. In some stores they rack the books by company, which is plainly ludicrous. How many people go to a regular bookshop looking for the Jonathan Cape section?

'We should challenge the idea that all comics are for everyone.' There is clearly a problem here. Comic companies are now supporting more non-superhero and mature reader titles, yet these are being racked in the same place as the mainstream superhero books.

Let's use a hypothetical example. A casual, former or prospective comics reader has heard that QUEEN & COUNTRY is good example of a non-mainstream comic that has a story would likely appeal to him. He goes to his local comic shop, only to it find racked in between POWERPUFF GIRLS and ROBIN, both of which send him screaming.

Had the books been racked by genre, he may have been offered a more diverse selection of related material. Had it also been racked so that other works by Greg Rucka were with it, the shop may have gained several additional sales.

The first thing that needs to be done is to challenge the idea that all comics are for everyone. It is a diverse medium, which has a lot to offer, but just because someone is a fan of JLA, it doesn't necessarily follow that they will like THE INVISIBLES.

Separating the racks into genre-defined racks would allow similar materials to be displayed together, and would allow for the separation of all-ages comics from mature-readers titles. Having 'Kids' and 'Teen' sections would be of great value to a comic shop, as it implies that any material not in those sections would be appropriate for an adult audience.

'Some stores rack their books by company, which is plainly ludicrous.' The next step would be to rack the books by creator, within these genre-specific racks. I would suggest racking by writer, as artists do tend to vary the type of books that they work on a lot more. This would allow all works by a specific writer to be displayed together, and would prompt new readers to seek out work by authors writing in a similar vein.

Many comic writers work within many different genres, so a simple 'Also by this author' card could be placed by an author's works in one genre that would point them toward works in another. A card placed near Greg Rucka's BATMAN, advertising QUEEN & COUNTRY and FELON, could quite likely generate a few additional sales, simply by alerting the reader to the fact that those other titles exist.

Another possibility would be to place graphic novels and trade paperbacks alongside the single issues, so that they are easy to find for new readers, especially in the case of ongoing series that have hard-to-find back issues that may put new readers off buying them.

In some shops this may not be viable due to space considerations. In these cases, a simple 'also by' card referring customers to the graphic novels/TPBs section should suffice.

This isn't a miracle cure for the ills of the industry, but it is a small thing that can be done to improve the image of comics. Racking in itself is not a major problem of the comics industry, it is merely a symptom of a greater problem, one of perception.

So long as comic shops continue to display superheroes as the main comics on sale, the industry will continue to be seen as a niche market. By moving the superheroes into their corner - but not disregarding them entirely - other genres will be given room to bloom, and other potential markets will be allowed to grow.

Even within superhero books there is a potential for crossover readership. PLANETARY, for example, could just as easily be racked as a science fiction title, which would probably increase its sales to casual readers.

'If superheroes dominate the racks, the industry will still be seen as a niche market.' To suggest a change in the approach to selling comics in this manner is to suggest that comics finally have something more to offer a wider audience, which is something that many creators have been saying for years. It would also suggest that the creator of the book is more important than the character, which is an approach that Marvel and especially DC are not keen on encouraging, as they make the majority of their income from their trademarks.

It is possible that not all comic shops would be able to implement such a change to their shelving systems, at least in the short term, for many reasons. They may lack the necessary diversity in titles, or may simply have very limited shelving space that can be dedicated to single issues, which would make this highly impractical.

Therefore I would suggest that shops start by racking graphic novels and TPBs in this manner as an experiment. Perhaps if it proves successful, it could then be expanded to the rest of their inventory.

The current method of racking - keep all the books together in one place, racked alphabetically - is fine if retailers only want to appeal to already established audiences. However, by making just a few simple changes to their racking systems, retailers could make their shops more accessible to the new readers who just want to be able to find a book that they might enjoy without having to wade through reams of irrelevant material.

Lawrence Rider is the author of REAL LIVES.

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