[The following editorial appears in Shards #11, Hidden Years #24, New Blood #31, Blood of Ten Chiefs #20, and The Rebels #8. --MK]
The following is the text of the keynote speech written for the Dragon Con southeast Trade And Retail Symposium ("S.T.A.R.S."). I felt - and feel - strongly enough about the message it contains to share it with everyone reading this issue of ELFQUEST, fan and/or retailer. Now that the pieces have aggressively begun to shake out of the publisher-distributor-retailer picture, these observations make more sense to me than ever before.
It appears to me that a whole lot of energy has been expended over the last seven months, ever since it became clear that something was going on between Marvel and Heroes World, and it also seems that most of that energy has been invested into words. Written words in magazines and comic books, spoken words at trade shows and in meetings, electronic words on the Internet. The current state of affairs (and isn't that a silly thing to say, since lately very little stays "current" for more than a couple of weeks, thus defying any sort of conventional analysis... But I digress...) The current state of affairs has been picked apart by everyone from the CEOs of huge megalithic publishing conglomerates to fervent flag-waving philosophical revolutionaries to the lowliest fanperson who is certain that he or she knows the answers to it all. This publisher or that one is trying to glut the market with substandard product. This distributor or that one isn't playing straight with everyone by making a deal to be the exclusive pipeline for such and so's books. Paper price increases, almost certainly the result of unfair price-fixing (so it's said) is driving everyone nuts. There used to be simple one-stop shopping, now retailers are faced with the unhappy and perhaps daunting prospect of dealing with several sources of supply. Let's rally 'round the flag, boys, we've got to stick together and get with the one true program, see the big picture, get the big idea.
Words, words and more words. So many - and from so many different points of view. It's easy to become numb to words - and yet they are the very tools with which we communicate. So in order to keep you all from becoming numb I will, over the next few minutes, try to be very careful of the words I choose.
Let me for a moment share with you some other recent non-comic-book-related events: A major earthquake in Japan levels a large and prosperous city and kills thousands of people in the process. Sustained flooding in the Midwest and south destroys millions of dollars worth of crops, and drives hundreds of families from their homes. A forest fire - possibly set by some idiot flicking a lit cigarette butt out a car window but just as easily started by a random bolt of lightning after a season of devastating drought - rages its way through acre after acre of precious and beautiful forest, wiping out everything in its path.
It's unfortunate, it's horrible, it's unfair - and guess what?
The universe doesn't give a tinker's dam for fair or unfair, for analysis, for hindsight... for words.
Blind nature doesn't give a damn about philosophy. Climatic reversals, asteroids clobbering the planet, forest fires, earthquakes, droughts, tidal waves - happen. They don't think about whether or not they'll affect this or that group of lovely little creatures just minding their own business trying to survive and have a good time while doing it. No. Changes happen. Threats happen. Extinction happens. And the lovely little creatures who avoid being made extinct are not necessarily those lucky enough to see the lightning strike the tree and set the blaze, or those who listen to the weather channel and catch news of the flood, but those who - by the way they have armored and prepared themselves against an entire symphony of possible setbacks - are ready to face tough times and adapt to them.
Species don't change and evolve and survive. Individual members of a species are the ones who experience a change here, a mutation there. It is individuals who find themselves better or less well equipped to deal with new conditions in the world. Nothing happens to an entire population of creatures unless, of course, you're a dinosaur and someone drops a mountain from outer space on you and all your buddies.
What is the point? You - retailers - are all members of a species of living, breathing, intelligent creatures - let's call you homo directus - who are as subject to the laws and the whims of Darwinian evolution in an economic sense as great whales or snail darters or California condors are in the biological sense. But you, you incredibly fortunate and gifted retailer beasties, have one soaring advantage over flatworms and gypsy moths with regard to evolution: You can engineer your own survival mechanisms, your own adaptive mutations - and you can bet I'm not talking about the next "X-title" when I use that word!
Words are easy. They're the easiest refuge in the world when times are tough. But in your rapidly changing retail world, words don't matter any more. Only action does. And the only item that you as a retailer have in your survival toolkit to initiate action - the only coin you possess to drop in the slot and start the music - is service. What "location, location, location" is to a real estate agent, "service, service, service" should be to you.
There was an article in a recent issue of THE ECONOMIST that spoke tellingly to what's going on in the comics industry these days. The article itself was about multimedia. This is, of course, a new technology and the darling of its proponents who swear that it will entice and satisfy computer users in their never ending quest for better or more exciting ways to communicate. Multimedia is bright and flashy, yet so far seems to consist of a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. What does multimedia actually do for the average person? Not a whole heck of a lot, it seems. Not yet, at any rate.
The thrust of the article is that there is, in business, a lesson that you ignore at your peril, and that is that no invention or innovation is more valuable than the service that it delivers to a customer. To quote from the article: "While cable companies invest millions in interactive television, lowly TV networks are enjoying a minor renaissance. Americans still spend more on books than on home videos. In Britain radio has been advertising's fastest growing outlet for the past two years. Such modest triumphs are a reminder that consumers are more interested in the message than in the medium."
The only message that you as retailers have to offer your customers is service. That message is not comic books, not any particular kind of comic book, not any individual title, not any special type of merchandise, but plain old service. Much as I'd like to stand up here and exhort you to sell, sell, sell ELFQUEST comics, because ELFQUEST is the greatest entertainment experience since dutch apple pie a la mode, that's not my message to you at this moment. Anyone who tells you that the way to survive and the way to success is simply to push more Marvel comics or to hype more independent comics or whatever, is doing you a disservice - and remember, service is the only commodity that matters.
In the long run, your economic struggle for survival has very little to do with this or that comic book title. It has everything to do with where you live, where you shop, where you send your kids to school, where you go to church, where you go out to eat - and where you conduct your business. Your economic survival has everything to do with that Gordian conglomeration of factors that defines your market. No one else in the business of retailing can know it nearly as well as you do, because it's where you are. Your market exists all around you, but it won't come to you. You have to go out, find it, nurture it, grow it, and service it.
There's a wonderful proverb that comes from the Kikuyu people of Kenya that goes: "When elephants battle, it is the grass that suffers." The elephants? They don't suffer. They get scratched up, they get a little bloody, but they go on about their business. It's the grass that gets churned, ripped up, and pulped. We know who the elephants are - they're the big guys. And we know who the grass is. It's you.
As far as the grass is concerned, elephants are great, huge, blind, uncaring forces of nature - just the same as earthquakes, fires, and floods. Elephants don't really ever see the blades of grass that they trample.
Big huge elephants. Big powerful economic entities. It doesn't matter that there are people behind the decisions of the big economic entities; because from down here in the grass, the effects look no different from blind catastrophic nature at work. So what's a blade of grass to do?
Darwinian evolution works in the world at large because every so often, a critter will be born and grow up with a longer set of horns or a more colorful frill, and this will either help it to survive, in which case the trait is passed on and multiplied, or it won't help, in which case both the critter and the trait end up in some larger critter's stomach. Another way of saying the same thing is that the life-form in question unthinkingly tries out a new gimmick. Whether or not it's a gimmick that leads to survival is totally up to chance.
Now, if a life-form such as a blade of grass could think, it might say to itself "I have no idea what those idiot pachyderms are going to throw at me next, and it's no good to just react in panic, so it would be a good idea to sink some deep roots into the soil I grow in. It makes sense for me to know what this earth has to offer me, and what I can give back to it so it doesn't become depleted. I'd really be smart to enter into a good, functional, cooperative, service-driven relationship with this place I'm in, so that even if some big ol' elephant blindly stomps on my head, I may bend but I won't die."
As a writer and an editor and a publisher, words are my tools. I know that I've taken quite a detour into metaphor here, but I think it's a good metaphor for the world as it is in our common business, and I hope you'll let me lay just a few more words on you.
As a storyteller and a conduit for storytellers, I have only one task, and that's to convey stories to as many people as possible. Let me repeat that with slightly different wording: I have only one task, to market my wares as fully and as widely as possible. Those two statements are functionally identical. Stories don't exist without ears to hear them, and hearts to listen. Stories need to reach out and touch. Even Homer, the greatest talespinner of all, as he went about singing the adventures of brave Ulysses, depended upon word of mouth to gather him an audience - and probably dinner - as he went from town to town. He had to market his product however he could. And that's exactly what I, and Warp Graphics, and ELFQUEST, and every other publisher and creator are doing at this and every other trade expo we attend. We're sending our little green tendrils out as far and as deep as we can in an effort to make what we have to offer just as strong and enduring as possible.
You must do the same, every day. You must keep in mind that you are part of a community, and that the makeup of that community tells you everything you need to know in order to market your wares. There's no such thing as a "typical" market unless you let yourselves be drawn into the lie that says that one-tenth of one percent of the population of the country represents the whole thing. Once upon a time, almost anyone could open up a comic shop with some back issues and this month's hot titles, and expect people to magically know that the new shop was the cool place to be. Those days are gone. Whether you do business in a city where every kid for miles around loves superheroes, or whether you're in a town where there are lots of teenaged girls interested in fantasy, you need to know your retail audience. You need to know the flavor of the soil in which you want to grow. The single most important thing you have to offer is the dynamic interplay between a provider and many consumers - they desire, you provide; they ask, you educate; they feed you, you feed back. In other words - service.
Give good service, and you'll survive the elephants as they blunder on through.
Thank you.
Richard A Pini