This is an interesting read worth your time (and a small thread to follow): https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/48079/how-prh-could-expand-market-comics-periodicals

The possibility of a crossover suggested by @robsalk between bookstores going comic and comic stores going book is interesting, and just got one giant step easier.

But this calls to mind what I think is the GREATEST UNREPORTED business story of the past decade…

The “independent bookstore” is still there. IT’S A COMIC STORE.

If the numbers quoted here are to be believed—and why not? They’re well-sourced—then comic stores already outnumber “independent bookstores.”

A couple years ago, I went to a Fancy Dinner with a Mega Author at the Chateau Marmont (ooh lal la) attended by indy book store buyers in L.A. The publicist who put the dinner together had to go to a 50-mile radius (from L.A.!) just to find 11 bookstores!

One of those bookstores was a B&N, the ONLY one in Los Angeles. That’s right, kids: A city of 4.5 million people, ONE B&N.

How many comic stores in a 50 mile radius of L.A.? Well more than 11, I can tell you that. I can prolly rattle off 30, top of my head. I could get to 50, I think, if I cared to research it right now.

The disconnect are twofold:
NOMENCLATURE: Society insists on giving two names to a “comic store” and a “book store;” and
INFERIORITY COMPLEX: Dammit, the comics biz has just NEVER known how to take the W.

Bottom line (I think): Go ahead. TRY to tell me, just TRY to tell me that @bookswpictures ISN’T a “neighborhood book store.” I’ll fight you!

TRY to tell me that @SamuraiComics isn’t a CRUCIALLY important part of several Phoenix-area neighborhoods, a bookstore, an employer, dammit a de facto daycare center for the after school latchkey crowd.

Anybody who knows ANYTHING about L.A. knows that @GAppleComics has forever been “the arbiter of cool” for the city. No matter what it is—a book, an event, a TV show, a band, an art gallery exhibit—if they say it’s good, that’s your Gold Standard seal of approval.

So yeah, this (go back to the article, son!) is some GREAT grease for the wheels for the potential “merging” of the public consciousness between “independent book store” and “comic store.” But I would posit that SHOULD have happened 10-15 years ago.

Your comic store IS your “neighborhood book store.”
Just take the fucking W, okay?

(All these thoughts are half-baked at 7 a.m., cut me some slack, huh?)