COMICBOOKMAN SEZ: Hobbies are great, they had better be because they are pretty much our stock and trade. Our customers are essentially collectors and collecting is pretty much part of the nature of a hobby. You collect comics to read them. And after a while you have a collection. "This is my Wolverine Collection", "this is my Alan Moore comic collection", this is my "this is my Reverse-Flash appearances comic collection" and so on. You get the idea. Ditto for collecting Magic Cards, however with this hobby players collect to build or strengthen their decks in order to play them. Even if your hobby is building models, you still have to collect all the necessary tools and equipment to build them. No modeler ever stopped at just one model so after a while they have a collection of models to display and show off. Hobbies keep you busy and allow other more creative portions of your brain to get some exercise. Hobbies are great.

Last week I wrote about my customer “Jason” (not his name) who wants to open up his own comic shop in Georgia. You may recall I asked him what I feel is the most important question anyone opening a business (especially a hobby business) can ask themselves. “Which is more important to you: opening a business or opening a comic book store.” The answer I feel cuts right to the heart of whether that business will ultimately be successful or fail. It forces someone to choose between having a business or having a hobby. They are exclusive of each other and like putting the cart before the horse, you can't put the hobby before the business.

 "I've always wanted to open a Comicbook Store" is the mantra any store owner hears from customers on an almost regular basis. And many stores over the years have been opened with that mentality of their owners. Many people think running a store like this is an exercise in reading comics all day and having the opportunity to buy your collectables at wholesale prices. Stores that operate under that model either go out of business fairly quickly or they have deep pockets backing them up. In the case of the latter, eventually the money dries up and the former state asserts itself. The whole process just takes a little longer. The history of comic retailing is scattered with the remains of shops that went under because their business model consisted of: five thousand dollars, ten long boxes and the belief that they were smarter than all the other shops. Not that money, stock and confidence aren't important elements of any business, but they are by no means the only elements.

My point is Alternate Reality is not a hobby for me but a business and its been that way since August 20th 1994. We are in the business of helping you realize your hobby but in order to do that we have to first and foremost be a business. In order to do that the store has to get my full attention almost all the time. Alternate Reality is my business and it requires almost my total attention to keep al the wheels spinning. Today is Saturday, and I have spent my day putting this newsletter together to ship it by closing. Tonight, I'll update the website. Sunday, I'll begin the June Previews Order - a process that will take all week through Thursday. Monday is the FOC (aka: inventory) and stripping the New Comic Rack. Tuesday is picking up the new comics, counting, facing, pulling subscriptions and getting the store ready for 7:00am New Comic Wednesday. On Wednesday, I'm putting together the next week's shipping from Diamond in Excel Spreadsheets and organizing the graphics in Photoshop. Thursday is my deadline for the Previews order (yours is Wednesday if you are ordering). And then I get a breather to do the hundred other things that keep this store running.

I am not unique in any of this. If you own a business, any business it becomes your life. I wish there were time to read every issue of Secret Wars or Convergence-but there isn't. There aren't enough hours in the day to get done everything I want to do as it is. So instead, you do what you can, the best you can, and keep pushing forward. I never understood how some store owners can also have other jobs and stay in business. Just on the south side there is a fireman, an author, a middle management executive, a musician and a lawyer. They aren't unique in this respect, it's a situation that spans a large segment of comics retailers. But, you also can't give 100% of your attention to your business if half of what you do is something else, somewhere else. That's never been the case here at Alternate Reality, we're serious about Funny Books because it’s what we do - it’s all we do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a newsletter to ship.
 

We order 99.9% of the comics PREVIEWS solicits. Keep that in mind as you read the numbers below; they not only break down our week, but they're also a good representation of the week in comics nationwide.

New Comic Wednesday for the fourth and final week of June sees a tight pack separated closely along each companies historical sales ranking. In 1st Place this week is Marvel with twenty five titles, with DC right behind in 2nd Place with twenty four titles and Image in 3rd Place with twenty three titles. That's right, only one title separates the top three shippers this week. IDW's in 4th Place with twenty one titles and Dark Horse way in the rear in 5th Place with twelve titles. The Indy totals are down a bit this week with sixty five titles shipping. Parsing through those totals, we find Dynamite again in 6th Place with eleven titles and Zenescope in 7th Place with seven titles. This Wednesday, you'll find an overall total of twenty five different publishers on the racks contributing to this week's total of 170 comics.