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John mentioned in a recent episode that his LCS racks its books by genre. I've never seen this done for monthly issues and it got me to thinking about how stores rack their books. In Seattle, The Dreaming and Zanadu rack their books by alphabetical order. The Comics Dungeon and Arcane Comics rack 'major' publishers (DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, any licensed books) on one side and indie/alt comics publishers on the other. The tourist trap Golden Age Collectables in the Pike Place Market organizes by publisher. If I ever made my pie-in-the-sky coffee & comics shop into a reality, I'd like to try racking by genre.

How does your LCS rack its books? Do you like how they organize them? What is the ideal way for books to be racked? For purposes of this discussion I'd like to focus on monthly comics, rather than trades.

My three fav stores here in Portland all do it alphabetical which is the method I prefer. I don't mind if Marvel/DC/Other are touching one another. It just makes the whole search process easier.

My old LCBS in Seattle (comic stop) was broken down into publisher. He had 4 sections, Marvel, DC, Dark Horse/Image, Other. It was ok but he didn't alphabetize the other section and that made finding a book a pain!

My favorite LCS here in SoCal (Comics Toons'n'Toys) does it in parallel alphabetic rows.

They have a REALLY LONG wall of rack space (maybe 50-60 feet), and the middle shelf (main eye-level) is all the current week's comics in alphabetic order. The row above that is last week's. The row below is the week before that. Row below that the week before that. The main effect is that you can either go straight along the main row to see just the new stuff for this week, or you can scan up & down the rows and pretty much see the past month's worth of books for any particular alphabetic grouping depending on where you're standing along the wall.

My LCS does it alphabetical.

They have one section for that weeks current books that are organized alphabetical with a top shelf that they put extra copies of the hot picks. The hot picks are also in with the rest of the current books.

The rest of the store is also alphabetical. The trades are mixed in with the monthly books. So if you go to the Avengers you will find a stack of monthlies right next to the Avengers trades. This makes it real simply so if your in the mood for a Superman story you can check out all the monthlies and the trades in one spot.

Webhead wrote:My LCS does it alphabetical.

They have one section for that weeks current books that are organized alphabetical with a top shelf that they put extra copies of the hot picks. The hot picks are also in with the rest of the current books.

The rest of the store is also alphabetical. The trades are mixed in with the monthly books. So if you go to the Avengers you will find a stack of monthlies right next to the Avengers trades. This makes it real simply so if your in the mood for a Superman story you can check out all the monthlies and the trades in one spot.

That sounds interesting. Are the trades racked face out? Sounds like there is a lot of shelf space in that place. What you describe sounds like it would take up a lot of room.

Fnord Serious wrote:

Webhead wrote:My LCS does it alphabetical.

They have one section for that weeks current books that are organized alphabetical with a top shelf that they put extra copies of the hot picks. The hot picks are also in with the rest of the current books.

The rest of the store is also alphabetical. The trades are mixed in with the monthly books. So if you go to the Avengers you will find a stack of monthlies right next to the Avengers trades. This makes it real simply so if your in the mood for a Superman story you can check out all the monthlies and the trades in one spot.

That sounds interesting. Are the trades racked face out? Sounds like there is a lot of shelf space in that place. What you describe sounds like it would take up a lot of room.

The store does have a lot of shelf space, the store is not wide but it is long so they have book shelves along most of the walls. The only wall that does not have shelves is the wall with the register.

The trades are shelved face out but they are overlapped a bit. My LCS monitors their inventory very closely so they only keep one copy of a trade. If they sell it they reorder it.

I should mention they also grouped some titles together. So all the Spider-Man books I.E. Amazing, Ultimate are all in the 'S' section. The same goes for all the Batman titles I.E. Detective, All Star... are in the 'B' Section.

My store does it by publisher but there is no end between say Marvel and then DC as they go from top to bottom and then it's basically they have some imaginary line where they stop to then go to the next shelf

Personally I do a all over the place approach. LOL

BUT as I said in a podcast with Bob and John my shop is a bit different than shops in the states. I know almost all of my customers and have pull lists for them. I mix the book up because I found customers would come in look at only one section, chat with me for awhile and leave. they wouldn't bother going over to the other side of the shop an looking at the shelves there. When I started simply moving the issues around I noticed that old issue were selling out.

It took me I'd say about 6 months to train them up but now my customers do look around the whole shop. (lol)

The way I figure it is if you haven't seen or read it before its a NEW ISSUE anyway.

However I do have a couple shelves where I will rack all the similar books ie Secret Invasion, Final Crisis, WW Hulk and so forth.

JessieGarrett wrote:Personally I do a all over the place approach. LOL

BUT as I said in a podcast with Bob and John my shop is a bit different than shops in the states. I know almost all of my customers and have pull lists for them. I mix the book up because I found customers would come in look at only one section, chat with me for awhile and leave. they wouldn't bother going over to the other side of the shop an looking at the shelves there. When I started simply moving the issues around I noticed that old issue were selling out.

It took me I'd say about 6 months to train them up but now my customers do look around the whole shop. (lol)

The way I figure it is if you haven't seen or read it before its a NEW ISSUE anyway.

However I do have a couple shelves where I will rack all the similar books ie Secret Invasion, Final Crisis, WW Hulk and so forth.

Sounds like an interesting approach. This is like what I would like to try if I ever have a shop. My idea is for a coffee & comics place that wouldn't try to be a full-on LCS but act as a compliment to other comic shops in the area. I would try to focus on indie comics and trades while still having the best of the 'mainstream' stuff for people to check out. I would order extras of first issues and make them available in the coffee shop section of the store to read for free to get people to check out new things.

I'd love to see some pictures of your shop!

Fnord Serious wrote:
Sounds like an interesting approach. This is like what I would like to try if I ever have a shop. My idea is for a coffee & comics place that wouldn't try to be a full-on LCS but act as a compliment to other comic shops in the area. I would try to focus on indie comics and trades while still having the best of the 'mainstream' stuff for people to check out. I would order extras of first issues and make them available in the coffee shop section of the store to read for free to get people to check out new things.

I'd love to see some pictures of your shop!

I had the same Idea foir a place. I couple of friends of mine are into things I ting would compliment a comic store well. One was looking to open a coffee shop the other always talking about video games and online games etc. So my idea was trying to find a large building and seperate it into the 3 stores. A Coffe shop, comic shop and internet gaming cafe and have like a central area where people could sit and drink, read or connect to the wireless network. There was a building near the local college and I would have LOVE to get it set up.
BUT I'm kinda the only one who had the initiative to really make something happen, and I already had my store to run...
And yes I do have to post some pictures. Its not a huge shop but its well lit with a lot of glass windows looking in. I often get compliments saying that I have a "great store" and that's always good to hear. AND I try to make it female friendly so that I attract the female crowd.