The Distribution Bottleneck

It's great to produce awesome comics. But there are a couple situations in which there can be unintended consequences to producing these stories.

The Problem of Overlap

The first situation occurs when too many of the stories being told cover the same ground. This kind of thematic or topical saturation can fatigue readers.

Past a certain point, the comic readership can only sustain so many comics covering the same field. It's equally rare for multiple comics with similar premises or dealing with similar topics to find comparable levels of success.

For example, it's unlikely that another zombie comic would find as much success as The Walking Dead at the same time - or even near as much success.

The Problem of Fit

The second situation is when any number of stories - breadth of content aside - are all trying to fit in the same area. That's how you get a true bottleneck.

Take, for example, the case of the comic book store. They only have so much shelf space to promote comics. Past a certain amount of titles released every week, they physically won't have the capacity to give them all a fair shot.

Within the industry this is typically referred to as oversaturation.

Learning about the French industry helped me better understand some ways to solve this problem.

Now, that's not to say the French industry doesn't deal with oversaturation. In fact, their comics market has contracted over the last couple years and they've been forced to deal with this exact issue as they've upped their production. Taking a long view makes this obvious - in 1983 there were 250 bd released per year in France and now they're approaching 5,000.

The advantage the French market has over the comics market is that their distribution is much wider. You can find comics shelved just about everywhere. Beyond their own comic stores and book shops, their big box retailers, like FNAC for example, have healthy comic sections, and even places like the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris sell comics in their gift shops.

With a wider network and larger audience to work with, it takes longer for the oversaturation to be felt - but it's really the same issue.

And while it's nice to think that we can solve the issue by producing less and putting more of our resources as an industry behind fewer stories, I think it's unrealistic. Because who is going to produce less? Which creator - which publisher - are you going to ask to release fewer comics so the other can benefit? And how would you build such protections against oversaturation across an industry when the realities publishers face are so varied.

The most realistic solution - at least in the short term - is expanding the areas where we make comics available.

The more shelves we have to stock, so to speak, the better we can reach an audience. Especially if those shelves are strategically placed to reach readers we wouldn't usually reach to.

To back away from my metaphor before it gets unwieldy - what I mean is that we should be confronting readers elsewhere.

We've already seen the viability of comics in the bookstore market here as they continue to embrace graphic novels. Big box retailers are also important - and America is showing signs of progress there. Here in France they help comics get the level of cultural penetration they need to go from niche industry to popular art.

But this kind of distribution is only the first step. Obviously, I'm a massive advocate for digital. The internet is one big part of the equation that the traditional print comics industry - not just in America, but in Europe, too - has left unexplored. Instead, they've let the web be the domain of webcomics, or limited their ventures to proprietary apps like Marvel's Marvel Unlimited or closed platforms such as Comixology. There's still a lot to be done there.

But beyond these platforms there are opportunities for greater innovation. If your comic is likely to appeal to a fantasy audience bring it to a Renaissance Faire. If you're targeting kids, consider getting to libraries, mommy bloggers, or PTAs. Don't only target pre-existing readers of comics.

Only working from the same pool we've had for years is a great way to perpetuate the bottleneck and not solve anything.

Instead, we need to work outside the system and innovate. And we need to develop formats that will allow us to more easily engage with audiences outside the Direct Market - whether they lie in reach of the usual suspects like bookstores and big box retailers, or in alternative audiences that have yet to be explored.