Representing my club to a comic book store

L

LongDistance

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May 24, 2004
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I will be representing the Superhero Club of Albany High School with my faculty advisor (my economic teacher) to a comic book store tommarrow. My club's goal is to promote comic books (not just superhero ones) in our school. Our two main events right now are giving the school library as many comic books as possible and promoting comic books during Diversity Week (a week where clubs get to show themselve to the student body).

I have never done any "businese" transitions before, so I am a bit nervous. I'm a polite person so I don't think I'm going to make any enemies and my teacher studied law before so he should take care of any legal aspects. However, I could use some advice on how to better present myself to the comic book store. How should I behave? Should I be very professional or "friendly"? If you conduct businese, I could use some of your inputs.

Also, what should I ask from the store? I am going to request donation of graphic novels and single monthly issues for the school library. Besides books, I would also ask for free posters and toys to be give out as prizes for Diversity Week. I am going to focus on Fables, Runaways, Y: The Last Man, X-Men, Spiderman, Batman, and Superman products because they are (or have high potential to be) popular with teenagers. Any advice on what else to ask?

thanks for any advice you guys can give
 
Honesty is always good.

Be youself, despite the stress, and enjoy yourself.

When requsting donations from a store, try to show a "gain for them" angle. Increased sales, advertising, etc.
 
The store is in business to make money. They may love comics, but at the end of the day they need to make money to stay in business. Everytime you ask for something, think of how it would benefit the comic store. Make sure they understand that this is a great way to promote the store to new customers. You could put their name & address on your table banner during diversity week. You could wear t shirts with the store's logo. You could hand out coupons and flyers for the store. You need to convince them that you will provide a better marketing/advertising impact than a newspaper/radio/tv ad. Show them how donating a few hundred bucks worth of free comics and toys and tshirts will generate a lot of new customers for the store.

Other than that be yourself and be a nice guy. Wear clean clothes.
 
Is your store big enough to have promotional items, like t-shirts and hats etc? If they can put their store logo and address on all of the comics they donate, and if they can write off the donated books for taxes, they might donate comics that aren't moving. I see no trouble from them donating stuff from the 50 cents boxes, but brand new, expensive graphic novels might not go over too well. The major superhero comics you listed should go over well, except for Y the Last Man. I've only read one issue, but I think it is more adult oriented, and probably would not be accepted by a public school in house library. I would recommend a comic like Bone, a lot of libraries probably already have copies of the tpb's, the comic book stores in my area have lots of issues on hand, maybe your store would be willing to donate some that have been in their storage for a while.
 
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