AndyFish

Thanks everyone-- I appreciate it!  More on Wednesday

thanks Larry!

Episode 9...

ASM OMNIBUS V1 --- TAKE IT!

The Dude is exactly right-- I've had this happen in the past.  The buyer has 48 hours to pay once they've accepted an offer, if they don't the item relists and the sale is cancelled.

As an aside-- seriously, if you're one of these people who counters $28 to a $30 offer please get a life.  Two bucks????!  Don't buy a coffee at Dunkins this week and BAM-- there's your $2 and you no longer look like a 7 year old.  Right off the bat, someone counters something like that I don't want to do business with them.

It really seems like the insufficiently_thoughtful_person to good person ratio on eBay is growing.

Archies #3-5 and Reggie #1 Sold Via PM

Reggie #1 VG/F 5.0

$275

Archie #5 G/VG detached $750

Archie #4 GD- a couple of missing pieces, book is detached $1100

Archie #3 Good 2.0 spine is completely taped $1200

If it's Wednesday, it must be time for another thrilling adventure of THE BATMAN DEATH RAY OF HUGO STRANGE!  Episode 8!

EPISODE 7 of my BATMAN Serial-- homage to Sprang with those gangsters...

Episode 6 of my Batman Serial...

Writing "Sorry I couldn't cancel your bid as requested" in the feedback-- THAT is a brilliant idea.

On 2/16/2017 at 6:07 PM, Comicdave1962 said:

What i hate is when you put a comic up for auction and it gets bid up pretty good and the hi bidder has really good feedback and then at the last second of the auction some low or zero feedback guy comes in and outbids the other guy. And what happens probably 90% of the time when this occurs is you never hear from the hi bidder. So you have to wait 7 days before you can make a non-bidder claim. But by this time even if you offer it to the runner up, they usually aren't interested anymore or think you had a shill try to bid them up and pass on the book. Then when you go and relist it, the book ends up selling for a lot less than what the under bidder would have paid for it. 

When this happens you just want to reach through your computer and strangle the insufficiently_thoughtful_person who didn't pay originally for costing you a chunk of money.

That's exactly right- it not only hurts the seller because now they have to relist it, it also puts a black mark in the eyes of the other bidders.  I can't tell you how many times I've relisted something and then get an email asking what happened to the previous sale.  Great if someone takes the trouble to reach out, but how many people even bother to do that and just assume it's somehow the fault of the seller?   I bet it's more than you think.

I was on eBay back when you could leave negative feedback for buyers and it was better.  This idea that sellers won't leave negative feedback out of fear of retaliation is ridiculous.  It wasn't a problem then and it wouldn't be a problem now.  HONEST sellers and buyers are the norm, but this would weed out the trolls on there. 

I'm not talking about sniping, there's nothing wrong with sniping and anyone who objects to it doesn't understand the auction process.  But what it does do is eliminate these who bid, win, and then just decide to walk away.  A strike against them is something, but honestly it should be a LOT more severe.  A winning bid is a binding contract just like it says plain and simple when you place a bid,  if someone can't pay they shouldn't bid, and if they don't pay for a SINGLE auction win they should be banned for 30 days.  2nd offense lifetime ban.

With the board switchover TWO episodes of my Batman Serial for your perusal;

Episode 4

and Episode 5-- here's the BW version of that one to keep it interesting....

To see the full color version head on over to THE BAT MAN DEATH RAY OF HUGO STRANGE

eBay has been losing sellers ever since they switched away from the ability to actually strike back at insufficiently_thoughtful_persons like this.  The inability to leave negative feedback for a buyer is insane.  If they put that option back in you'd have a lot fewer buyers acting like 4 year olds.

Not only is it a pain for you to have to go through and list it again, now prospective buyers are going to assume there was something wrong with the book.  My advice is to relist immediately and make a note that you are doing so because you had a buyer who could not pay-- and ask that new bidders do so only if they can follow through with the binding bid.

More over,  go through channels with eBay in cancelling the sale because the buyer can't pay, they will put a strike against him so that if he does make this a habit he will get bounced.  And definitely block him.

Sorry for this trouble, 90% of eBay buyers are good people.

Episode Three for your enjoyment-- this has been fun.

Visit the site to see some behind the scenes info and such if you're curious about the process.

BATMAN DEATH RAY OF HUGO STRANGE

Thanks for the nice comment, I'm totally aware that they are protective of their copyrights and rightly so-- even though I do agree the Public Domain laws are slanted towards big companies.

Having said all that-- this is simply my version of the original Batman and indeed intended as an homage.

We'll see how far it goes, we're on week 4 now. Anyone interested in the process of making comics feel free to visit the link above and click on Process Spoilers to get some behind the scenes access.

Meanwhile, be sure and pick up Marvel's SPIDER-WOMAN #16 which features my breakdowns next month.

Here's episode two-- click the link above if you want to read further.

How long I make it before I get the C&D is part of the challenge here, although as a not for profit piece of fan-fic and my having freelanced with them in the past I might get some slack.

I've had an idea for a vintage style Batman story kicking around for a while, I pitched it to DC years ago and they were on board, then management changed over and it got lost in the shuffle, so I'm putting it to paper and offering it up in weekly installments like an old serial.

The first three episodes are up now, and new ones are up on Wednesdays. The site also has spoilers which are clearly listed if you happen to be interested in the process and don't care that much about having things given away.

You can read the other chapters here>>> THE BATMAN DEATH RAY

Check it out--hope you like it.

Five star customer here-- great to deal with!

This is a great thread with a tremendous amount of good advice-- I echo the "don't do it" sentiment and if you do, change your mind about the online aspect of it as that takes your customer base from the 100s that walk by to the millions all over the world. Packaging is a lot less work than filing bankruptcy papers.

My experience comes from retail grocery where I worked my way from a bag boy to a divisional vice president, my duties included opening new stores and investigating why failing stores were not performing and then taking steps to turn them around or to close them. Grocery stores operate on tiny margins, so they are extremely difficult to make profitable, but look around, there are a lot of them, so it can be done.

The biggest reason I saw stores fail: Poorly trained staff, cleanliness issues, lack of customer service, hours that didn't match customer needs.

One of my closest friends owns one of the largest comic shops in the Northeast and he retired at 45 from day to day activity at the shop and has a staff that runs it for him. He and I would spend a lot of time talking retail and it's not far from the retail grocery world.

For the past 15 years I've been a full time comic book artist, working for a variety of clients most of whom no one in the comics world has ever heard of because quite simply I don't love superheroes so that puts me out from mainstream American comics, my wife does currently work for Marvel as the artist on Spiderwoman so I'm in tune with them too.

We do several cons all over the country and I've traveled to comic shops from east to west and I see some that are great and some that are still just as bad as the dank old comic shops of the 80s that used a cigar box instead of a cash register.

I strongly agree with the poster that said watch the music or WHATEVER you have playing on your PA system. I was in one shop that had horrible rap music blasting, another had droning folk music and still another had the most obnoxious comic book promotional video playing over and over again on the TV-- all of these drove me running out of the store. You know why big retailers play that Musak ? Because shoppers barely notice it. That background music should be white noise.

All right so from there-- approach your store like a customer, if you have a wife get her insight too. Too many shops are run like boys clubs, what you might see as a "cool fun place to hang out" I see as a place where the regulars are all engaged in conversation and I'm ignored.

Gamers are a necessary evil because they provide some small revenue when your comic sales are off but set them out of the way of your main store and make sure they behave themselves.

I walked into a comic shop in Northampton Ma one day, and it's a nice enough shop with a big discount TPB section and in the middle of the store was a table with about seven gamers packed around it-- they were eating chinese food and basically acting like a bunch of should be adults who live in mom's basement and were out of that setting for the first time in years-- yup, you guessed it, I didn't spend much time there-- counter this with the $200 I dropped the previous time I was in and guess what-- no gamers that day.

In my experience the stereotypical "comic book guy" of Simpson's fame is actually a gamer. Most comic buyers seem like pretty normal folks, it's the gamers who don't seem to understand the magic of soap and deodorant.

If I were opening a shop I would offer gaming but it would be in some kind of annex and they would have strict rules about conduct or they'd get tossed. Too loud and obnoxious-- bye bye. No food, no drinks in the store.

A Mom's opinion is priceless. At another store I was at-- a big well run store by the way, I was browsing and a mom walked in with her son who was about six years old. The kid at the counter walked them over to the new comics section to show them the latest issue of Daredevil because as she had explained that the new Affleck movie (yup a few yeas ago) was too violent for little Jimmy to go see, but she'd heard it was based on a comic book so she decided to get him one of those. The clerk just pointed her to the latest issue and the mom said thanks and started to take it to the register.

I stopped her and explained the new DD had very adult content (I think there was a rape in this one) and that she would be better off getting one of the old books out of the back issue section-- we went over and found a Gene Colan one from the mid 70s. She ended up buying 3-4 of those.

So what's the point? Staff was poorly trained. The clerk merely took her to the DD Comics without listening to what she said. Had that woman bought the issue he recommended the store would likely have an angry ex customer. Instead we have the potential for a lifelong new reader.

At another store I went to I was impressed by how much like a "real" store it was, but it had strange operating hours. It was closed Sunday and Monday and then open 11-5 on Tues 10-8 on Wed 11-5 on Thu & Fri and 12-4 on Saturdays.

How can your customer remember these hours and who are you serving? 11-5 is pretty much a working day for 90% of your base. Worse, by having different hours each day you run the risk of turning away a customer and trust me they don't always come back.

In the past I've done some retail consulting and I once encountered a store owner who changed his hours from 10-6 to 12-8-- he found much more business with the same amount of hours. He said he likely lost no business because mornings were so slow. I set up a camera that pointed to his front door for while he was closed and over the course of three weeks we counted 30 customers who had come to his door during those closed hours and left. He's now open 10-8. The extra business has allowed him to hire two part time clerks.

Speaking of those clerks-- how do they perform when you're not there? Send in relatives and friends to check and then hold them accountable. That same retailer I consulted for had a clerk he called his "right hand man" when I came in after the owner was gone I noticed he was giving free packs of magic cards to his friends.

Not a great right hand.

As I said, great thread. My strongest advice based on years of retail is do not open a brick and mortar store. Do cons, do online, do everything but. But if you really want to do it be prepared to lose money for the first 3-4 years and expect to work 365 days a year.