FCBM Wrap-Up

Free Comic Book Month here at YACB was a smashing success! I received 98 entires, and 50 of those people received free comic books. If I could have given everyone free comics I would have, but it was becoming a bit expensive: I spent $80.66 on postage, not to mention the costs of envelopes, bags & boards, etc. All told I probably spent around $100 on FCBM--but that's money well-spent if I was able to turn some people on to new comics!

I gave away a total of 121 comics; 50 of those were the Free Comic Book Day Edition of Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards, and the rest were other comics from my collection.

Some people wondered why I was giving away my comics. Was I crazy? Well yes, a little bit. Some of you may recall back in mid April I posted my little essay on Ranganathan & Comics. In that essay I said: "If I have 25,000 comics, it does no good to anyone to leave them locked up in my closet--they need to be set free!" So I decied to put up and give away some of them. Of course, 71 comics is just a drop in the bucket, but it's a start. Sure I suppose I could try selling them on eBay, but this results in slightly better karma :) (I've also been donating comics to the library these past few months.) It can be fun to give stuff away; I've been a member of Bookcrossing for a while now, leaving books around to be picked up and mailing off books to people who ask.

Plus, giving away comics is just fun. Matching people up with reading material is something at which I think I do a decent job, and it was fun trying to match people up with comics they might like based on the list of comics they gave me.

I also wanted to promote comics, and free comics is a good way to do that. That's why I decided to toss in copies Jim's Bone Sharps; the additional postage wasn't much to add them into the envelopes, and hopefully some of you will like it enough to get the full graphic novel when it comes out in August (it's in the current Previews--pre-order now!) More than one person has posted that they liked the free comic(s) I sent them and plan on looking for more of that title or by those creators, so by that measure it was a success too.

I also knew that May was going to be a somewhat-busier-than-normal month for me and that I wouldn't have time to do though-intensive posting like reviews and such; that's why regular content took a breather during May for the most part.

As suspected, traffic to this blog went up a bit suring FCBM, especially during the first half of the month. But I got kind of hard to measure the effects, as partway through the month librarian.net linked to my Ranganathan post and stats took a huge bump from that. But by the end of May my stats were back down to normal levels, and it was my non-FCBM posts that generated the most traffic; I guess that some of you got tired of seeing me give away comics to others. But as you can see, we're more-or-less back to normal around here.

It was interesting to see what comics people told me that they liked. I did some compiling, and here are the comics listed by all 98 of the entrants:

16 people: Y, the Last Man
12 people: Fables
11 people: Ex Machina; Planetary
9 people: Daredevil
8 people: Astonishing X-Men; Gotham Central; Hellboy; Sleeper
7 people: Runaways
6 people: Hellblazer; Sandman; The Invisibles
5 people: Birds of Prey; Powers; Supreme Power; The Walking Dead; X-Men
4 people: The Authority; Bone; Captain America; Girl Genius; Green Lantern; JSA; Legion of Super-Heroes; Queen & Country; Strangers in Paradise; Stray Bullets; Teen Titans; Tom Strong; Top Ten; Watchmen
3 people: Batman; Conan; Doom Patrol; Eightball; Flash; Love & Rockets; Madman; Marvel 1602; Promethea; Spider-Man; Starman; Street Angel; Superman; Swamp Thing; The Goon; Transmetropolitan; Ultimate X-Men; Ultimates
2 people: 100 Bullets; Amazing Spider-Man; Astro City; Blankets; Blue Monday; Cerebus; Concrete; Dr. Strange; Flaming Carrot; From Hell; Global Frequency; Green Arrow; Grendel; Hikaru-no Go; Invincible; JLA; Kabuki; Losers; Love Fights; Marshall Law; Milk & Cheese; Outsiders; Plastic Man; Preacher; PS 238; Ranma 1/2; Rex Mundi; Rom, Spacenight; Sandman Mystery Theatre; Scott Pilgrim; Seaguy; Seven Soldiers; Superman/Batman; The Maxx; True Story Swear to God; Ultimate Spider-Man; We3; Wonder Woman; Young Avengers

Plus another 159 titles chosen by one person each (too many to list!)

That should pretty much wrap things up. If you received free comics, and you haven't already done so, please make a comment on the post announcing your comics whether you liked them or not; the feedback will help me improve my recommendation skills.

Oh, and we're not done giving away free comics here on the blog; later this month I'll be announcing a new contest; not quite as large in scope, but still with a couple of pretty good prizes. Stay tuned!

Thanks to everyone who participated. I had fun, and I hope you did too.