If I look at the daily stats for this blog the one thing I notice is that, for being the largest Independent UK black & white comics publisher (with a great line of prose books, too if I need to mention that) I see little in the way of views from the UK. Take today, Friday at 12 noon:
United States
Portugal
Germany
Argentina
Russia
Brazil
France
Phillippines
"Unknown region"
Canada
The UK seems to come down pretty low on daily views. I thought we were "All British" and wanted our own comics alongside US imports...and Franco-Belgian imports, of course. UK literacy is bad. I know what you are saying: "Oh he isn't selling books so he has to find an excuse!" No excuses -the books are good and cover genres: they just are not selling.
As for the, uh, 'excuse':
Adult Illiteracy in the UK. According to the National Literacy Trust a major 16% of adults are considered to be 'functionally illiterate' in the United Kingdom. Literacy levels are falling among the younger generations and it is stated that 1 in 5 adults struggle to read and write.
That is awful. In the UK most kids used to learn to read with comics -fun but learning- and I used to teach Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi kids using comics. I have known people from their 20's to 60's who could not spell/write their own names and, yes, had to use an "X" when signing documents.
So what about France where there is a strong comics industry?
Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life. France literacy rate for 2018 was 99.00%, a 0% increase from 2015. France literacy rate for 2015 was 99.00%, a 0% increase from 2010.
So 1% illiteracy rate.
So what about Germany? Ahem....
Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life. Germany literacy rate for 2018 was 99.00%, a 0% increase from 2015. Germany literacy rate for 2015 was 99.00%, a 0% increase from 2010.
Coincidence that the UK has such a poor literacy rate and absolutely no real comics industry (ignore the people who say that there is one because if they admitted the truth...they would not be 'stars' in their own minds). But here is the shock:
Between 1800 and 1840 literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. In the South the rate grew from about 55 percent to 81 percent. By percentage and circumstance that means UK literacy was better in the 1800s!
And according to Trends in standards of literacy in the United Kingdom, 1948-1996 By Greg Brooks, National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) (Paper presented at UK Reading Association conference, University of Manchester, July 1997, and at British Educational Research Association conference, University of York, September 1997):
"... for the period 1948-76 the results from these tests are the only national monitoring survey information available for England and Wales. The results can be summed up as follows:
- the average reading score rose slightly between 1948 and 1952; this improvement was widely attributed to a recovery in the education system after the war years;- average reading scores then remained essentially unchanged from 1952 to 1979."This means that people in the UK are actually not as educated as they were (which might explain Brexit and voting in Johnson).
I am always thankful to the thousands who read my posts on Black Tower Comics and Books, both on this blog and on Face Book, but I really would be ecstatic if some of them actually purchased books.
In the United States more and more comic stores are closing due comic companies having lost any idea how to run or publish ("make the money fast and ***** the fans!" is no way to keep a good business. Nor is 24 cover variants....20 cover variants or 30 cover variants -someone somewhere went insane. Comic shop owners and "comic pundits" (gods help us) are now talking of a comic industry collapse in the United States. Is France, Germany, the Phillippines concerned about a comic industry collapse? No.
The UK is definitely not worried. It has no industry.
I once put it to three US comic store owners that they needed to try something new. I suggested, of course, that they try a few of the cheaper Black Tower titles (since most are self contained and not series) and see if they sold. They buy in the US the books are printed in the US and shipped in the US. No international postage blah blah blah.
No. Oh, some, like a couple of European comic shop owners, were willing to have ME pay for and ship books to them for free so that THEY could put whatever comic price they wanted on them THEN decide if they would order anything (I worked it out and the cost to me came out as £350 -$400?- and I would get nothing. And, no, I never took up this "great deal to get your books seen in our stores".
They need to keep customers and I need to keep eating and paying bills.
So, please, where ever you live, consider checking out the online store -they are printed and shipped from YOUR area not overseas so no big shipping fee!
Thank You
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