Amazon has a lot of people posting reviews at their site. Anyone can review anything they sell… although those who have purchased the item from Amazon get a “verified purchase” tag. Amazon uses these reviews, among many other factors, to determine search rankings. Vendors have figured that out, especially those vendors that sell easy-to-make items such as dietary supplements, cellphone cases, and various bits of offshore-manufactured small electronics (like charging cables and selfie sticks). They want lots of five-star reviews, […]

A few links I found to be thought-provoking reads: First up, how newspapers have cannibalized their own sales. Like magazines before them, single-copy sales have practically disappeared as publishers raise prices drastically in order to combat declining readership. But that’s a stupid idea, because you drive existing customers away and you prevent new ones from easily trying your product. Publishers have applied the same pricing theory to both home delivery and single-copy selling over the last four years or so: […]

Memories by KC Carlson Well, this is odd… What we have here is an interview that I did for a local Eau Clare, Wisconsin, television show called “Thirteen Interview” sometime around 1981. The interviewer is Geoff Welch, a old classmate of mine at the University of Wisconsin — Eau Claire, which I attended (and occasionally actually went to class) in the late 1970s. I could usually be found working for the UWEC Davies University Center as a film projectionist or […]

I bought the ComicsWorthReading.com domain on December 23, 1999, as a present for myself. That means that this year, it will have been operating for 15 years. The internet, particularly blogging, has changed a lot in that time, and so has this site, going from static pages to WordPress and from reference pages about comic series to a blog covering more topics, including related movies and books. The modern gift category for the 15th anniversary is Watches, and I’m certainly […]

In case you’re wondering why there hasn’t been very much content here over the last few days, we took a vacation. To sunny (very sunny) California, where we went to Disneyland. We’d been to Walt Disney World (WDW) in Florida several times, but I’d never before seen the original (beta version) park. Here are some photos and thoughts from the trip. How to Have the Best Time at Disneyland We have come up with a workable strategy for enjoying an […]

Retailer Brandon Schatz, in a post at The Beat (no longer available), points out a lot of interesting observations about Archie Comics’ recent business practices. I hadn’t realized that they’d suddenly jumped their cover prices up to the now-standard $3.99, but the other concerns — eliminating digests and series, shipping late, missing solicitations — make me worry as well. He says It would be easy to say that the company is entering a period of creative and cultural renaissance. Unfortunately, […]