You may remember a long time ago, back when Journalista roamed the Earth, a report that the major American bookstore chain Borders was switching to category management for its graphic novel sections. In a nutshell, category management is an industry term for a procedure by which advice is solicited from the publishers themselves as to how their books should be shelved and marketed within the store.
Now that I work at a certain major American bookstore chain that shall remain nameless, I’ve seen what’s in store for the cat-manned graphic novel section, and frankly, I’m pleased. The unofficial split between “manga” and “everything else” will now be made official, with a third category of “superheroes” emerging, leaving “everything else” to include artcomix, altcomix, indies, non-superhero genre books, and so forth. Each category will be alphabetized according to what makes the most sense–superheroes will be in order by character, “other graphic novels” by author, and (I’m assuming) manga by title. (Right now everything’s by author, and despite the wishes of the “we deserve legitimacy!” crowd, that makes it much harder to navigate. You might have to look in four separate places to track down a significant run of, say, Daredevil books; and how many kids can keep track of those foreign-to-Western-eyes Japanese surnames? (Hell, oftentimes the chain will accidentally file a manga book by the author’s first name.))
One final aspect of category management? The graphic novel section will be expanding by 40%-60%. So far, so good.