Spinner Racks

A spinner rack is a rotating merchandise display, usually placed on a retailer's floor or counter. Often used to display magazines, paperbacks, greeting cards, postcards, hats, or seeds, the spinner rack is closely associated with the comic book industry.

A typical spinner rack is composed of a metal central spine with wire pockets, baskets, or pegs. A floor unit may have between four and twelve tiers (usually with four pockets on each tier) that may or may not rotate independently. Additional features may include a signholder that sits on top of the unit. (A typical comics spinner rack would have 44 pockets, with each pocket holding around five comics.)

Author George R. R. Martin, in writing about the spinner racks he knew as a child, notes that they offered a hodge-podge of titles (in his case paperbacks) regardless of genre, and thus exposed readers to a wide variety of writing, as opposed to the modern bookstore, where books are generally categorized by topic.Martin, George R. R. "Tales From the Spinner Rack," ''Warriors'' (Tor Books, 2010) .

History

Up until the mid-1980s, comics spinner racks were a common feature of American and British newsstands, pharmacies, grocery stores, and variety stores. As comics historian John Jackson Miller writes:

With the growth of the direct market and comic book specialty stores, comics — and spinner racks — mostly disappeared from the old venues, to the point that they mostly became a thing of the past. Spinner racks also suffered in reputation because, as ''The Thought Balloon'' blog notes, they:

Despite this, a few companies, like Tokyopop, were known to offer retailers free spinner rack displays for Tokyopop manga, thereby increasing the visibility of the medium in bookstores.

In the years 2018–2019, however, nostalgia for comic book spinner racks motivated some manufacturers to offer them again, both for stores, conventions, and for individual collectors to keep in their homes. Johnston, Rich
"You Wait Ages for a Comic Book Spinner Rack and Then 2 Come Along at Once,"
''Bleeding Cool'' (April 30, 2018). Diamond Comic Distributors, in announcing that it was now offering spinner racks for sale, posits them as a way to bring comics back to the "book, record, toy, or game store around the corner, the hospital gift shop down the street, drug stores, convenience stores, movie theaters," as a way of expanding comics distribution once again beyond the comic specialty shop.

Notes

References

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External links

SpinnerRack.com
retailer of spinner racks for comics collectors

''Indie Spinner Rack''
2007–2016 podcast devoted to independent comics

Retailing
Collections care
Comics industry
Distribution (marketing)