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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Talking at Comics
So, Diamond has apparently raised the minimum purchase order amount on the titles they carry. I say "apparently" because, despite being talked about on new sites and gossip columns, I've yet to see an official statement from Diamond about this change in policy. But then, since I only work in comics retail, I guess Diamond doesn't see how this can affect me at all. What this means is, in short, that unless titles receive a certain number of orders, totaling about $1500 wholesale, Diamond won't carry those titles. Yes, even if they solicited them.
I've got very mixed reactions to this. On the one hand, there is an awful lot of crap in Previews, and anything that cuts out some of the dead weight is probably good for retailers and smaller publishers. Of course, Diamond didn't do that for them, Diamond did this for Diamond. Because now Diamond won't be carrying the titles that they lost money distributing. On the other hand, I'm already sick of customers getting antsy because a title they ordered is running late, or got shipped to east coast stores before west coast stores, or bookstores before comic book stores. I'm not looking forward to explaining to them that the book they ordered isn't available to comic shops with Diamond accounts because Diamond didn't feel that enough people ordered them.
So, I see lots of things happening in our shop because of this. For one, I'm going to have to be much more aggressive about getting our customers who buy and enjoy independent and small press titles and graphic novels to buy Previews and pre-order books. Because we can't count on testing out small press books with small orders anymore. I also foresee us ordering from smaller distributors like Cold Cut and Last Gasp more often.
I also strongly suspect that small publishers who were hovering at or below Diamond's old cut-off amount will end up raising their prices in order to meet the new cut-off amount. I think we're probably looking at the death of the $3 price point for small press books. I think we're going to see many more books solicited at the $4-$5 price point.