Today is Wednesday, and that means it's New Comic Day in North America. Although I probably won't get to my local comic store until next week, were I to venture there today I'd find 10 new comics waiting for me among the dozens that arrived from scads of different publishers this afternoon, just in time for Christmas.
Next Wednesday, however, almost no new comics will be released. The reasoning apparently involves the distributor (Diamond) not wanting to have to deal with the usual hassles of shipping between Christmas and New Year's (despite a long history of somehow managing in the past). This news was received, I imagine, with some consternation by comic store owners, as it potentially meant a week of missed revenue for them. You can argue that all of the same comics will come out sooner (this week) or later (first Wednesday in 2010) anyway, but from a cash flow point of view, I think it makes a difference. For one thing, that's one week out of fifty-two in the year (nearly 2%) during which few, if any, customers would be coming into the store and possibly making impulse purchases. Add in the fact that some might be flush with Christmas cash and it makes for a poor economic scenario for the merchants.
Never fear, though, as DC and Marvel/Disney both decided to do something about it. Each of them has arranged to publish one special item next Wednesday: Blackest Night # 6 from DC and a (free?) 2010 Calendar from Marvel/Disney. The idea is that these items will bring the customers into the store during that lull week, and everything will be good. Of course, since Diamond isn't shipping that week, this solution only works if the objects in question arrive ahead of time... specifically, with today's big shipments of comic store fare!
For the 2010 Calendar, that's not such a big deal. Stores will have received them today and should have little problem "sitting" on them until this time next week. And if they didn't... so what? Who's really going to care if some copies of a calendar get out there a week early? In the case of Blackest Night # 6, on the other hand, you're talking about the hot-off-the-presses, absolutely latest issue of the hottest comic event of the year. Blackest Night is crossing over into lots of DC titles right now and interest in it couldn't be higher. So what exactly are the odds that no unscrupulous store owners will either leak or outright pre-sell copies of this much-sought-after comic between now and Dec 30? How likely is that the contents of this all-important title won't be spoiled for the majority of us before we even have the option of owning it ourselves?
To mitigate the chances of that happening, DC has taken some steps to introduce a reward system whereby all stores will receive a limited run (and therefore valuable) variant issue of something (maybe Blackest Night) early in 2010 so long as they haven't been found to have jumped the release date of Blackest Night # 6. How DC is planning to track this, I'm not sure. With the nature of viral reporting these days, perhaps they're counting on Internet reports (or the fear thereof) to keep things in check. At any rate, it seems like quite the fascinating cultural / behavioural experiment to me, and I'm already looking forward to watching the results unfold in the next 7 days.
[Update Dec 24/09: It didn't take long.]
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2 comments:
As I can't remember the last time I was in a comic book store my commentary could be completely off the mark.
Interesting comment on comic release schedules. Does a comic book store rely on regulars to pay the rent or to provide the majority of operating profit? If the regulars provide the majority of profit, not having them stop in for a single week would hurt. On the other hand, if the regulars cover rent, having adequate boxing week advertising to bring in some more casual consumers could compensate. Another consideration is that the regulars, flush with post christmas cash and approriate sale pricing, would likely stop by their favored comic book shop regardless of the release schedule to purchase items they would not normally consider. This also ignores the concerns of individual comic publishers. Perhaps some bean counter at comic book publishers have noticed releases right after christmas do not move as well as other weeks of the year. It might be nice for the publishers to give a gift to a long suffering store owner but they must vigilantly gaurd their own bottom line to continue providing releases year round.
Amazing as always
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