Quote Originally Posted by Ascended View Post
If digital is a little ahead, is that really a problem? Retailers will bitch and moan, but they're trying to stay afloat in a dying market so of course they're going to complain about anything that might snag customers away. But if digital came out a little early, *would* that actually steal that many customers? We've had same-day digital for almost a decade now, and it doesn't seem to have had that big an impact on direct market sales. As DC themselves said, these are different audiences; serving one doesn't necessarily under-serve the other. Would print readers really abandon floppies just so they can get their book a couple weeks early? Some would I'm sure, but generally I don't think they would.
I think it would be a problem. There are people who cannot wait. If the biggest universe changing event just happened, is 90% of the readership really just going to wait 2 months, or 2 weeks even, or however long the delay is? Nope, they are either going to pay for the digital or pirate it, or at least find out all the spoilers and then have no excitement for the issue. It pretty much breaks the habit.

It also shifts the money off by months, meaning that is two or three or however many more issues committed and done before the first issue even drops or something else happens to affect readership/buying. Marketing also becomes much, much harder.

I am sure if we were honest we could come up with all sorts of other 'problems' that if not industry harming at least would require bigger changes to the way things are done.

Quote Originally Posted by ohfellow View Post
Some comic shops have already been buying very few shelf copies of most titles, and zero for many smaller titles if no one requested them. They order what their savers/subscribers have standing orders for. Or for special orders placed using Previews. They take some chances on a few others.
Yes and no. Yes, for most stores a lot of titles are not ordered at all except on request, but not all stores are primarily subscription boxes. That is a lot to assume and the possibility that there are a lot of stores that do most of their sales off the shelves should be allowed.

So - a lot of business is locked in. And I think people with pull lists will still want their printed copies.

Since publishers are making comics fully refundable going back to mid-March and for at least several months going forward, the risks are mitigated. Stores will be returning unsold copies.

The bigger problem is if the stores can survive long enough for all of this to matter.
Returnability is big but I think that first line is also a lot to assume. I mean, they will still want them, mostly, if they can afford them -- even a handful of issues. Even if most of the customers plan to buy their pulls, some could take weeks or months to catch up, and in the meantime it makes it difficult for people to even manage their pulls. Usually it is no problem to get something off your pull list about a month ahead, but now I am possibly committed to months worth of comics that I might not even like the first issue I read coming back?

Regardless how you feel about the likelihood of any of those issues, it is going to put a giant stress on everyone, from the publishers to the printers to Diamond to the shippers to the stores to the readers.