DC Cuts Ties with Diamond

[skyvolt2000]

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/mile...s-50-off-sale/

P.S. I am beginning a 50% off back issues sale today with the codeword DCSUCKS! I make no apologies for the forthrightness of my codeword choice, as I am rightfully and truly pissed off. The 50% off DCSUCKS! Codeword applies to all ten million+ of our back issue comics and magazines, including an awesome collection that Pam purchased this morning. Those key issues will be in our Premium New-In-Stock link at about 10 AM tomorrow (Saturday) morning. Only new issues, my few variants, and our professionally-grade comics are excluded. Please stay safe, and have a great weekend. We will all survive, because, love is love…

I gotta ask this....

Do any of these fossils realize every single thing in a comic book store can be bought CHEAPER everywhere else in some form?

Do they not know what Ebay or Half Price Books are?

[Vordan]

It really isnt that.

Its do i make my retail competitor, who i cant compete against now, even more competitive against me, whilst seeing my own costs rise for the privilege of doing so.

And DC has nowhere near 40% of the market - its closer to 25 than 40. Marvel has utterly destroyed them over last few years.

So it’s not really a big deal to completely drop DC, yet you and the store owners are losing your minds and having complete meltdowns over this? Yeah I think you’re lying to yourself bud. Dropping Batman at the very least is going to hurt.

[iron chimp]

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/mile...s-50-off-sale/




I gotta ask this....

Do any of these fossils realize every single thing in a comic book store can be bought CHEAPER everywhere else in some form?

Do they not know what Ebay or Half Price Books are?

If you arent buying at least somethings off the rack, dont complain when theres nothing for you.

Ebay's no good when the book has been cancelled for poor sales.

[Lonewolf36]

I'm sorry but i'm not gonna support a shop that bitches or refuses to sell DC Comics because it might require a little more time to order from multiple distributors ect. I tend to buy a slight bit more Marvel than DC which i can order do online if it reaches that point. If this works for DC then those who refuse to sell will want to come crawling back if they remain in business. This is me, and i am in the minority i'm sure, but if they go under so be it but the sad thing is that will hurt the industry i love the end. Comics survived and to a point thrived before the Diamond's monopoly and i hope it makes it back to that but i have my worries.

[iron chimp]

So it’s not really a big deal to completely drop DC, yet you and the store owners are losing your minds and having complete meltdowns over this? Yeah I think you’re lying to yourself bud. Dropping Batman at the very least is going to hurt.

I never said it wasnt a big deal. 25% is a very large chunk.

I said stocking it f's you as a shop. And not stocking it f's you too. Either way yr shafted.

Oh and there is no distro of dc in europe anymore as dc are telling retailers outside usa to go to midtown and dcbs for their books - which i cant see anyone doing. So thats DC dropping them not them dropping DC.

Im not bothered - it just makes room in my pull list for other books. Im just staggered people think that buying from someone who has the potential to retail books at less than they can wholesale to everyone else isnt going to lead to only one outcome if people agree to it.

[Dthirds3]

Looks like alot of stupid comic store owner are going out of business. GOOD.

[superduperman]

It really isnt that.

Its do i make my retail competitor, who i cant compete against now, even more competitive against me, whilst seeing my own costs rise for the privilege of doing so.

And DC has nowhere near 40% of the market - its closer to 25 than 40. Marvel has utterly destroyed them over last few years.

25% is only about ten percent higher than they were before COIE. And they can't just do that again. Cried wolf too many times on that one.

[iron chimp]

25% is only about ten percent higher than they were before COIE. And they can't just do that again. Cried wolf too many times on that one.

Im sympathetic to them as theyve tried a lot of things.

$3 vs $4 marvel books
2 relaunches of vertigo
Young animal
2 reboots or whatever they were in nu52 and rebirth.
Black label
100 page giants
Creator imprints like gaiman and ellis
Arguably 4 of the very biggest names in comics in frank miller, tom king, Scott snyder, and bendis.
Spent a fortune on getting a topline rosta of artists.
Distro at barnes and noble

And all its got them after 10 years is Marvel hammering them yet again.

If their solution now is to make their books more expensive to stock in usa and removing books from euroland then if all those potentially good ideas failed i cant see how this is going to work at least for monthly books.

[Samm]

If I were DC I’d just focus my efforts on outside media. Animation (series and movies) video games, shows and movies! They’ve slaughtered Marvel in the former three categories and will likely catch up with them in the latter in time. Why waste money on comics, when the sales have either dwindled or remained stagnant no matter what has been done.

[Flash Gordon]

If you can't adjust your business plan, you shouldn't be in business.

There's always going to be marketplace changes and new challenges to meet. If you treat your business not as your personal hobby with your friends (which so many shoppes do), and as an actual business you can figure it out.

I mean the real problem facing ALL small businesses is rent, demands of rent being astronomical- beyond that? Meh.

[Man_of_Tomorrow]

While I can see this as a new set of challenges for retailers, I can't help but think of all the complains I read about Diamond's monpoly and business tactics.I see various comments about diamond discounts and orders. I don't have a shop so I don't know how it works.

So yes, this will be a different era. I hope many if not all rise up to the challenge. But a monopoly is never good for business, so if a period of trial is needed for the industry to get better then It will be worth it.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Im sympathetic to them as theyve tried a lot of things.

$3 vs $4 marvel books
2 relaunches of vertigo
Young animal
2 reboots or whatever they were in nu52 and rebirth.
Black label
100 page giants
Creator imprints like gaiman and ellis
Arguably 4 of the very biggest names in comics in frank miller, tom king, Scott snyder, and bendis.
Spent a fortune on getting a topline rosta of artists.
Distro at barnes and noble

And all its got them after 10 years is Marvel hammering them yet again.

If their solution now is to make their books more expensive to stock in usa and removing books from euroland then if all those potentially good ideas failed i cant see how this is going to work at least for monthly books.

In terms of sales to stores, Marvel does better not just because of sales to end customers, but also its many gimmicks to get stores to increase orders.

I wonder if Marvel will see this as an opportunity to come up with even more gimmicks and appeal to pissed off retailers who are soured on DC now.

I really think DC is looking elsewhere now anyway for sales growth. Take away the gimmicks and the constant relaunches from both companies, and I wonder what sales would really look like. If the customer base isn't growing in comic book stores, there is no real sales growth that is sustainable without a constant stream of gimmicks.

[SanityOrMadness]

AOL only cares about the IP rights to these characters. They care very little for the floppies that don't bring a lot of money in. They took on huge debt to buy Time Warner and than the pandemic hit. They are looking for ways to save where they can and this decision most likely came from a non-DC person at the company.

AOL have nothing to do with DC any more. Time Warner sold them (at a massive loss) years ago.

You mean AT&T, a completely separate company.

And I gotta laugh at the stores saying they won't stock DC. I understand being upset but if you're gonna do that you might as well just close up shop now; Marvel and the indies alone won't keep your bills paid. Do we know yet if DC's new distributors will have any kind of cost control in place to help stores recover from the loss of the Diamond discounts?

It doesn't really matter what Lunar/UCS do. There are three major losses in buying DC comics from them rather than Diamond:

• Terms of Service. Most shops are in good standing with Diamond (those that aren't tend not to last...) and so get to receive books on credit and so pay Diamond for them in arrears, after they've sold them. When moving to a new distributor, you don't get that - they'll be paying faster, possibly even cash-on-delivery in many cases. That means they need to have money to pay for books before they've sold them. This would hurt many shops anyway (when a chain of shops is in trouble, suppliers starting to demand COD usually finishes them off quickly...), but even if that doesn't happen (e.g., DC advances a bunch of money to UCS/Lunar to enable them to match Diamond's TOS for individual shops), it's not the end of the story...
• Person-hours. Dealing with two companies need not necessarily take fully twice as long as dealing with one, but it takes a lot longer. This translates to increased costs for a shop in terms of wages - someone spending even as little as five extra hours a week on dealing with additional forms/calls/packages/etc is five hours they're not spending on everything else. And "everything else" still needs done.
• Freight. Even for shops in the USA, this will cost more - simply on the basis that they'll need twice as many deliveries, and Lunar/UCS probably don't have the networks or volume Diamond does. Also, see "person-hours" above - but this will go CRITICAL for international shops. Diamond have an established international network - especially in the UK, and countries served from there like Ireland and mainland Europe - that means they can send stuff from the USA in bulk and deal with stuff relatively locally, which keeps costs containable. If each shop needs to get a separate international package from UCS/Lunar, the break-even cost for each individual DC comic sold will be multiple times that of a Diamond-served comic with the same cover price (basically, they'll be in the same position as a UK retail customer ordering a package from Midtown/DCBS, without the benefits of wholesale shipping). Which means any sensible UK shop will need to have pre-paid preorders for any UCS/Lunar-served comic, because they'll be too pricey to risk them sitting in a pull box for an extended time, let alone shelf copies.

And all that would still be true in "normal" times. But lots of shops have taken a major hit from Covid-19 (being shut for weeks doesn't help anyone) and don't have the ready cash to pay the extra-and-quicker costs associated with the above.

Most comic stores will be p'oed because they currently have a monopoly on where you can buy print comics, they don't want any outside competition, the more centralized distribution is, the profit they pull in, the easier their life is with co=ordinating shipments, and with comic stores dying off like flies in the last 10 years the more of an increase in profit the remaining stores will have.

I'm all for helping out the little comic shop guy, but they shouldn't have a monopoly on where you can find the product. Again comics have to be made as visible and accessible to the general public in as many digital and print outlets as possible. otherwise they will continue to die off.

It could be a historic disaster for DC, or it could be an era of new innovation, and rejuvenation depending on why they are doing it. If it's to expand the market that's a good thing, if it's to simply save AT&T money without any innovation, well...than bad idea.

Diamond have literally NOTHING to do with non-DM comics, or any of DC's non-DM book sales (they do serve the "book market" for some other companies, like Image).

DC's "newsstand" sales gradually died off from the 80s onward (and went completely extinct in the 2000s) because comics were too cheap and too fragile for newsagents to spend the time and space on stocking them vs. a more expensive and more robust set of magazines. And this was before magazines started dying in earnest as people shifted to digital.

UCS/Lunar will still have nothing to do with shipping to non-DM stores. Penguin Random House do with respect to HCs/TPBs/OGNs, but they already did that and have done for years, that's not changing (except in that DM stores are now being formally encouraged to order from them. Some already did). Magazine distribution is a whole other field again.

And on digital... ComiXology have a near-monopoly on digital comic "sales" (thanks to decisions made the better part of a decade ago) and now they're owned by Amazon. Who get to do whatever the F they want to you, because they're the figurative 800lb gorilla and you can't live without them (when other publishers have tried to push back, Amazon stopped selling their stuff, and they ended up crawling back because the losses got too great). The only other game in town for DC is DC Universe, and that's not even available outside North America. (And who knows how long it is for this world, with HBO Max being WarnerMedia's main streaming service now).

[iron chimp]

In terms of sales to stores, Marvel does better not just because of sales to end customers, but also its many gimmicks to get stores to increase orders.

I wonder if Marvel will see this as an opportunity to come up with even more gimmicks and appeal to pissed off retailers who are soured on DC now.

I really think DC is looking elsewhere now anyway for sales growth. Take away the gimmicks and the constant relaunches from both companies, and I wonder what sales would really look like. If the customer base isn't growing in comic book stores, there is no real sales growth that is sustainable without a constant stream of gimmicks.

You are right. Its easy to forget all marvels shenanigans.

Theoretically marvel could single handedly bankrupt dcbs and midtown and take dc of the shelves completely by asking diamond not to sell them their books so strong is their share of the market though.

Dc have put themselves in the weakest position by giving their business to a distributor with only client underpinned by a retail operation so dependent on marvel.

Its not likely as it would cost them millions in lost sales until they broke dcbs and make them very unpopular but. Its now theoretically possible for them to remove dc entirely.

I would have thought any one with any cash reserves (which might be no one after covid) would be looking to win shelf space in the shops with special deals - buy any marvel book get a key book reprint free (hulk 181, spiderman 127 etc) for the next 2 months, heres an image comic giant reprinting 5 mini series and stories arcs over the next 6 months for $2 wholesale for you to sell for $5, heres the diamond sponsored small press anthology of issues from vault, adhouse, and whoever else etc etc.

At the end of the day its 75% vs 25% - they could crush the 25% if they could get organised and had some spare cash. Two very big ifs admittedly!

[Samm]

You are right. Its easy to forget all marvels shenanigans.

Theoretically marvel could single handedly bankrupt dcbs and midtown and take dc of the shelves completely by asking diamond not to sell them their books so strong is their share of the market though.

Dc have put themselves in the weakest position by giving their business to a distributor with only client underpinned by a retail operation so dependent on marvel.

Its not likely as it would cost them millions in lost sales until they broke dcbs and make them very unpopular but. Its now theoretically possible for them to remove dc entirely.

I would have thought any one with any cash reserves (which might be no one after covid) would be looking to win shelf space in the shops with special deals - buy any marvel book get a key book reprint free (hulk 181, spiderman 127 etc) for the next 2 months, heres an image comic giant reprinting 5 mini series and stories arcs over the next 6 months for $2 wholesale for you to sell for $5, heres the diamond sponsored small press anthology of issues from vault, adhouse, and whoever else etc etc.

At the end of the day its 75% vs 25% - they could crush the 25% if they could get organised and had some spare cash. Two very big ifs admittedly!

The comic industry would collapse of Marvel/Diamond did that. And 30% or 1/3 of the comics industry is DC... that’s a huge chunk of the market that you can’t just laugh off! This decision by DC is a huge game changer and it’s been a long time coming!!!