Kon_Jelly Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 Diamond announced no more shipments after this week, so no new comics starting in April. Full announcement here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExNihilo Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 God, I'm really not sure what this is going to do for the industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juno Beach Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 That can't be good... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigDaddy1 Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 Oh boy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldbsturgeon Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 Yep that’s a big deal for this industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Less Blob Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 23 minutes ago, ExNihilo said: God, I'm really not sure what this is going to do for the industry. What's the point with half or more of the shops getting closed? Give it a pause for a month or two. Maybe a month in isolation will result in some incredible creativity. BishopT 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExNihilo Posted March 23, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 23, 2020 3 minutes ago, the blob said: What's the point with half or more of the shops getting closed? Give it a pause for a month or two. Maybe a month in isolation will result in some incredible creativity. I don't worry about comics as a medium. I know it will continue on in some format. My bigger concern is comics as a paper format. I really enjoy reading a physical copy of a book as opposed to a digital one. It's already a very tough industry for comic shops, I only hope that this isn't the death knell of floppies as we know it. If the medium continues on purely as digital and TPB's, it'll be a sad thing indeed. Mayor006, toro, aardvark88 and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post miraclemet Posted March 24, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 24, 2020 No new comics this week? What will I read?!?? dupont2005, Harry Lime, kaculler and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadGenius Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 Probably a minority opinion, but aside from the potential loss of the LCS I think I'm okay if the medium moves to digital and TPBs. The output of monthly comics, especially from Marvel and DC, is bloated and the glut of variants and constant events were already slowly killing the industry. Digital/TPBs might be a purer form of the medium that might allow it to go back to basics. Ken Aldred, SpeedforceKJ, Key Largo Comics and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nme00 Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 Reading this right after I just put my preorders in at DCBS. So what happens now? Do we get refunds? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Spider-Woman Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 Wow. I'm surprised but not really surprised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tv horror Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 I'm only worried that you can't wipe yourself with digital comics! toro and Bookery 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Less Blob Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 2 hours ago, ExNihilo said: I don't worry about comics as a medium. I know it will continue on in some format. My bigger concern is comics as a paper format. I really enjoy reading a physical copy of a book as opposed to a digital one. It's already a very tough industry for comic shops, I only hope that this isn't the death knell of floppies as we know it. If the medium continues on purely as digital and TPB's, it'll be a sad thing indeed. I'm not sure how pumping 1-6 more weeks of releases into a quarantined market will save the floppy. It may kill it faster. Bookery 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KolmarAvenue Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 Unprecedented? In terms of books I hope it elevates and rewards the quality books and puts an end to the manipulation/abuse by the publishers while rewarding the LCS. Diamond has not been helping especially in aiding ecommerce sales. We'll lose a decent portion of month to month surviving LCS's which I don't like. If it gets worse, what do you think the future of floppies will look like? How different is this situation than the 90's crash? smh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Less Blob Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 3 minutes ago, KolmarAvenue said: Unprecedented? In terms of books I hope it elevates and rewards the quality books and puts an end to the manipulation/abuse by the publishers while rewarding the LCS. Diamond has not been helping especially in aiding ecommerce sales. We'll lose a decent portion of month to month surviving LCS's which I don't like. If it gets worse, what do you think the future of floppies will look like? How different is this situation than the 90's crash? smh Totally different. The 90s were caused by a glut. We don't really have a glut here. I am not so sure so many LCS close up unless they were on the brink anyway. If they were paying their rent in the past, why would their landlords not work with them? It's not like there is a ton of retail looking to move in. If they were constantly behind, probably not. there is a lot of retail space out there, I think the landlords on average are going to be smarter. And I don't think comic shops are the kinds of places people will be scared to go back to. crowded bars, clubs, maybe movie theatres, flights.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dupont2005 Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 There will be plenty of self published stuff available directly from creators, and plenty of smaller publishers sell directly to the consumer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobbledclam Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 🤔advice.....this is when you want a well worn G/VG and not VF/NM😵😱 toro 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExNihilo Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 1 hour ago, the blob said: I'm not sure how pumping 1-6 more weeks of releases into a quarantined market will save the floppy. It may kill it faster. I think this entire thing (corona/quarantine) has resulted in a lot of companies re-evaluating costs and efficiencies to better prepare themselves should such an event occur again. Playboy has already announced that the Spring issue will be the last for 2020 and there is speculation that it might be the final print issue as they focus on other revenue streams (and yes, I realize their print numbers were probably low to begin with). With publishers pushing digital platforms in the last 10 years, perhaps this is the catalyst that makes them re-evaluate their distribution strategy. I'm not sure what the revenue numbers look like and how profitable various aspects of the business are, but if the paper medium shows that it is more susceptible to market events as compared to digital, that seems to be a valid reason for higher ups to at least consider alternatives more so than they would have previously. And what about Diamond? Do they have enough of a runway to survive a prolonged shutdown of the comic market? I don't think this will be the end of floppies. The Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad haven't ended paperback books. CD sales continue to trudge along despite digital music being available for two decades. I think it's fair to say floppies will survive, but will they have a smaller footprint? Or who knows, maybe you're right, maybe this will save floppies. Maybe we'll see fewer variant covers as a result, lower print runs, and just higher quality books in general. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post lighthouse Posted March 24, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 24, 2020 As a shop owner I am VERY pleased with Diamond's move, even though their hand was forced by the governors in the states where they have warehouses. It's unlikely any comic shops were going to be open to the public until late-May or early-June after this week. When the California governor enacted stay-at-home he indicated he didn't think it would be "many months" but that the "next 8 weeks" were critical. Anyone who think these lockdowns will last less than 8 weeks is naive. Given that scenario, in a choice between burying 3,000 LCSs with invoices while they can't sell to customers or just suspending weekly shipping altogether through the lockdowns, this is the better choice. What they need to do now as a followup is cancel pending solicitations, skip publishing Previews for two months, and just pretend these lockdown weeks never happened. If June 3rd is the date when shops nationwide are able to reopen, then ship the "April 1st" books to arrive June 3rd. Ship the April 8th books to arrive June 10th. And so on. And make the next round of new solicitations be for August shipping product. If a statue was previously solicited for June, you could probably ship it in June, it doesn't need to be pushed to August. But the printed material should just skip forward as many weeks as needed and then restart. Because OTHERWISE you are going to tell a decent-sized $2500/wk customer that "here you go, here's 9 weeks of books all at once, you owe us $22,500". And that shop is going out of business. Because the shop's own customers will just then be headed back to work themselves. They won't have 9 weeks of pull money set aside waiting for opening day. 8 or 9 weeks of no new comics won't kill the industry. People used to sit through a summer of reruns and they still started watching tv again when fall rolled around. Sports fans deal with having an offseason. 8 or 9 weeks off won't have that big an impact on the typical comic buyer. But burying 3,000 shops with a 9x normal invoice? Yeah, that would. And frankly, knowing this is the situation with Diamond makes the rest of my planning as a shop owner much easier to deal with. I'm not getting any breaks on my store rent. My part-time staff is all being fully paid while they stay at home. Knowing that I only have to dip into savings / credit lines / stashed wall book inventory to cover rent and utilities and payroll (without having to also plan for inventory expenses) makes this all a lot easier. Robot Man, Juno Beach, AndyFish and 5 others 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slym2none Posted March 24, 2020 Share Posted March 24, 2020 49 minutes ago, lighthouse said: Anyone who think these lockdowns will last less than 8 weeks is naive. Anyone who thinks these lockdowns can go on as long as 8 weeks is crazy. It's not sustainable for that long. We, both the private and public we, cannot be propped up for that long without major damage being done. I don't think anyone will go much longer than March 31st before things happen. What those things are, we cannot discuss here further. But 8 weeks in lockdown is not going to happen. -slym theCapraAegagrus and Von Cichlid 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...