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Bleeding Cool: Today, The Comic Shops' Direct Market Was Saved
Bleeding Cool has been reporting widely the effect that the current coronavirus pandemic has on the comic books industry, specifically the direct market comic book industry. We have seen comic shops shut down under government mandate and fear of infection. Comic publishers pull back on their publication schedule or stop publishing entirely. The direct market distributor, Diamond Comic Distributors shut its doors to new product, make people redundant and stop paying publishers. But today, that all changes.
Over a week ago, we gave one modest suggestion. That comic shops might be able to sell digital codes for comic books through their websites. Redeem them for print comic books later. Maintaining the weekly reader buzz without sacrificing the physical and collector mentality. We were told that the bureaucracy behind such a plan would be untenable. Today that has all changed too, and it appears that the right people have been working on this for some time.
Comic Shops Through ComicHub
I have been speaking to Stu Colson, owner of comic store Heroes for Sale of New Zealand, and of ComicHub, the point of sale management software for many comic book stores. They have been talking to a lot of stores and a lot of publishers about getting just that kind of system going.
Publishers can already post preview pages for upcoming titles for the existing ComicHub customer tools. When customers register their account, they link with a physical print store. Which means stores don't need even their own website. Customers order comics, receive them digitally and then redeem them for the physical copy at their comic book store at later date. Adding a shopping cart means that publishers, creators and stores get paid. That means there and then, without having to wait. Even Diamond can get paid in advance for that physical distribution as and when printing and distribution returns. This is a major game-changer for a comic book industry, under shutdown.
ComicHub usually takes time to be installed inside a comic shop. Given the circumstances, they have pared back the standard tool, costed to work online for every comic book store on the planet. ComicHub doesn't even need an existing website to work within. Stores register customers and control that data, not ComicHub. The company has also pulled the app from iOS and Google, so as to prevent any existing ComicHub clients from pro-actively stealing customers of other stores. They even cover international exchanges of currency.
A Stressful Time
Stu Colson has put his considerable resources behind this solution and they will be rolling out a version gradually so as to stress test the system. On the eighth of April, they will run the new system out across their existing hundred stores. On the ninth, they will add stores from the ComicsPRO activist group. By the tenth, they will add two hundred mor.e They want to add every store in the world by the twelfth of April. So by Wednesday, the fifteenth of April, they will be able to run a full direct market of comic book stores, using digital and print, whatever system of lockdown we will be in at that stage.
ComicHub has been talking to all major comics publishers to achieve this and it will also cover the two or three missing weeks the direct market has experienced since the coronavirus pandemic set in. While it is unfortunate that today's date is rather notable, this is not a joke. This is, for want of a better phrase, the saviour of the direct comic book market.
Our Last, Best Hope for a Piece
I am aware that some stores will see this as a way of driving their customers away from print and towards digital. However, if the last ten years has taught us anything, it's that traditional comic book readers prefer print. And right now, not being able to choose anything will doom hundreds of comic book stores and take down a few publishers along the way. This is a chance to preserve the traditional direct market of print comics to stores. I hope the right people seize the opportunity. You can follow what effect the current coronavirus pandemic has had on the comic books industry with this tag.Comment
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The logistics must be nuts for that. What if 50 people order Batman via my LCS, but they only get 20 copies?
I get that it's an emergency situation, but it's also difficult for me since I pay for my comics with cash like 95% of the time.
I don't know if I'll do it at all, but I definitely am not doing it before I hear my LCS is participating. I definitely want to continue supporting my LCS, though. I just figured that would mean hoping they open again and buying a backlog of comics when I get there.Last edited by Space Cop; 04-01-2020, 02:52 PM.
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Not much of a surprise there. Once the chain was broken, the money flow from A to B to C was always going to stop almost imediately.Originally posted by Hypo View Post
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'ComicHub' Temporary Distribution System 'Isn't Going Forward'
Despite being positioned by some members of the comic book press less than 48 hours ago as the solution that “saved” the comic book Direct Market, the team behind the proposal involving the ComicHub suite of tools are pulling back their plans for a temporary retail solution to Diamond Comic Distributors' suspension of service due the coronavirus.
“The ComicHub advance digital reader copy initiative isn’t going to move forward right now,” retailer John Hendrick of Big Bang Comics told Newsarama Thursday afternoon. Hendrick, along with Ryan Higgins of Comics Conspiracy, took lead roles for ComicHub in communicating the proposal to their fellow retailers and the comic book press Wednesday.
“It’s obvious from the concerns voiced by our peers that this isn’t an initiative they can get behind," Hendrick continued. "This was designed by people who love comics with the best of intentions, to get cash flow back moving in our industry again from the retailer all the way up to distributors and publishers.
“But until such a time as we can all agree on a solution that fellow retailers can support there is no point in Stu [Colson] continuing this at this time."
Colson is the founder/owner of ComicHub.
“Unfortunately publishers who were interested in joining the platform now aren’t and we can 100% understand their decision despite the positive reception by customers and creators," Hendricks concluded. "This might not have been a long-term solution but we didn’t need it to be one. We just needed it to tide us over until the industry returns to normal. Whenever that is but hopefully soon.”
In case you’ve heard the name bandied about over the last three days, ComicHub is a pre-existing suite of tools (including POS and front-end ordering) used by comic book retailers, publishers, and creators, and seemingly very well regarded by its retailer customers. It quickly gained more widespread notoriety earlier this week when Colson began pitching a plan for ComicHub to, within weeks, begin serving as a mass-adopted temporary tourniquet for the Direct Market rocked both by Diamond’s shutdown along with city and state social distancing guidelines forcing businesses to close their doors.
While largely emphasizing how retailers and publishers could start using the system rather than why they should use the system, Colson proposed ComicHub be used as a means for brick-and-mortar (or mail-order) comic book retailers and publishers to generate revenue during Diamond’s shut-down. The basic pitch was this: comic book stores and comic book publishers working in tandem via the service, pre-selling eventual print comics to readers with the customer receiving a digital copy instantly along with a receipt for the eventual printed version weeks or months down the road.
The pitch strongly emphasized what would be sold were printed comic books with the digital copy being an add-on, to differentiate it from existing digital services like comiXology. The reader would purchase the printed version at full cover price in indefinite advance, with the instant digital version serving as a free incentive for readers who’d have something to tide them over until publishing resumed.
Sort of crowdfunding on steroids, or in an alternate view readers/customers acting as micro creditors-lenders to retailers and publishers, theoretically the system would allow for retailers to keep paying their bills and generate income while distribution was on pause. That in turn would allow retailers to pay their outstanding Diamond bills, which would allow Diamond to pay outstanding money owed to vendors (publishers). The Diamond receivables along with the revenue from the new comic books pre-sold through the system would allow publishers to continue paying their staff and creators to produce new work uninterrupted.
While a premise with some merits to explore and with proponents of genuine intent, the system as proposed clearly had some hard questions it needed to answer. Like how publishers and retailers would distribute a significant backlog of printed comics when physical distribution resumed, without interrupting the revenue stream generated by the distribution of brand new monthly comics, the very problem the system was being proposed to solve.
In other words, if retailers and/or publishers “owed” customers months worth of comic books when printing and distribution resumed and with the revenue those pre-sales generated already spent, how would all those comic books owed all be delivered to fans while not interrupting the flow of brand new comics?
How long could that system of creating a backlog of comic books owed continue while still remaining feasible and what security would the customers have if distribution remains suspended longer than anticipated?
And what would happen to customers who purchased from retailers that go out of business during Diamond’s shutdown anyway? Who would ultimately be responsible for securing and completing those transactions when a retailer who already took their cut of the purchase price in previous months was now out of the equation?
The system as proposed also seemed dependent on quick, widespread adoption by readers, retailers, and publishers to reach the mass necessary to operate as intended. In the comic book Direct Market, that effectively means it needed DC and/or Marvel Comics and likely both (70-ish % of the Direct Market between them) to sign on. Marvel and/or DC’s adoption would be the difference between ComicHub maybe being a tool that could help some retailers and publishers in a small way without the ‘Big Two,’ to being the potential game-changing solution it was being billed as with them signed on.
While it seems likely the proposal achieved some success in terms of the major publishers who listened to the pitch this week, it also seems highly unlikely Marvel or DC would or could give the system their support in the time it took for this proposal to be embraced in the time it was.
‘Industry-saving’ and matter-of-fact 'How It Will Work' headlines and social media posts promising the system going online in weeks occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday despite neither questions about its methodology having immediate answers nor publishers or retailers publicly pledging their support. In fact, prominent retailers have come out publicly against the system, completely opposed to the premise of encouraging their customers to embrace digital, even temporarily, one of the main reasons the proposal has been scrapped.
In a community whose future is in legitimate existential crisis, understandable wishful thinking perhaps prematurely elevated an idea worth exploring into something more than that. And as of Thursday, it was still going on.
Jon Arvedon of CBR reported just hours ago that “news broke that ComicHub was stepping in to help get new comics into the hands of readers” (ComicHub wasn’t and isn’t stepping in, it was a proposal seeking support and no longer is) and that Image Comics is “opting out of the temporary distribution method” (Image can’t opt out of a system that didn’t and now won’t exist).
While retailers, readers, and creators all await more word from the major publishers - particularly Marvel and DC - how they plan to deal with this crisis, perhaps this episode will serve as a cautionary tale about asking the hard questions first.Comment
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That's not a surprise. The logistics would've been a mess.
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Yes. I had been wondering how they were going to make the nitty gritty work.Comment
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Yeah, my question was whether the app would be able to say my LCS is definitely getting 30 copies of X and 35 people could not order them. But the article brought up a lot of other potential problems.Originally posted by Michael Heide View Post
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It's unfortunate that they couldn't make it work to keep a steady stream of revenue coming in because I don't think Marvel and DC are going to hold off on releasing completed books digitally indefinitely until Diamond is back up and running.Comment
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Yeah, but ideal would be total stoppage.Originally posted by Hypo View Post
Even under the best circumstances this solution would've been difficult. I know my LCS (and this seems true for others I go to) has pretty much just enough space for a single heavy release date. So, if they opened say June 3, the June 3 books would all go there. Maybe they could just stack all the pre-sales and grab them when the customers come in (even that would be tricky), but where are they going to put all the ones that weren't pre-sold before June 3?
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MARVEL COMICS 'Pausing' Work & Release of ONE-THIRD Of Its Publishing Line
Marvel Entertainment is immediately "pausing" work on - and the release of - approximately one-third of its May and June titles, a spokesperson confirmed for Newsarama. Marvel did not provide details at this time as to which titles would be affected.
The decision to pause work on the affected titles, according to the spokesperson, is "to help spread the amount of publishing product over the coming weeks and months."
Asked when the publisher intends to resume publishing of the remaining two-thirds not affected, the Marvel spokesperson declined to answer.
Marvel has been telling creators involved with the suspended title of this decision today, and the company spokesperson re-assured Newsarama that "all talent will be paid for their work to date."
A revised schedule of releases from Marvel Comics is expected.Comment
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The unspoken truth about comics is that speculators drive the industry. They're why print comics are still around. But if the stores can't stay open, what then?Comment
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Thought this episode of Off Panel with John Hendrick, owner of Big Bang Comics, was worth a listen. One tidbit is it seems Jim Lee was the reason DC reversed course on releasing comics digitally.Comment
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Villain Draft 3: Fourth Place Winner
September 11, 2001; January 6, 2021; February 13, 2021Comment
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