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Justin Colussy-Estes on DCD Dumping Viz Backlist And Providing Another Reason To Bypass Comics Shops
posted February 19, 2009
 

I don't quite get how that blows your weekend, but I must say, I owe a big "Thank You!" to Diamond for yet another reason not to go to comic book stores.

Seriously, when you start treating books like magazines (ie-kill the backlist), you take the industry backwards rather than forward. I know I can walk into any bookstore, whether they've ever carried manga or not, and order any Viz title, because the major book distributors (Baker & Taylor, Ingram) carry them. However, I can't go into a comic book store, see a series I'm interested in, and order an earlier volume? What's the comic book store owner going to say, "you can always get that on Amazon"? Does this give comic book stores the incentive to start looking at other distributors, a la The Beguiling? Or, as the cynical part of my brain guesses, do they even care? Are they glad they no longer have to flip past all that in the catalog?