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Steve Jamrozik on Why There Isn’t Early Shipping to DM Stores
posted September 9, 2008
 

This fact was pointed out in one of the comments on ICV2, but some retailers did (or do) get their books early. As for why it isn't done more often, let me tell you a story.

In January 2002, my wife and I were meeting some friends for a birthday dinner on a Tuesday night in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago. We were early so we walked into the local branch of the chain comic book store. It was about 6:30 pm, and the store was closing at 7pm. The clerk working that evening began sorting the independents. During that winter, the only title I bought was Walt Simonson's Orion from DC Comics. Shortly before closing, the clerk put the copies of Orion on the shelf. I bought one copy and was happy that I did not have to make a special trip to the local comic store the next day. The store closed and half of the DCs were not out. Neither were any of the Marvel books. My wife mentioned at dinner that I bought Orion that evening. One of our friends works/volunteers at the local comic shop on Wednesday afternoon for the first few hours to sort the books and do the pull lists. The next day, shortly after noon, I get a call from the owner of the local comic shop wanting to know where and when I bought the book in order to report them to Diamond. I never worked in retail, so I had no idea that stores could not sell the book before the onsale date. To the best of my recollection, I don't think I gave the name of the store where I bought the comic although it was easy enough to figure out based on the location where we had dinner. I explained that they were not selling comics on Tuesday, but that we were in the store at closing enabling me to buy the book.

Several months later I stopped at an independent retailer in a suburb. He made a point of saying that he often got his new books on Tuesday.

Diamond has enough troubles shipping items to the stores that ordered them. I don't think they want the hastle of policing matters like this. Based on the above scenarios, I don't see where a one size fits all penalty for the early sale of books would be in Diamond's interest. In the first case, Diamond would be cutting off eight accounts over the mistake off putting out a $2.50 (now $2.99) comic five minutes early vs. the second where an owner actively tried to recruit pull customers by violating the terms of sale.