Over the past few weeks, we've done two major articles on Diamond's poll regarding the release day for new comics (see 'Thursday Comics -- Better or Worse' and 'Las Vegas Report -- Thursday Release Controversy') that produced some retailer response.  Here are some comments from Bill from Comics Plus in Brooklyn, New York:

I have just finished reading your article on Diamond's proposed change of release date from Wednesday to Thursday.  I believe this would do more damage than good, as it will shrink the already small customer base into two days instead of three during the work week.  Diamond should consider shipping product twice a week instead of once a week, say Tuesday and Thursday.  This would still alleviate their Sunday work problem and would benefit all major comic store owners as you would have at least 50-60% of customers come in twice a week instead of the usual once a week.  Remember the more times a customer comes in, the more he or she is likely to spend.  This would also eliminate the late shipping weeks, provided that Diamond could do the job correctly, which they currently do not.  Almost every other time sensitive product released on a weekly basis is still released on the correct day of the week [on holiday weeks] except for this industry. 

It is time for everybody (not just Diamond) to take a look at what the real problems are and make the appropriate changes that will grow the industry, not change the release day to Thursday just to help save some money by not having to pay overtime to its employees.  Changes may hurt in the short term but will only grow the biz in the long term.  Just take a look at Marvel and the changes they made, beginning almost a year ago.  Everybody thought they were nuts, but what does everybody think now when sales are way up?