Andy Battaglia of Comics, Etc. in Rochester, New York saw retailer Noah Broessel’s comments about comic shipments (see “Noah Broessel of Pop Culture Paradise on Weekly Delivery Schedule”) and says he agrees that getting books one day earlier would allow retailers to “concentrate on selling the books rather than processing them:”

I agree that Diamond should make the books available one day early so that we can process the books and then be ready to take care of the business of moving the product on comic day, rather than being faced with the entire process when customers are waiting for the books.

I schedule two to three extra employees for comic day every week and with the amount of merchandise we receive, it still is a minimum of two hours before we have the books unpacked and checked in before we can open up the new comic area for customers.  The rest of the day is spent pulling books for over 250 reserve customers while hundreds of non-reserve customers do their shopping.  It would be such a help if we could get the comics a day early so that we could concentrate on selling the books rather than processing them.

I understand that there is concern about stores selling product early, and this does happen with some game items, but the biggest offenders are not the independent stores but instead are the big chains like Barnes and Noble and Target that routinely sell product before the on sale dates. Yet, neither Diamond nor the publishers seem to care or make any effort to stop this practice.  If the stores that do violate on sale dates are in no way penalized, why are the stores that are the backbone of the industry penalized by not receiving product until the on sale date?

The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.