Over the past year, there's been a lot of controversy surrounding Marvel's no-overprint/no reprint policy. Some of it has been reaction to the policy itself, and some has been reaction to Marvel President Bill Jemas' in-your-face way of communicating the policy. Origin has been the Marvel title around which this discussion has swirled most recently, both because it was a hit and a quick sell-out at retail, and because Jemas used it as an example of what he sees as the success of Marvel's policy. See 'We Are Never Going to Overprint' for a full report on his remarks, but briefly, what he said was:
'Absolutely, we are never going to overprint. I will debate this until the cows come home but we are not going to overprint and we are not going to reprint. What we are going to do is to drive traffic to comic stores every Wednesday. Go to a comic shop today and see how many people are waiting until Saturday to get their Origin book. We are not overprinting. We are not reprinting. We are trying to keep the industry healthy and this is doing it.'
Here are three responses to those remarks. We'll start out with a retailer that went straight to the top--John Cashman at Cashman's Comics in Bay City, Michigan.
Last week after reading what Bill Jemas had to say about 'not over printing,' I had to respond. But I wanted to respond to HIM. So I took a stab in the dark at his e-mail address and WA-LA, I found him. Much to my surprise he responded to my e-mail within 24 hrs. After I read what Brian Meredith of The Comic Stop in Lynwood, Washington had to say it prompted me to write to you. Looking back at the situation, I wish I would have told Mr.Jemas what he said in your retailer reaction. He took the words right out of my head! Here is the exact text from my conversation with Bill Jemas.
Dear Mr. Jemas:
You said 'Absolutely, we are never going to overprint. I will debate this until the cows come home but we are not going to overprint and we are not going to reprint. What we are going to do is to drive traffic to comic stores every Wednesday. Go to a comic shop today and see how many people are waiting until Saturday to get their Origin book. We are not overprinting. We are not reprinting. We are trying to keep the industry healthy and this is doing it. '
My response is this:
It's too bad you didn't over print these books because I ended up 'trying' to double my original order, but I couldn't because of your printing restrictions. You tend to forget that we retailers order our books two-three months before they ship, therefore by the time it actually hits the store more people have added it to their subscription list after the original order was placed. So you never really know just how much to order because quite frankly I don't have a crystal ball to tell me what the future holds. And no comic store likes to be stuck with more books then they can sell by over ordering the first time around, therefore we have to base our orders on what people wanted 2-3 months ago, not this week. I really can't see where your 'not over printing' has helped my store that much because in most cases I end up ordering only what I need at the time when it is solicited so I don't get stuck with something I can't sell. Thus ordering less Marvel comics overall because reorders are not available anymore.
His response:
If you re-check your order cut off dates with your Diamond rep, you should find that the final order increase date is within one month of the ship date for the next month's books. If you hear otherwise, please let me know, and I'll ask someone here to look into the problem.
My last response: I attempted to reorder the following items on 8/17/01, most of which were either not available at all, or in the quantities I requested. As you can see some of them didn't make the one month cut off, and now I know why the orders were not filled. Thanks for updating me on that matter, and for the quick response.
[Title list followed]
We also heard from Mr. Cashman again a few days later, when he gave us an update:
Please note that I did hear back from Mr. Jemas again after our conversation, and they decided to give retailers a bit more time to get advance reorders in. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, I guess.
The second is from Pat Thompson of 8th St. Books and Comics in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
I would like to offer a comment in regard to Bill Jemas spouting off about reorders. Just to put this reorder thing in perspective, I had twenty file customers sign up for Origin between Monday and Wednesday the week the title came out. Twenty was very close to the number of copies I wanted for my shelf. Not so easy to predict when I placed the initial order. I covered all my file orders, but was sold out of the title by 2 p.m. that day. Mr. Jemas also has claimed to be helping me by having everyone come to my store on Wednesday to make sure they don't get skunked in their search for this week's Marvel title that they can't live without. I don't need all my customers to come in on one day. It really cuts into the amount of time I have to hand sell titles if my store is swamped with customers coming in for just one title.
Okay, one more whine. Marvel's 'no reorders' means I have to order extra copies of marginal titles to make sure I can keep customers coming through my door. If the titles don't sell I'm stuck. Marvel wins, I lose. That isn't really good for Marvel, Mr. Jemas. We are in the same fight for consumer dollars. If I go, so do all the sales. I really find this 'no reorder' policy irritating in regard to new titles. I have no idea when I place orders as to the reception of unproven titles. This goes all the way back to Ultimate Spider-man and continues with titles like Alias and US War Machine. If Marvel has a hit with one of these titles, I don't have enough. If the title is a dog, I'm left stuffing the dollar bin. And I have to order blind. There is no preview for retailers from Marvel. At least DC sends out black and white advance copies for some of their titles.
And a third, from Brian Meredith of the Comic Stop in Lynwood, Washington:
I just read your article on Bill Jemas and have a few points I would like to make. In the article, Jemas is quoted as having said, 'Any retailer will tell you that reorders are not a substantial part of their business except on trade paperbacks -- and the fact is that the trade paperback business has really been given a shot in the arm by the no reprint policy.' This is false. Not your reporting, of course, but Jemas' thinking. As a very successful retailer in the Seattle area, I hate the fact that he is inadvertently putting words into my mouth. As a retailer, reorders are VERY important to our business. By having the luxury of putting in reorders a week, even days, prior to a shipment coming in, I can accurately order what I need, for my box customers, my shelves, etc. This allows me to adjust and grow as the months pass from the initial order. I constantly have customers dropping or adding titles for any number of reasons, so there are times that my initial orders no longer work, that they no longer are enough to cover my demand.
For example, I order 30 copies of Nightwing for the month of October. I have 12 box customers at the time. A couple of months pass, I now have 25 customers down for the title. No big deal. I check my orders prior to the shipment, then advance reorder an extra ten or so for the shelves. Green Arrow is same. Even with extremely heavy orders initially, I have reordered those issues so many times that I have tripled what I originally ordered. By reordering, I didn't have to tie up my money on all those copies at once, allowing me to spread the wealth to all the books. When the need comes, I reorder and I have more for the shelves.
Jemas also said, 'But believe me nobody is waiting around for the Origin 1-6 compilation. That's not what's happening -- there's a feeding frenzy now, and there wouldn't be a feeding frenzy if people knew we were going back to press on a leisurely basis. What you have is store traffic -- like any other business, store traffic means more sales.'
Another lie. I have customers who prefer to wait for the trades, for many reasons. Some just buy trades, some buy the issues, then pick up the trades later to have convenient reads. His bull**** posturing is too reminiscent of the collectibility mentality of the early 90s. There is no feeding frenzy, just a market he's trying to control. I did have people pounding down my doors for Origin, and most will wait until the weekend to come in because they know everyone will have ordered massively on this book (a book, by the way, that has not had too many sterling reviews from my customers).
DC's policies on reorders with issues and trades have worked well for our store. We easily sell five times the amount in trades and issues from DC that [we do] from Marvel.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not about bashing Marvel. I have really enjoyed what they have managed to produce for the last couple of years, but some of their policies are skewed. A lot of customers have passed on new titles such as Elektra or Punisher because they can't find the first issue. I won't have that problem with Suicide Squad or Monarchy.
We recently reported that Marvel plans to reprint Origin #1 in a compilation book (see 'Marvel to Reprint Origin, Sort of'). Like everything Marvel does, that also brought a response, this one from Bill Eckman of Classic Cards and Comics in Castle Rock, Colorado and Evolution Comix in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
I'd like to comment on Marvel reprinting Origin #1 and their 'no reprint' policy in general. I'm a pop culture retailer with two stores, one in New Mexico and the other in Colorado. I sell cards, comics, games, action figures, etc... I watch my sales and profit margins closely, so I tend to err on the side of too little inventory rather than too much.
Frequently, opportunities come up to sell more of a product line and expand my customer base. This is usually a good thing, since I sell more, I make more and everyone else in the distribution chain sells more and makes more too. The problem is when I can't get the product that helps me expand that customer base. If there is a lot of interest in a product but I can't supply the product because it's not available, then the interest wanes.
Origin #1 is a prime example of lost opportunity. Knowing this was going to be a very 'hot' book, I ordered 5 times my regular order amount. The books lasted two days on the shelf. Since then, I've had over 52 requests (yes, I track almost everything) in my Colorado store for Origin #1. Thirty-five of these requests are from customers I've never seen before, but they came into the store looking for one thing. Most left empty handed, even when I pointed out that I still had copies of Origin #2, because they didn't want to start without reading #1. If I could've back ordered or reordered the book, that's 35 potential customers I could've kept. (Once I've got them coming to the store for comics, I've got a 78% repeat rate after the first comic sale and a 95% rate on them increasing their subscriptions or the number of books they buy.)
Since Marvel is no longer reprinting anything, I've got two choices: 1. Buy a few extra copies whenever I 'think' a book is going to do well. 2. Stick to the percentages of sales and purchases that've let me grow into two stores. The first choice will make the House of Ideas more money, but will undoubtedly leave me sitting on inventory. The second choice will definitely continue to make me money, but doesn't allow me or Marvel to expand their product base when a book is 'hot'.
In the short term, I'm sure Marvel has seen the order rates go up, but we small retailers don't like to be stuck with excess inventory, so I'll predict that this trend won't continue for much longer. In the long term, Marvel needs to get rid of their 'no reprint' policy and replace it with something like a 'no reprints unless we've got 25% backorders' policy. Then they'd continue to profit no matter what and we'd be able to give our customers and potential customers the product they want.
Thanks to all of our readers that commented on this topic!
