Mike Milewski of M & M Comic Service in San Antonio, Texas comments on DC's decision to allocate orders for the upcoming Villains Month titles (see "DC Says 3-D Motion Covers Will Be Allocated").Allocation information is available for all the September shipping 3D Motion covers. According to DC they had to print these in advance but put in a "healthy overprint."
We knew these would be hot and we put in a very healthy order ourselves. Then why are some of my allocations less than or close to what my average orders are for? On some titles we will receive 80% of our order. Like Batman #23.2 Riddler and Batman #23.4 Bane. But we will only receive 1/3rd that amount on Batman #23.1 Joker and Batman #23.3 Penguin.
DC has offered us complete 2nd print sets as a band aid. Only problem is this forces us to buy complete 2nd print sets in order to fill the demand on only a few titles. I won't be able to sell them in sets because I will have to break them up to for individual demand. The ultimate outcome will be unsold product and more unhappy customers. I look at this as either a complete blunder or a very sneaky way to inflate sales in a very underhanded manner.
Let's take a look at Diamond for a minute. I know my rep has been trying to put out fires all day. These poor folks have to deal with a mess they had nothing to do with. Diamond had to come up with an allocation program, not to mention the incredible amount of wasted time and lost sales.
I sincerely hope they put some rules into place where this is never allowed to happen again. This is the direct market. We place our orders by the FOC date and we get our orders. No publisher should ever be allowed to change those rules. Yet it happened and look at the mess that it is.
We are going to have some very unhappy customers. I admire DC for the innovation but the unintended consequences are devastating.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
