Barry Branvold of Barry's Collectors Corner in Grand Forks, North Dakota saw Steve Bennett’s recent column about low selling series (see “Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Just Say No”) and says retailers should place orders for their pull customers and leave it at that:

Steve says: "So I say, let’s help them (publishers) by NOT ordering comics like All-New Atom, New Dynamix, Avengers Classic, Avengers Fairy Tales, Number of the Beast, Marvel Comics Presents, Uncle Sam & The Freedom Fighters, Shadowpact, Checkmate, and Suicide Squad."

Well Steve, any comic retailer who has been around knows you just order enough of these titles to satisfy your pull customers and no more.  Sure it is tough to guess how many of #1 I should order, but if you have "informed" customers who actually look at Previews and let you know what they want, you as the retailer stay "informed" as well.  Oh sure, you occasionally have some customer who asks why you sold out of Shadowpact so quickly, but a simple, "I only order what my customer requests are for that book," should give him the hint that if he wants one, he needs to request one or put it on his pull list.

While I agree with Steve about not ordering some titles, if you have a pull customer with any title on his list, one of that title keeps the customer happy and should give the publisher the message that it may be time to cancel some titles. Just "not" ordering a title doesn't help anyone--not the retailer, not the pull customer, and not the publisher.  Maybe a better solution would be for the publisher to make informed decisions based on low sales numbers, or they could just contact you so you can tell them which titles they should cancel.

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