Glen Soustek of Westlake Cards, Comics & Coins, Inc. in Roselle, Illinois writes in to share his recent Christmas ordering experience and how some publishers missed out on his orders.

I spent my day off last Sunday writing Christmas re-orders for the store.  No need to bore you with lists of card and coin reorders, card and comic supply orders, so I'll skip right to the comics themselves.  I re-ordered some of The Boys from Dynamite Entertainment at a special 60% off and then I waded through 12-pages of Marvel trade paperbacks and hardcovers at 85% off and I wound up buying several hundred books from that list.  Hell, at that price, what I don't push at Christmas can sit on the shelves for a while or be used in any number of promotions.  Now, if you're a publisher and your name isn't Dynamite or Marvel, you might be asking "What about US?!"  Well, I'll tell you, one of three things probably happened:

1)  I never got your memo (email) or if I did, there was nothing in the title that screamed "OPEN ME AND SAVE YOURSELF SOME REAL MONEY ON STUFF YOU CAN SELL!"  So it's sitting in cyber-space in my massive deleted bin.

2)  I got your email, opened it and the "extra" 5% off (my regular discount) that some publishers were offering was kind of laughable considering what others were giving me.

3)  I got your email, opened it and couldn't find a single thing among all of the fringe material offered to me that I would consider squeezing into my already overfilled store--at any price.

IF (and that's a big IF) you really want MY business, and you really want your products on MY shelves, you need to tell me and more importantly, you need to show me.  I can walk into any big-box bookstore and see how much you want THEIR business... I can also go on the internet and see how much you want the business of various anonymous dumpers of your books... none of which makes me want to open my checkbook at my "regular discount" (or -5% from that).  

Time is ticking down for Christmas 2010 guys (for us "hobby" stores)--that pay our bills on time--and don't own your inventory on consignment.  It's time for you publishers to show us how much we really mean to you.

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