Marvel is making money!  Marvel is paying off its debts ahead of schedule!  Does anything else matter to the management at Marvel?  Does anything else matter to the Marvel stockholders?  If they do, it's hard to tell!  I and others have complained about Marvel policies and about statements made by its management, all to no avail.  So let's try this from a point of view that they can understand, dollars and cents.

While many of the past statements made by Mr. Jemas were perceived by most as just a lot of pointless ramblings having no other purpose than to draw attention to Marvel, his more recent statements have taken things to new levels.  Jemas seems to be trying his very best to raise the level of animosity towards both himself and Marvel to new hights, and he is succeeding.  He is succeeding not only with retailers, but because of the very public forum in which he is making these statements, with readers as well!

Customers speak their mind most loudly when they speak with their wallets.  As one of Marvel's customers I may need to order Marvel product for my own customers but for the first time, I have decided not to carry Marvel's full line.  I have also been doing whatever I can to get readers to change their buying habits by getting them to read books published by other companies.  This reduces the influence that Marvel has upon my business while allowing my sales to continue growing.

Marvels change in the Previews catalog listings have cost both Marvel and my store customers.  With so little information to judge a publication on, Previews orders for Marvel products have become almost non-existent.  As pre-orders have declined, so have my orders.

Marvels policy of 'no overprints/no reorders' means that if I sell out of a book, I can't increase my sales by getting more, so I don't waste my time trying to sell anyone a Marvel book.  Instead, I put my efforts into expanding readership on books that I can actually sell to my customers.  This takes readers away from Marvel and costs them future revenues not just for comic books but also for related products.

I find it rather ironic that when Marvel was publishing some truly mediocre books, they produced tons of them but now that they are actually publishing books that are good enough to attract new readers, they refuse to produce enough books to meet the demand.  How many additional copies of Heroes were sold because of the decision to overprint/reprint?  How many additional copies of Origin could have been sold if Marvel had made the same decision again?

As a stockholder, I would be happy that the company is selling everything they produce but I would be quite upset that they were failing to take advantage of potential sales.  I would be even more upset with management that seems to be doing their best to drive away a large portion of the company's current customer base while at the same time using company resourses (time and money) to try to attract new customers.

You only get one chance to make a first impression -- someone hears about a book that has been publicized and decides to make their first comic book purchase, only to be told 'sorry, I'm all out and I can't get any more'.  If you start a relationship with a person by disapointing them, it's very unlikely that they will ever become a repeat customer.