Ilan Strasser of Fat Moose Comics in Whippany, New Jersey saw our article on Marvel Previews (see 'Marvel Ads Previews Supplement') and isn't happy:

 

I have always sold Diamond's Previews at my store rather than give them away.  That is because far less than 20% of my customers who actually bought Previews gave me additional orders from the Previews.  With the new pricing for Previews, I am now going to ask those customers if they wish to continue buying Previews and I will only order Previews for those customers.  There will be no extra copies for random purchase, especially since they now will fall on the high cost side of the pricing scale.  And with this new price increase coming not too long after the previous jump to $3.95, will Diamond still charge us separately for consumer order forms?  I'm sure they will.

 

It's amazing that a company like Marvel, with such a lousy track record in terms of retailer relations, can dictate to Diamond another self-serving plan that costs retailers even more money and makes us even more unprofitable.  It's just becoming less and less fun to be a comics retailer and for me, the fun part of it was what made all the other hard work worthwhile and rewarding.

 

Far brighter minds than me have said that we retailers who tend to gripe should just shut up and become part of the solution, etc., etc. - but how can you do that when you never have any part in the decision making process?  Well anyway, here's a solution -- keep Diamond Previews at $3.95 and offer the Marvel tagalong separately for those who want it.  Let our customers decide with us which way they want to go.  And if that choice means no Marevl info, so be it.

The only thing we can affect is where we spend our dollars based on what our customers want -- but individually or as a group, we have no real say or input into what happens at all on the front end.  Retailers should not be fooled.  No one in the comic chain is partners with us except our customers and without them we'd have nothing.