From: sward@agsm.ucla.edu (Sidne Gail Ward)
Subject: Re: Speculation and the market (was: Valiant sucks)
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:25:40 PDT

jcowling@ophelia.UVic.CA (Scowling Jim Cowling) writes:

>In article <sward.715383361@uclagsm> sward@agsm.ucla.edu (Sidne Gail Ward) writes:

>>The additional bad news is that (at least locally) Capital has been
>>known to ship the minimum 3 copies to stores that only ordered 1 copy
>>of a book that retails for less than $5.  This has made my local store
>>reluctant even to attempt to order copies of certain independent
>>comics for pre-order customers.  They're certainly not making any
>>money if they get stuck with 2 copies they can't sell.  Too bad
>>Capital and Diamond can't see their way to relaxing these
>>restrictions.  Currently, if I can't find 2 friends interested in
>>something that's a little different I can't order it even though the
>>distributor has it available.	

>Try telling that to Joe Comeau (I'm a retailer, Joe -- I know what I'm
>talking about).  I have a number of subscribers who order a book that no one
>else not only subscribes to, but is impossible to sell on the shelf (Disney
>comics, for example).  What do I do?  I order the minimum three copies
>anyway.  I haven't had a problem yet.

>However, this means that the owner of the shop loses money on the deal.  He
>recognizes that once the books are put in the discount bins, they sell, but
>on a three-issue order, he loses about 20% of his expenditure.  He also is
>nice enough a guy that he's willing to write it off as a cost of providing 
>service to the customer.

>Now, we have two stores in town, and I work at the larger of the two; however,
>we're a small store overall.  We sell about 50 copies of each X-title, about
>a dozen copies of Legion, 6 copies of Avengers, and ten copies of Cerebus
>every month (just to give you an idea of our throughput).  We're a small
>store.  The way I look at it, if the store you deal with is unwilling or
>unable to offer what we, as a small store, is able to, then you're dealing
>with the wrong store.

In defense of my local store, Heroes in Burbank, California, they
offer a very liberal discount policy on pre-ordered books.  If they
ordered 3 copies of a book they felt they could only sell 1 copy of,
they'd lose a lot more than 20% on the deal.  It's particularly a
problem since the discount they get on independents is not as good as
that for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Malibu, etc.  They already have a box
of pretty much unsaleable at any price independents that they acquired
by trying to order only 1 copy of books under $5 for customers and
getting shipped 3 copies.  They're also a fairly small store.   

Most stores that take pre-orders must have this problem.  If you look
at the Capital City (or Diamond, for that matter) monthly catalog,
there are literally hundreds of titles of comics alone every month,
not to mention a large number of magazines.  In the catalogs for
distribution to customers they just indicate that people should order
whatever they want.  Then the stores get stuck either by ordering
extra stuff they can't sell or by disappointing customers by not even
trying to order stuff that doesn't meet Capital's minimum of 3 copies.
I assume that people that deal with the big mail-order places don't
have these problems.  Surely they must meet the minimum on virtually
every item.

Anyway, even though it's inconvenient not to be able to get
everything, I still plan to stick with my local shop for my ordering.
The guys are really nice about the catalog, and I like to be able to
get my stuff right when it comes in rather than waiting for mail
order.  I get the vast majority of things I want through them.  Then I
just have to hunt at cons for the rest.

Sidne G. Ward

igta225@mvs.oac.ucla.edu