Diamond Not to Distribute New Comics Until August at the Earliest

>sports events
>concerts
>live theater
>stand up
Literally all of them will continue as normal whenever Coronavirus goes away.

Let's summarise:
>Marvel and DC sell to local comic shops, not the consumer. So if local comic shop buys 100 Marvel and 100 DC comics and they only sell 70 of each then Marvel and DC each have 100 sales, the local comic shop has 140.
>If Marvel and DC use digital publication then they'd only have 70 sales each instead of 100 sales each.

This is the problem with digital distribution.

>Diamond distributes these comics to the local comic shops.
>Diamond won't be resuming shipping comics until August.
>If digital publication is used all the local comic shops will lose revenue from all the April-July comics. This may result in them going bankrupt.
>Local comic shops may go bankrupt from being in lockdown for 2-3 months.
>Local comic shops may go bankrupt during the 1-3 month period between lockdown ending and Diamond redistributing.
>All other non-digital stores, such as supermarkets, will have greater bargaining power than local comic shops. Thus DC and Marvel won't be able to force them to buy comics that won't sell.

So if local comic shops die sales will greatly decrease.

Attached: comic dare devil kingpin.jpg (1280x1992, 476.44K)

You think 6+ months of lost revenue won't affect the live entertainment industry?

Sure, your big venues will probably survive but lots of smaller venues will shut doors.

It's the small fries that will suffer.

But dude we flattened teh curve!!!!11

Update
bleedingcool.com/comics/new-comics-stores-sooner-mid-may/

>Specifically that, as of tonight, unless there is a major change in the current shutdown and lockdown orders, that Diamond Comic Distributors will, somehow, be distributing the currently held new comic books to comic book stores on Sunday 17th of May, arriving in comic book stores shortly afterwards, followed by newly printed comic books. There may be some delays to certain parts of the US, it will depend on which stores can and cannot accept delivery or put it on sale, and international distribution to Europe may take a lot longer. What this means for future solicitation dates and delivery is also unknown, to me at least. However right now, we at least have a ballpark. Things can change, Harold MacMillan once talked about having to deal with 'the opposition of events'. This is the plan, as it has been shared by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic book publishers – the big ones at least. How that rolls out to everyone else, we'll try to report as and when it comes to us.

And immediately switching to selling a license for 22 jpg's for $4 isn't going to fix it. They need to make comics cheaper and put them back into supermarkers and pharmacies, places parents being their kids

The direct market was already a dieing industry. This pandemic has accelerated the process to the point where it looks like death is inevitable. DC and Marvel are going to survive and produce new material in some form. The days of the traditional distribution methods are over. If they can't find a way to get new product out the stores are going to die regardless. How long do we pay lipservice to the idea everything can and will go back to normal? The companies are going to need to reevaluate their production methods. I'd say writers and artists are going to expect lower page rates. They're also going to have to be more selective about which series get produced. It's called facing reality. It's tough, but you have to do it.

Possible. DC has a reasonably successful Giant Line at Walmarts and Targets. Tjey can work on getting it larger distribution.

Interesting. Either somebody lieing to someone or another option is Diamond is prioritizing certain companies over others. Like Marvel and DC get their product back in stores mid may, but smaller independents don't get service till august.

DC and Marvel may survive but will they still make comics?

Local comic stores specialise in comics so they can have a wide variety of different titles. However as supermarkets will only give comics a few shelves they won't have the room for the same volume of titles and will most likely prioritise the ones that sell the most. I doubt there will be room for all of Marvel's 47 different comic series in supermarkets, which may limit the number of titles that are produced far more than economics.

Fuck small businesses.

Most retailers will be dead by August and of the ones that survive 5 months of no releases is gonna make a lot of people just stop buying comics. Big two really need to go digital and start pushing people to buy trades and see about getting current trades on to online retailers so people have something to buy.

That would require changing the entire publication line to be aimed at children/all ages. Right now they're like TV-14 in content aimed mainly at adults.

Yeah, I think it's time to Spotify comic books.

Whatever LCS survive this crisis won't order enough books every month to make up for the lost ones. The publishers will keep selling lower and lower not (only) because of lack of interest, but because there won't be stores ordering floppies.

Make all floppies digital-first and set up a streaming service to access them. 8 dollars per month, and every Wednesday you get all the books due to that date. Whoever dislikes digital can wait for the printed trades and hardcovers.

It wouldn't even be that much trouble. Marvel already has Marvel unlimited. DC already has DC Universe. It's just a matter of putting the new comics there.

At one million subscribers, it would already be more lucrative than the current method.

It's like entertainment wasn't a necessary commodity to live!

At one point in time, physical retailers were also the majority of revenue for the music industry.
This isn't to shit on retailers. But publishers and retailers are different entities, with different priorities. Stores are short term, publishers are long term. Retailers are incentivized to obstruct exploration of new channels.
This isn't new, this isn't surprising, but do not confuse the best interests of this group of stores with the best interests of comics as a whole.

>Yes dog, you live to survive! Enjoyment is unnecessary goy, just slave for my 3rd yacht.

It’s kind of hard to care since I wasn’t buying too many new comics and was running out of older volumes to read and collect. Hard not to take part in enjoying the industry collapsing though.

BASED
ENJOY POVERTY SJW WRITER FAGGOTS

And then what?

What's This ?

Could it be ?

The end of Batman ?

Say it isn't so !

Turn in tomorrow comic boy fans !

Same Bat Time ! Same Bat Channel !

It is, we are just getting it online for now. Humans are social creatures and entertainment keeps us sane.

Yeah that's an idea or just to keep things simple what you could do instead is just have it so all comics except last three months are available for you to read and that if you do want to read the latest comics you need to pay a premium subscription.

Similar to how one of the bonuses of buying your books from a comic book shop back in the day was that they use to sell the latest comic books two months in advance from their intended release date (I.e All April releases would be dated June). Everything old is new again.

>Either somebody lieing to someone or another option is Diamond is prioritizing certain companies over others
This is going pretty much as I had predicted earlier.
For the smaller publishers, this undoubtedly sucks. But Diamond's priority is to get cash flow for the stores as quickly as possible, and that means focusing on the big 2. Even if they didn't, retailers wouldn't be sparing money to order from the smaller pubs anyway. Cash is simply too tight.

And nothing of value was lost.

I always wonder what year people think it is when they post this. If comic books were not in hobby stores they'd already be dead, newsstand media is dead as shit