stingermck

Not impossible at all. I use the league of comicgeeks website and app to track Wednesday comics. It shows everything coming from each publisher that has been previewed, each week. You can also add issues or titles to your profile to show what you are getting each week and even adds your subscription discount to show how much you will be spending.

Red Hood

This week marks the first shipment of Marvel books by Penguin Random House to retailers and it hasn’t gone well. Plain and simple, their packaging boxes suck. They have 0 protection, are just a little bigger than comic book size and have comics crammed in it without any care. They need to fix this now cause retailers are pissed

Josh-da-man

That's how Barnes & Noble and Amazon ship books, packed into tight boxes (if you're lucky) with no corner protection...

Red Hood

Exactly, but this aren’t books. Their are comic books, collectibles to many and PRH should know that by now.

Also, Amazon has gotten tons of heat for how they ship collectibles. They have adjusted a little but a lot of times figures and books arrive like if they had been kicking the boxes

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I don't like getting my books (book-books, not comic books or graphic novels) smashed up, either. A few years ago, B&N mailed a couple of expensive books to me (over-sized art books, with a combined list price of $150) jammed tightly into a box. All of the corners of the books were severely crushed by the time they got to me.

So I guess that the bookselling industry seems to think we don't care about the condition our books are in. Maybe most people don't; I don't know, they probably don't.

Lord knows I've had bad experiences with actual dealers of collectible books on eBay, and one publisher of limited editions. (Long story short, both would send autographed, limited editions hardcover books in fucking bubble mailers.)

But it's probably going to be a hell of an adjustment for places like PRH to adapt to the demands of the comic book industry.

It's probably going to baffle them to no end that comic book retailers would complain about a box full of comic books that arrived with 1/2" dings in the corners because UPS dropped a box on its edge.

morriscroy

Same here. Even though I haven't consistently collected comics over the past few decades, I still have the mindset of a "comic book collector" when it comes to condition of my reading materials.

For example when I was in college, I put an extra paper cover over the covers of my textbooks and didn't write in them. Nowadays these ancient college textbooks are almost completely worthless on the used book market, regardless of the condition. (New editions published every few years, pretty much destroys the market for all previous editions).


With all that being said, gradually my mindset has moved away from condition to print quality. Apparently the types of books I've been reading for decades, has nosedived in print quality over the past 20+ years. Especially stuff which is published as "print on demand" from the start, even as a preorder. (Amazon does a lot of print-on-demand stuff for such publishers).

The absolute worst were books which were transferred to "digital printing", where the more recent reprinted copies were made from a crappy "digital scan" of an older paper copy. (Along with the crappy binding of the recent reprinted copy).

The most aggrivating part is that it is less expensive to order the print-on-demand reprinted book from amazon, than printing out a pdf of the book on my desktop computer's printer. Apparently just the printer ink alone to print several hundred pages, is more expensive than ordering the print-on-demand version.

morriscroy

Lets hope Penguin Random House actually gives a damn. PRH is entirely 100% owned by the giant German conglomerate Bertelsmann.

https://news.sky.com/story/end-of-an...nguin-11889930


I have to wonder if Marvel and others are just using Penguin Random House as a means to an end, to completely utterly destroy Diamond by pushing it into bankruptcy.

fujishig

In that scenario what's the "..." before "Profits!" ?

morriscroy

Deliberately creating an artificial scarcity of mint condition copies from now on, while flooding the market with damaged copies. Basically forcing hardcore collectors to drive around town checking out every comic/hobby shop in town, to hunt down mint condition copies of current issues.

Watching the feeding frenzy and keeping up the hype on the collectables market.


.... Profit !!!!

fujishig

I wonder if the current state of shipping is just playing havoc on things as well.

I ordered for the first time in a while, some manga from RightStuf and they default to adding insurance for crushed books (for a fee).

morriscroy

I'm guessing this was ordered from an online shop which are specialists in inventory where condition is of utmost priority (ie. comics/books, blurays/dvds, toys, etc ...) ?

Insurance options seem to be completely absent when ordering books from amazon and other general book retailers.

Red Hood

The problem with the damages in the Marvel books is nationwide and most, if not all retailers have reported at least 50% damages with their Marvel shipment. The problem now is this: Penguin doesn't have enough replacements to cover for these damages so are they going to refund everyone on the books and expect retailers and customers to be happy or is Marvel going to reprint everything from this past week and have Penguin send it again to retailers? This is a huge issue as many of the damage books are unsellable. No customer is going to pay full price for a book that is at most in fine condition. Then there's the added issue of printing shortage, so having all of this re-printed is going to push back a lot of things, so this may not be an option at all.

morriscroy

Another question is where all this damaged non-mint inventory is going to end up.

Will PRH ask the comic/hobby shops to send back all the non-mint stuff to them for "forensics analysis" to determine whether any of it is actually "damaged" ?

After that, will PRH dump all this non-mint inventory to dollar stores as a tax write off ?

morriscroy

(Thinking about this more).

I'm guessing that nowadays that this ^ is the best publicity / advertising that money cannot buy.

Red Hood

Depends on the decision, but usually for returns of damaged comic books, distributors like Diamond ask for retailers to rip up to the cover of the books and send them back to them. In those cases, those books become are usually given away to customers or sent to recycling since they don't have a cover

morriscroy

This sounds like the standard practice of paperback novels sized books "returns". I don't know what big box retailers like walmart, barnes & noble, etc ... does with the cover-less books, after sending back the cut off covers.

morriscroy

A better question is how PRH is defining "damaged" when it comes to returns.

If I had to guess, the general book market has a very different definition of "damaged" than the comic book floppies market. Judging by stories of how Diamond has done things for a long time, and seeing slightly scuffed up "new books" at nearby big box retailers. (ie. For the latter using "comic book terminology" grading, scuffed up "new books" in a fine to very-good condition).

Red Hood

This is where Marvel and retailers will put the pressure. Retailers like Midtown and Coliseum of Comics wont tolerate this shit on a weekly basis so they will sue PRH if this practice continues. PRH wanted to get into the comic book business, so they need to adjust themselves accordingly.

Josh-da-man

I think that the book industry views the books they publish as a disposable product. You buy a book -- a mass market paperback, a hardcover, whatever -- read it once, then either give it away, throw it in the trash, or sell for a dollar at a garage sale. Or, if the book is lucky it gets stuck on a shelf and fogotten until the next move or big spring cleaning.

So most people aren't going to care if there's a crease or corner dent on their mass market paperback of the latest Stephen King novel, or an open tear on the dust jacket of Susie Orman's latest book. They're reading books at beach, getting them wet beside a swimming pool, sticking them in their purses, and otherwise abusing them.

morriscroy

The question is whether the giant retailers like midtown, milehigh, etc .... have enough resources to initiate legal action on their own. (ie. Can they pay the hourly attorney fees for a long drawn out legal case? ). If not, can they bring in the smaller guys and turn it into a class action suit?

Lets hope Marvel is on the side of the retailers in this situation. (I am assuming the executive/phb in charge of printing + distribution at Marvel, actually gives a damn and will raise a stink about it with the legal department at Disney/Marvel).

morriscroy

At the risk of going further offtopic, I should qualify what I mean by this ^ in context. (Out of context, this assertion would seem puzzling).

Without getting into specifics, I do have easy access to the original manuscripts of many such "books". Many of these are the files prepared by the original author(s) in the form of msword, pdf, and/or even the original latex/tex files which the manuscript was typeset in by the author(s).

These are the types of "books" which are not meant to be read in a linear manner from cover to cover. I usually jump around in different chapters between several different books, to understand what is going on. It is extremely annoying to be doing this with the digital ebook files.

If there is a book with enough interesting stuff, I look into whether it is less expensive to just buy the actual paper book (with a deep amazon discount). In over 99% of cases, I ended up buying the actual paper book. It is a complete waste of time and cash trying to print out the entire book on my desktop computer's printer.

In contrast, the cost is considerable in printing out these books and putting the pages together in a binder, regardless of whether it is a better laserprinter or a generic home computer printer that one finds at bestbuy, costco, etc .... By any measure, the cost of the ink or toner cartridge is considerable.

Even printing out the pdf files at a nearby Staples or a generic copy shop, it was still very expensive to print out several hundred (or over a thousand) pages. Even when there are no colored pages.

morriscroy

I would agree with this assessment.


(More generally).

In the niche of books I regularly "read", I get the strong impression that most of the preorders are made by libraries. After that, whatever is sold through amazon, barnes & noble, etc ... is largely "icing on the cake".

This is judging by anecdotal accounts from a few individuals I've encountered offline, who make such "institution" purchasing decisions.

fujishig

Back in the day when there were spinner racks, in order to get your refund for unsold product (including magazines) they would tear off the covers and ship them back to prove how many were unsold and to cut down on shipping the entire thing back, but they were supposed to then pulp everything, and I believe you could get in trouble if you actually sold or gave them away. Didn't stop some shops from doing that and selling a pack of coverless comics for a cheap price, though. But I don't think you're supposed to, even if it is a colossal waste.

morriscroy

I encountered this in a non-comics niche where old magazine issues cut out the front cover of the magazine, but they still sold the coverless issues either in 3-packs or dumpbin 50 cents fodder.

(This was in a niche where back issues dating back several years, were not out-of-date and still had some interest by the hardcore crowd).

Josh-da-man

If anyone wants to read an interesting story about the old newsstand distribution system, "stripping covers," and how organized crime was (allegedly) involved the distribution of comics and magazines, I suggest you read this from Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics...

https://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg70.html

It's part of a larger story about the acquisition of the "Mile High II" collection, which is a pretty crazy yarn in itself.