Not That Warner Bros. Will Notice Either Way

One of the temporary big hullabaloos in the comic world in the last couple months was DC announcing they weren't going to use Diamond as the distributor for their comics any longer. They'd turned to other avenues when Diamond shut down in the spring due to COVID, and apparently liked their new circumstances so much, they'd just stick with them.

From my end of things, it's not a big difference. Makes it a little harder to find the solicitations, and to see what comics DC has coming out in a given week, but that's about it. And no more new DC comics than I buy in a year these days, they're on track for 10 this year, which would be better than either of the last two years, that's a minor inconvenience.

But when I was in one of the comic stores the next town over last month, the owner mentioned that they were about to stop stocking new DC single issues. They can still stock trade paperbacks, because they get those through different channels, but individual issues of Batman or Amethyst, no.

The new distributor has different discount rates, and when the store ran the numbers, they were only going to break even for their DC sales on the best weeks, and lose money the rest of the time. Granting I only took one economics class - which was over 15 years ago, and I recall essentially nothing from it - trying to sell stuff that ultimately loses you money is not a sound business practice. So the decision to walk away from a particular publisher makes sense. Especially since DC really comes in third behind Marvel and Image for that store, and they tend to focus more towards "indie" stuff anyway.

Their other reason was that the new distributor is a comic store as well. In essence, they'd be buying their product from a competitor. The owner didn't really like the idea of simply handing over sales data to a competitor. I don't know if they would have bit the bullet on that if DC comics were a bigger piece of the financial pie for them or not, but under the circumstances, I suppose it acted as one more thing.

I wonder if that store is going to be an exception, or if there are going to be more. If there are other stores, is it enough that it makes a difference, saleswise? On the latter point, probably not. The people who would have bought DC comics from that store will probably go to a different store, or get them from somewhere online. There's another comic store in that town that is going to continue to stock DC single issues. So the sales may not change much, instead being concentrated into fewer stores. Having your product available in fewer places seems like the wrong move, but the horse has probably already fled the barn, broken its leg in the middle of a freeway, and been run over by an 18-wheeler on that one.

On the stores, I assume most are operating too close to the margins, or are too dependent on superhero comic sales, to say bye to DC entirely, but maybe not. I can think of a few stores I've been in that seemed oriented more towards tpbs/GNs or independent publishers that might be able to do the same. That doesn't mean they necessarily will if they don't have to.