| Motormouth: Paul's nattering about this and that. I tend to get carried away. I get involved in stuff, be it just a random thought or a response to an enquiry, and what starts as a sentence or two becomes a book. Considering that I've written the pieces anyways, and they tend to be inappropriate for Astronotes, and this IS my website, I figure I'll post them here, just in case anyone might be interested. I suppose it might be a sort of a blog, but it's probably going to be more of collection of essays than a thing with links and pictures and daily thoughts, so you can call it what you will, I'll call it Motormouth. |
February 18th, 2010
"Chase Variants (CV)" or "Incentive Comics (IC)":
Fairly often, publishers offer "chase variant" covers (or whole comics) on the basis that if a retailer orders (say) 10 copies of a particular title and issue, he can also order one copy of a variant. In this case, that's called a "1/10" (one variant per ten regular) ratio. Sometimes the ratio is 1/15,1/25, etc., and that can go all the way up to 1/1000! Generally, these ratios have at least some grounding in reality- I mean 1/10 (or even 1/100) Batman isn't all that much of a stretch for many retailers, but 1/500 Red Sonjas? That's just a little crazy. These things are actually sometimes (but very rarely) free from the publishers, but they add a huge risk factor to ordering: Let's use a 1/200 Red Sonja as an example: We typically order about 20 copies of this title, because that's what we figure we can sell. To go for a 1/200 means we have to buy an extra 180 copies that we think we won't be sellable in our market, and we have to hope that somewhere in the world there's someone willing to pay at least $250 for the IC, just to cover our extra costs. Not too bloody likely, that.
We've actually been selling CVs on eBay for years, and recently began putting them out for sale in the store. People seem to like them, but of course they don't have the same wide-based appeal that the regular books enjoy. Because of the greatly increased risk we do charge a premium for them, but people whose collecting focuses on ICs tell us that we're generally pretty much in line with the market pricing, or even slightly below it. So here's what we' re going to offer: We will now accept reserves for chase variants provided you tell us exactly which ones you want: Sorry, but "All Batman 1/10 ICs" won't do it: We need (say) "Defective #738 1/10 Larocca IC". We've found that most of the folks who are into these things are well aware of exactly what they are, and therefore being specific means that you don't need some special "insider" knowledge, you just have to be aware of what's going on in your chosen enthusiasm.
OK, it's bottom line time: First the prices:
1/10 CV: $10U.S. less your normal discount, plus the usual exchange and taxes
1/15 CV: $15U.S. less your normal discount, plus the usual exchange and taxes
1/20 CV: $20U.S. less your normal discount, plus the usual exchange and taxes
1/25 CV: $25U.S. less your normal discount, plus the usual exchange and taxes
And so on & so forth.
Notice a trend here? Well, it's partly based on market, partly based on ease of handling, it being just a bit easier to remember that a 1/100 IC is invoiced at $100US, rather than doing the whole "put it up on eBay" thing (where, as I recall, we sold a recent 1/100, "Batman & Robin #1", for $165. By the way, we still have plenty of copies of the regular book left over, if you happen to need one or two. Or ten.
I mentioned ease of handling: One little feature of ICs is how often they arrive damaged, or were left out of the box at Diamond's warehouse. This is a common complaint that I've heard from retailers all over the globe. Well, we do usually get shortage/damage replacements, it just takes a bunch of extra processing both in actual handling and in paperwork, so anything (including standardised pricing) that smoothes out the process is a help.
So order away, and by all means, please order early. The earlier you order, the better we know to order more by the monthly Diamond deadline than we normally might, just to satisfy our "CV"customers, and, as usual, we operate on a "first come first served" basis. By the way, ICs are sometimes more "iffy" than regular books; publishers seem a lot more prepared to cancel an incentive, leaving the retailer stuck with all the extra copies of the regular book he wouldn't normally have ordered. This is also a common complaint of many retailers, greeted with the publishers' traditional shoulder shrug and "Customer concerns? Why are we supposed to care about them?" query.
Ok, finish on the upbeat: More than 99% of the time, we get the stuff, which means that you get the stuff, and we get your money. So everybody's happy, right?
So what are you doing just sitting there reading? Send us your orders! Operators are watching TV right now, but they are prepared to process your order as soon as they get around to it. Don't delay, do it today! And tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. And the day after. And the day after. And the day after. And the day after. Life is so exciting...
-Paul
January 15th, 2010
Here's a bit of Comic Industry news:
The big Spiderman news these days, according to the New York Post, and other sources, lies not with the comics themselves, but other media: There was a Spiderman Broadway musical scheduled to open in February, but apparently due to cost overruns and the director being distacted by other endeavours, it's been delayed for an unspecified time. It seems that backers have already sunk over $50million into the project, and it would have to be a mega-hit, playing to sold out houses for over four years(!) to turn a profit.
On the movie front, Spidey 4's been delayed indefinitely. It was due for a summer release, and they haven't even started filming yet. Both director Sam Raimi and star Tobey McGuire are off the project... The one comics-based movie that seems to be starting to generate a bit of heat is "Scott Pilgrim". Here's hoping for another one of those sneaky little "surprise hits".
-Paul
December 27th, 2009
Here's a little bit of trivia I recently came across:
Back in the 1940s-1950s, when radio was king, and TV had not yet captured the entertainment world, there was a hit radio show called "The Great Gildersleeve", which was a spinoff from the big hit show, "Fibber McGee and Molly". "Gildersleeve" itself was popular enough to spin off its own TV show, as well as four feature movies.
I'm not a fan of old time radio, but googling Gildersleeve led me to an OTR site with a show or two available, and you know, it was good!
So much OTR is so seriously outdated that it's unlistenable, but Gildersleeve was still enjoyable and funny.
Although he wasn't the originator, a writer named John did the scripting for several seasons. Cut forward about 50 years, and we find his son, Tom, as the head writer on the TV show, "Deadwood".
John Whedon's grandson, Joss, is also a writer of some repute- you might recognise him as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
-Paul
December 11th, 2009
THEFT AT FRANK FRAZETTA MUSEUM IMPLICATES FRAZETTA'S SON:
Here's a story that's just run (Dec 10th) on Heidi MacDonald's "Beat" blog. I've just copied the part that she seems to have gotten from a press release or newspaper report:
"Alfonso Frank Frazetta, 52, of Marshalls Creek was arrested by state police at Swiftwater and charged with burglary, theft by unlawful taking and criminal trespass." "According to the police report, Frazetta, with the help of an accomplice on a backhoe, broke through the museum door and took about 90 paintings on Wednesday afternoon."
Sad news, especially for us Astro folk who are Frazetta fans. Particularly for one of us, an original art collector, who went down to the museum several years back, and was charmed by Frank's wife, Ellie, who passed away a few months back.
-Paul
December 10th, 2009
Comic Industry News:
The big news in the comics biz over the past couple of days involves DC, Devil's Due, and Dabel Brothers. To start with, Dabel's been acquired by Dynamite Entertainment, the same people who bring us books like "The Boys". You might think that it's no big deal, and at least in one way that's true: Dabel's been kind of floating around for years, sometimes under their own name, other times as an imprint of allied companies (like Marvel). With an outright buyout, especially from a stable company like Dynamite, we could expect to see a, well, stabilizing impact on Dabel production.
A huge indication of this possibility lies in the news that Dynamite has already started taking steps to do something that Dabel (by reputation) is hesitant to do: Pay the creators for their work. Non-payment has been rumoured for years as the reason for delays on Dabel's titles. Publisher's Weekly has it that Dynamite has already instituted payment scheduling, not just for future work, but also (in a proposal) to take care of creators who were never paid for past works. This is purely a sign of Dynamite's inherent decency. They're under no obligation to cover any of Dabel's outstanding debts; they just seem to be trying to do it because it's the right thing to do.
Now, I've never been a big fan of Dynamic Forces/Dynamite's love of variant covers, exclusives, and so on, but nobody's forcing us to buy every variant there can possibly be. They're there if we like that kind of stuff, and that's that. What I do like about Dynamite is that outside of a few problems with getting a couple of hrdcovers produced, they've always come through on what they promised at solicitation. The buyout of Dabel appears to be a complete takeover, an opportunity to both correct past mistakes, and to profit from Dabel's superior licence aquiring capabilities.
On to Devil's Due, and while the news is kind of upbeat for Dabel, that's not the case for DDP: Big cheese Josh Blaylock has confirmed that the company is having financial problems, which he blames on "hundreds of thousands" of bookstore returns in 2008-2009: See, outfits like Borders, Chapters, Amazon, even Wal-Mart, can (unlike DM comic shops like us) simply return what they don't sell for full credit. Now a TPB that retails for $20 or so costs the publisher $1.50-$2.00 from the printer (plus creative costs, of course.). The publisher sells it to Barnes and Noble for $12.00. Pretty good, but when you ship 10,000 copies to B&N, and they return 6,000, the publisher is out the $9-$12,000 that it cost to print them.
It's not the first time a comics publisher has been taken unawares by bookstore returns. That's what was supposed to have killed First Comics back in the early 1990s. What's surprising is that DDP apparently never considered the possibility of massive returns: That's a phenomenon that's increasingly played havok in the publishing industry in general over the past 25 years or so. I've never really understood book publisher numbers: What's amazing is the amount of pure waste that's considered good: Conventional wisdom had it that 35-40% returns meant a book was a winner, and profitable(!), while once the returns start hitting 60-65%, it can be a death sentence for the publisher.
On to DC: They've announced the imminent appearance of a new line of OGNs, running parallel to the traditional comic book format. This new line is described by pundits as "DC's long awaited version of the Marvel "Ultimate" universe. There's no info yet on price, size, or frequency (beyond maybe a new volume every six months or so) Of course, retailers are already complaining about this, whatever it might be. Lack of knowing what we're talking about will never keep us from adverse commentary. Facts? We don' need no steenkin' facts... The other big deal at DC is War of the Supermen", their big 2010 event kicking off with an FCBD book. Kickoff looks nice- let's see how they play it on the field. We were all waiting for DC to clean up their continuity, right?
-Paul
December 6th, 2009
On the condition of magazines and such:
We've recently gotten a complaint or two about what we considered as the acceptable condition of a new magazine. Naturally, we gritted our teeth, credited the unhappy customer, tried to get a replacement, and that was that. I'm a bit perturbed with this: As with everything else, we examine magazines as they come in, and if we feel the condition is reasonable, that's that.
Admittedly we are a bit stricter with comics, TPBs, toys, statues, prints, and so on (because they're all collectible, and condition/grade is so important with collectibles), magazines are a different story. They're basically for reading, then disposal. They may end up as part of someone's library, but aside from esthetics, condition isn't really all that important. That's not to say condition's unimportant. Unless it was the last copy available, I wouldn't buy a heavily folded copy of Time Magazine from a newsstand, and I don't expect anyone to buy a folded copy of CBG or Protoculture Addicts from us.
That said, please be aware that I've given the crew instructions not to be quite so accomodating when it comes to condition complaints: They are to ask themselves; "would I buy this at a newsstand for full price?" If the answer's "yes", then the customer is likely just a bit extreme in condition conciousness, and should have the complaint dismissed. If our crewmember wouldn't buy it, then there's no question- do whatever you can to appease the customer.
Look- we're not trying to pull a fast one here, nor are we lowering our standards. It's said that you can't please everyone all the time, and that's pretty much true. There's always someone who's just a little more particular than you are, someone whose taste in literature makes them feel justified in sneering at yours. I'm telling my crew that if they feel a customer is being unreasonable, don't accept it. In front or in back, make every possible effort to make sure the customer gets an acceptable product at the lowest possible price. If need be, be prepared to lose an overwhelmingly difficult customer's sale. Not a desirable circumstance, but sometimes hard choices must be made.
-Paul
October 5th, 2007
EXCHANGE RATES
My bit this month concerns the Canadian dollar.
So it's reached par with the US dollar, and there's been a fair number of consumer-oriented articles about how American goods still cost more in Canada, seemingly unjustly so.
Well, we can take the moral high ground here. As our reserve customers well know, we've been ignoring the egregiously inaccurate exchange rates printed on comics for many many years now, running on the US cover prices plus the prevailing over-the-counter exchange rate at the bank.
Prices fluctuate from week to week by a penny or two, but the exchanges are accurate, not some publisher's fantasy.
This past week, our customers paid $2.18CDN (plus tax) for a $2.99US comic. Pretty damn good, especially when you consider that a few years ago they were paying $2.93CDN for the same thing.
But, but, but...You'd figure that if we were effectively buying and selling in US all along, the dollar fluctuation wouldn't mean anything to us, but it does.
You see, say when the dollar's even, that $3US book costs us $1.50US (and CDN), and we sell it for $2.10CDN. Our profit (y'know, the stuff that goes to pay the rent and salaries and stuff) is 60¢. When there's a 20% exchange rate, the book costs us $1.80CDN, and we sell it for $2.50 - 70¢ towards the rent.
A dime is only a dime, but on the $5,000 worth of books we get a week (that's our cost, folks), a 20% gain in the Canadian dollar means we're left short about $400 a week- $20,000 a year.
And that's a 20% drop. Over the past five years, the US dollar's dropped forty percent.
Yes, the cost of comics has risen. In 1992 a copy of X-Men was $2.25US, today it's $2.99. That's a 33% increase, but along with the exchange shortfall, I also have to deal with other cost increase - labour, rent, taxes - pretty much the same things you have to deal with.
I dunno. I guess this is the peril of running close to the bone. If, all these years, I'd been basing myself on Canadian cover prices, and shoving the extra 20-30% in my pocket, I'd be able to afford to hold the line. You guys would be a lot poorer, true, but that's your problem, isn't it? Your problem, but not my way. Other guys might have taken the money and laughed, but I couldn't.
Buuuut, it looks like something I've been resisting for a couple of years might have to come to pass. Will have to come to pass - a discount reduction.
As usual, I'll be doing it in an arcane fashion - by "grandfathering" your lists. Simply put, if a title's on your list by the end of 2007, it'll remain at our current, standard 30% discount. As of January 2008, new additions will get a 25% standard discount.
So your best bet is not to give up on Batman or Superman just yet - ride it out - if they get better again, you'll save in the long term. You can also add titles - that's a good plan too! But if you want to wait, the impact shouldn't be all that nasty - that $2.99US book that costs $2.18CDN with us today will be a big 15¢ more if you add it in the new year.
-Paul
March 16th, 2007
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY
We're doing it again, it's May 5th.
PLEASE DO RAY A FAVOUR
Don't ask him to reserve any FCBD comics for you.
We did this one year, the year Marvel hijacked the day to match the Spiderman movie. We were not participants that year, but we did special orders for people, because I felt it wasn't fair that my customers should miss out simply because I was making a political statement.
It's come to my attention that the past couple of years Ray's been reserving this book and that book for people- a sort of mini-reserve system. Give the guy a break! He works hard as hell as it is, he's not SUPPOSED to reserve any comics (that's not in the spirit of the day) yet he's been doing it anyways.
And y'know, there's potentially about 700 "just this ones". That's a LOT of work that Ray has to sneak by me.
So give the guy a break. Come in on FCBD and get your books in person.
Thanks
-Paul
January 5th, 2007
Deconstructing Lichtenstein
I'm hardly an art critic. My studies of the subject are 3/4 forgotten, and were largely concerned with sculpture anyways, but still...
There's a website that's gained a bit of popularity/traffic in the comic community lately, called "Deconstructing Lichtenstein". I checked out the website, and was struck by what a disservice it does to Lichtenstein's work. "Deconstructing" is a rather odd title for it, but I suppose it is a little sexier than "The Source"...
Thing is, painting, sculpture, any art, is rarely intended to be viewed through a magnifying glass, and that's all that "Deconstructing" does.
The comic book images are presented pretty close to natural size, but slightly enlarged. Aside from the Sekowsky/Dr.Light panel, they lose some of their ...grace by being taken out of context, out of perspective- they were meant to be viewed surrounded by other images, remotely lit, at half arms-length or so.
Similarly, Lichtenstein's work, so heavily reduced, has lost an enormous amount of detail, and lost all perspective- they were meant to be viewed from several feet away, even from across a room, and sitting in clear space. I was never much of a fan of Lichtenstein (still am not), but I did come to a clearer ...understanding of what he was about, a much greater acceptance of his work, in seeing it as it was meant to be seen- in person, hanging on a wall. (I had much the same reaction to VanGogh and Picasso, by the way.)
All art is a re-presentation of an image in altered form. Leaving aside the pre-photography "recording of an event" or comics' storytelling aspects, ALL art is a representation of an artist's impression of a scene (or, in severe abstract, a feeling). Winslow Homer and James Whistler were "copying" real life, just as were Rembrandt and Constable before them, but released from the bounds of pure representation, they were able to impart a greater sense of the spirit of the places and people they portrayed. VanGogh followed Homer as naturally as Picasso followed Whistler- moving farther away from "pure' reproduction to impressionism and abstraction.
Impressionism and abstraction can only go so far before they become completely internalised to the artist. You can catch Brancusi's intent with his endless columns or "Bird In Space", but what can you see in something by Barnett Newman or Jackson Pollack?
In the fifties and sixties (give or take a decade or two), there was another "school" developing; "Magic Realism". (Andrew) Wyeth sort of led the way, but Hoffman, and Colville are perhaps the most "hard core" artists associated with it.
Pop art, to an extent, is part of magic realism, but it (to me) was more an effort to find the essence of the mundane. These artists were growing up in a new civilisation, in the flowering of mass production, of mass communication, of fleeting fame. Warhol and Lichtenstein are the most often mentioned of the pop artists, because they captured the spirit perfectly- ubiquitous but fleeting. Preservation of the ephemeral.
Marilyn Monroe and comic books. Everywhere, then gone.
-Paul
Who's run out of steam.
November 6th, 2006
T.O. commuters told Stephen Harper 'eats babies'
Here's a little CTV news item that I found hilarious. Had to repeat the whole thing, because it has bits o' boffo all the way through...
Updated Tue. May. 2 2006 11:17 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Bemused Toronto commuters were repeatedly informed that "Stephen Harper eats babies" after a hacker tampered with advertising signs on city trains.
The scrolling electronic signs that usually carry transit updates and advertisements on Toronto's westbound Lakeshore GO Transit trains carried the messages Thursday, Friday and Monday after the hacker used a remote-control device to re-program the wording and mock the prime minister.
Thursday, Friday, Monday. Did the trains take the weekend off? In any event, the signs were running for five days before anyone objected? Or noticed?
The ingenious hacker made sure that suburban commuters in at least five different cars continued to get his or her subliminal message.
Yes. Scrolling light-up signs. Very subliminal.
Commuter Gerry Nicholls said he thought he was hallucinating as he relaxed in his seat for the 35-minute GO train ride between Toronto and his Oakville home.
Every three seconds, the scrolling electronic sign read: "Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies," Nicholls told the Toronto Star.
"No one seemed to be reacting to it." said Nicholls, who happens to be vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, the same conservative think-tank formerly headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"No one seemed to be reacting to it." Of course not. People react to surprising news. The best this should get is a shrug and a "figured as much."
"I kept waiting for the kicker,'' he said. "I thought, there's got to be something to this. It's a joke, it's an ad for baby food or something like that. It just kept going over and over again and I realized that this is something that could be pretty serious.
"I wasn't even sure when I got off the train. Was I hallucinating?"
Why am I disconcerted about an influential think tank's VP presuming that he was hallucinating rather than thinking "The sign is broken. Someone must have tampered with it."? Unless this guy regularly hallucinates, there's a logic jump there that is kind of worrisome.
The case of "electronic vandalism" prompted red-faced GO Transit officials to pledge the insults would never happen again.
To do so, they will have to power down all the signs on their cars and use special software that is being couriered from the United States to password protect the digital signs, a process that is expected to take three days.
That process sounds pretty gruelling, doesn't it? Three days!
Day one: Order the thing.
Day two: Overnight UPS.
Day three: Install.
Mind you, it might actually be gruelling. Apparently these people have never heard of downloading files. But then, they also never seem to have heard of password protection either...
"Unfortunately it's a slur, it's an offensive message," GO Transit spokesperson Ed Shea told the Star.
"We regret it happened and we're sorry if anybody was offended, including the prime minister."
Nice of them to include the Prime Minister. Y'kmow, just in case he was offended, rather than, say, pissed off that someone found out...
However, a digital security expert told The Globe and Mail this kind of digital tampering is as easy as buying a $23.95 gadget -- and more of it should be expected.
"There's actually a whole slew of ways to hack into these signs," said Ryan Purita, a forensic examiner with Totally Connected Security Ltd. in Vancouver.
"If people don't think those things are connected to the Internet, they're wrong," Purita told The Globe.
Is this whole article a joke? Mr.Purita of "Totally Connected Security" in Vancouver?
It's a Toronto story- why didn't they just call up the Alarm Force guy? And what is this "Totally Connected Security" outfit? A division of "Totally Awesome Security", a unit of "No, Really, This Is The Real Thing Security"?
And I guess I'm wrong because I never thought those signs were connected to the internet.
I just kinda figured that those signs were wirelessly connected to a keyboard somewhere, and some clerk just punched in new messages and sent them out by microwave or carrier pigeon or something.
I also kind figured there was some sort of security, otherwise we'd be seeing traffic alerts along the Decarie Expressway about SUV eating bats at the Jean Talon exit...
Dimitris Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, described the hacker's actions as "inappropriate and disrespectful."
Meanwhile, when asked about his time with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, Nicholls said: "I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he, in that time, eat a baby."
See Gerry Nicholls: Hallucinatory tendencies. Is he sure that was just a ham sandwich?
-Paul
July 17th, 2006
Walmart
I'm not a fan of Wal-Mart, but I don't think they're the Great Satan either.
I very much admired Sam Walton. He was just a five-and-dime owner who recognised that times were changing, recognised that efficiencies were becoming more attainable, and jumped on every innovation he saw as useable. But Sam's dead. It's a different outfit today.
I'll criticize them for labour treatment. I know they're brutal towards any thought of union. On the other hand, they're hardly the first. They're not Henry Ford with machine guns at the Rouge, but their style is much like W.H.Smith or McDonald's: You want a union? Fine with us. Oh how unfortunate, your store's unprofitable, it's closing. Both Wal-Mart and McDonald's have pulled THAT stunt here. W.H.Smith pulled it with a whole CHAIN of Montreal stores they bought.
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Killing towns? Yeah, I suppose, but they're hardly innovative there either. I remember Plattsburgh, with its thriving downtown in the Fifties and Sixties. Then Highway 87 went in, and a store called Grand Way (dry goods division of Grand Union) opened up as anchor of a strip mall out on Highway 3, a sleepy little route, the road to Dannemora.
Grand Way- Plattsburgh's first big box. Inside of two years downtown was dead. JC Penny, Montgomery Ward, Kresge's, Woolworth's, and all the indies along Margaret street had either closed, or built new boxes of their own out on 87. What difference does it make if it's one store called Wal-Mart, or one Champlain Mall? The local businesses were killed, as the malls created the environment in which Hickory Farms and Fannie Farmer and all the other specialty chains were comfortable.
And y'know, Highway 3 became the new main street. Nobody WALKED along it of course, but it was/is the main drag of Plattsburgh. There's even a Wal-Mart there now- one of hundreds of stores.
And fast-food joints. When I was a kid, the nearest A&W was in Burlington. Food in Plattsburgh was the lunch counter at Fishman's or WT.Grant, or diners. There were LOTS of diners. There's two diners left. Lots of fast-food chains. They sprouted up along Highway 3, and the diners on Routes 9 and 22 disappeared.
Towns die. Traditional old-line businesses die. Could be a Wal-Mart, could be a new highway, could be a demographic shift, but towns (and districts) die, and they've been doing it for a thousand years.
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Hell, I've been a victim of a demographic shift. I opened a store on Sherbrooke St.W. many years ago, a relatively genteel, if a bit run-down area. About six months after I opened a police crackdown in another area drove drug dealers and their ilk to new pastures. Sherbrooke St.W. $2,000 net net a month (about $2,700 gross) for five years, and after the seventh month I never did more than $2,000 a month in SALES. Changing demographic. Killed the district. It wasn't Wal-Mart.
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Towns die. Areas die. I've given two examples, a new highway, and a change in population. There's other reasons. The mine dries up. The steam locomotive is replaced with deisel, and the tank town isn't needed anymore. The mills along the Winooski River are packed up and relocated to Appalachia because labour's cheaper there. (That's what happened to Burlington.) Hell, air conditioning's invented, and the mills no longer HAVE to be in cooler states. Hello Atlanta, hello Memphis. The Cold War ends- goodbye Plattsburgh Air Force Base. The St.Lawrence Seaway is opened, and ships can run from Europe to Duluth without transshipment in Montreal. THAT hurt this town. More than separatism.
Towns die. Wal-Mart is just a current hot target as a town killer.
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Wal-Mart's Asian thing- taking jobs away from Americans and sending them to China, just in the interest of lower prices.
Yeah, well, I'm old. I keep bringing that up. My father was importing cheap clothing from Korea in 1950. That ended when the war began, but growing through the fifties and sixties was the "cheap Japanese imitation xxx". Going offshore isn't new.
Finding the cheapest labour isn't new. That's why the Chinese built our railways.
What's relatively new is that immigration, the traditional source of cheap labour, has dried up. The last big influx for us was Hong Kong in '97. For you guys? BIG influx. The early part of the 20th Century? Second generation doesn't want to work cheap. Third generation won't.
So if we can't bring the slaves to us, we'll bring the work to the slaves. Primarily thanks to the increased security of container shipping, but also thanks to air travel, thanks to satellite-based communications, it really makes little difference where head office is, and where the plant is.
Back in the early eighties, I was a traffic manager. One thing I did was co-ordinate this process: On behalf of a customer in Montreal, we bought leather in Brazil, had it shipped to a half-dozen different makers in Korea, who manufactured leather garments that didn't have buttons. The makers shipped the semi-finished garments to us in Los Angeles, where we consigned it to a subsidiary of our Montreal customer, who sewed on the buttons, and shipped the garments to a store in Minneapolis. No secrets here, the store knew exactly what the routing was, but they needed that "Made In USA" label to mollify the rubes, and in those days, sewing on the buttons was good enough.
We had a similar deal with another outfit, but higher quality coats. For these, the routing was Buenos Aires - New York by ship, to Montreal by truck, the leather finished in our tanneries, the US retailer would send an inspector to Montreal to check quality, thence by rail to Seattle, APL ship to Busan, made into buttonless coats, back to Los Angeles, on with the buttons, and off to the stores. Made in the good ol' USA.
This was in the early eighties. This was before FAX, never mind e-mail. Communication was by phone or Telex/TWX. And even featuring crap like my $1,800 a month phone bill (only 3rd highest in the company!) it was still more profitable to cart stuff all over the world than it was to make it locally.
Communication and transportation. The town was now the world.
And this was before China and Vietnam and Indonesia and Thailand were developed as even cheaper sources of labour than Korea or India.
But it was after the container was invented. That was the key to overseas manufacture. As much as goes overboard these days, I read somewhere that it's less than a tenth of what used to disappear when everything shipped breakbulk. The only reason manufacturers needed to be near the end-user was because of transportation, and shrinkage that grew with each transshipment. No longer a problem.
And you know, for decades we've sold our action figures and statues and swords and tchotchkes made in China and India, sold our books printed all over the Orient, sold our comics, printed in Montreal, and so on. Wal-Mart's selling Nikes made in Indonesia by slaves that are interchangeable with the slaves used to manufacture the products we sell.
I'm not saying what's going on is right. I'm not certain it's wrong. I'm just thinking that when throwing bricks at Wal-Mart for practises we've used for decades, we should consider that our own houses are pretty transparent...
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To me, Wal-Mart's a pretty lousy store, but it's only evil in the same way that most of mankind is evil. Industries whose sales rely on (and cause)the death and destruction of people and planets are evil. Wal-Mart's just like the rest of us- greedy.
That's enough for now- just reminiscence and observation.
-Paul
Lost Girls at "Lying In The Gutters"
As anyone who reads Astronotes is aware, I'll often quote Rich Johnston. Well, this week Rich is quoting me, amongst a whole bunch of people commenting on "Lost Girls", Alan Moore's "Big Book Of Porn".
Although I'm always fascinating, of course, I'm not just steering you to the column to see how clever I am. It's an interesting situation- you'll notice I devoted a whole page of this month's Astronotes (#131) to it.
Rich's column gives you some deeper levels:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=litg
-Paul
Basic Discount for "C-Type" Reserve Customers
Our basic discount is 30% for printed matter- comics, books, magazines, TPBs, etc.
To get this, you must have at least one ongoing title on your list. By "ongoing", we mean a title that ships with a meaningful regularity. "Batman" or "X-Men", obviously, but also manga like "Naruto" or "Rebirth". They may run on a three-month schedule, but they do ship on a regular basis. Books like "Love & Rockets" or "Astonishing X-Men TPBs" don't count, because they ship at random.
That doesn't mean you don't get a discount on those kinds of books when they do ship. You get the same 30% discount, no matter if it's ongoing, infrequent, or even a one-shot. We just need an ongoing to cover our costs on maintaining an account.
We charge based on US cover, exchanged into Canadian at the prevailing over-the-counter bank rate.
We charge GST and PST as applicable.
As of this writing, a $2.99US comic costs our Quebec customers about $2.77CDN, discounts and taxes included. We don't care if the publisher says the Canadian cover price is $3.75 or $4.00 or $62,000. They can go as crazy as they want, we base on the US price.
I said "Quebec customers". Customers outside of Quebec are not charged Provincial sales tax. An Ontario resident would pay about $2.58CDN, while one in Pakistan (yes we have customers all over the world) pays about $2.41CDN. The reduction in taxes goes a long way towards covering postage costs for our mail-order people. In fact in most cases it more than covers the cost of postage.
There is a caveat to that 30% discount: Every once in a while there's a book or comic that's "short discounted" at Diamond. Now, while we're nice guys and all, we do have to pay the rent. When we get short discounted, so do you. The discount drops to 25%. You are notified of this when you place the order. We don't like springing nasty surprises on our customers. Frankly, this short discount thing isn't that big a deal, I'm just mentioning it because it's part of reality. It mainly hits DFE-type signed stuff, very rarely anything mainstream. Right now, a quick survey of our database shows just 72 outstanding short discount items. That's out of 14,597 listings.
-Paul
April 3rd, 2006
Another "Motormouth" entry, torn from the pages of Ellis' Engine. This one was my response to Craig (Wahoo Morris) Taillefer, about
Why Diamond Won't Ship Adult Books To Canada
To me, it's a case of Diamond acting very responsibly to themselves, their Canadian customers, and to their suppliers.
Each week, Diamond brings all of Canada's books in on one truck.* If this truck is stopped for inspection, all of Canada's stores are out of luck until the truck is released, and that can take days, depending on how fast customs moves, how long it takes to locate and inspect the suspected contraband, and whether, upon inspection, customs feels that there's reason to inspect all the contents of the truck.
It's not as simple as customs saying "show me the shipment for customer X". For one thing, that might be in the nose of the trailer- the whole unit has to be unloaded before it's found. More importantly, Diamond is the importer of record. All Canadian shipments are manifested under one B3, which means that a seizure of one is a seizure of all. There are myriad forms, reasons, intensity and procedures for inspection and/or seizure- too many to describe, but suffice to say that in an industry built on regularity, the impact of a disruption of this type can be severe.
I mentioned that Diamond is the sole importer. This is absolutely neccessary. To do otherwise would neccessitate Diamond delivering to a sufferance warehouse, at which point it would be each store's responsibility to effect clearance, and arrange onward shipment. Very costly, very slow, very cumbersome. The alternative would be for Diamond's customs broker (Tower Group) to have power of attorney for every store, and do the clearances when the truck hits the border. Again, very costly and slow. A clearance takes (say) a half-hour. Be it one box with 200 comics, or one truck with 200,000, it takes the same half-hour. Consolidation is the cheapest and most efficient way.
Now customs has a very important job to do. They're protecting us. I'm not being sarcastic, here, they are protecting us. They are enforcing the laws that protect us. They do this using the same bag of tricks that any law enforcement agency might use: Informants, random inspections (legal in importation), reputation of the importer, and the individual inspector's "feel" for the situation. The guys at the border points are very, very good. They have hundreds of trucks waiting to cross at any given moment, and they're out there making snap decisions on who gets passed, and who gets inspected. A lot of stuff gets through, but a lot gets stopped too.
The easiest way to get passed without delay is to be consistantly clean. To carry nothing that will attract attention. To be very stringent about obeying the law, even more stringent than customs is itself. And to do it over and over again, every week, shipment after shipment.
And that's what Diamond does. That's why Diamond won't ship Horny Biker Sluts into Canada, why they'll shut down anything that might be dodgy. They simply can't take a chance with everyone's shipments for the sake of a tiny portion.
That doesn't mean they won't sell adult material to Canadian stores. They're quite prepared to set up separate accounts at US drop points, and there are any number of stores (and at least one distributor) that does this. They "receive" their goods at a US border town, and importing it into Canada is at their own cost and risk.
Craig mentioned Diamond getting "fed up having their shipments seized". This happened only once to my knowledge, and that was about a year ago. It was not a seizure, the shipment was held for inspection- there's a big difference. Diamond moved Heaven and Earth to get the shipment released, and although they warned us that we might be looking at Thursday or even Friday delivery, they did get the books to us on time.
So they hardly have anything to be "fed up" about. They just got caught in a random spot check, and passed with no problem, at least in part because of their sterling reputation. Again, no sarcasm. They do have a reputation for law abiding conduct.
Yes, we can get books that are quite raunchy at stores coast to coast, some of them of domestic manufacture, some imported. These books are distributed by companies in the adult materials trade. They know the laws, they specialise in handling this type of material, they know what will pass inspection and what will not. They are experts in their field. Diamond is prepared to leave that field to them- it's just not worth it. Yes, the odd book loses, but a "Persepolis" wins 1,000 times for each Melody loss.
-Paul
*I believe- certainly all of Ontario and East- there may be a different West Coast arrangement.
On Narwain (et al)
This was a response to a creator on The Engine, who asked about our reactions to Narwain- he has a story in one of their anthologies. As I wrote the response, I realised it reflected a certain change that's come over my ordering habits this past while...
I'm sorry but Narwain isn't a publisher that enjoys much support from me.
I've tried a few titles, the most successful has been Free Fall (at 4 copies!), but it's also a title that's running late.
I'll generally try a couple of copies of just about anything, but Narwain somehow sounded a bit too ...imitative.
It started with a clump of titles, and just somehow felt like the latest go-round of publishers putting together a couple of faded stars, a bunch of never-quite-made-its and unknowns, a copy of a publishing formula that has failed so often over the past few years.
It's kind of annoying to order from a formula- chrome covers or zombies or whatever might be the hot ticket of the day. I know that whatever it might be, this latest imitation is a fifth, sixth, seventh generation copy of the thing that was the hit. I guess an example is Claw/Red Sonja- trading on the Red Sonja spinoffs, trading on Red Sonja itself, which in turn is trading on the Conan spinoffs, which trade on the success that started it- the Conan (main) series. Each new title a bit smaller than its precursor, each one diluting the field.
Narwain somehow feels that way as a publisher. They may be absolutely wonderful, but they feel too much like the latest in a string of "musical chairs" publishers- a temporary home for random titles, following the example set by Speakeasy and Alias, and an endless string of these guys going back to Defiant and beyond... Trouble is, that model never started with a hit. Each generation is a "dilution" of something that wasn't very much to begin with.
Nowadays I'd rather "wait for the trade" with these guys. Wait to see if they establish a trade, become a publisher like Oni or even Crossgen, one with a certain amount of solidity. Roll out small with the possibility of growth, and I'll support a new publisher. Roll out big, and chances are very good these days that I'll be very leery of writing orders.
-Paul
ON DC AND MARVEL HEGEMONY
There was a recent enquiry about what percentage of orders go to Marvel and DC, and whether or not the big two are crowding other publishers off the racks. So I sat down and did a little analysis, and here's what I came up with- The way our February 2006 order breaks down:
(DD: average for January orders per Diamond Dialogue -March 06)
Retail per piece average:
$4.13 OVERALL
$3.89 DC
$3.45 MVL
$5.47 OTHERS
Percentage of order by piece:
35.2% DC (DD: 37.4%)
39.0% MVL (DD: 42.2%)
25.8% OTHER (DD: 20.4%)
Percentage of order by dollars:
33.1% DC (DD: 35.3)
32.7% MVL (DD: 36.8)
34.2% OTHER (DD: 27.9)
Percentage of order by TITLE:
16.7% DC
15.6% MVL
67.7% OTHER
The most interesting little chunk here is the last one- percentage by title. Leaving aside different formats for the sake of brevity, a stack of comics occupies 7"x10" of wall or floor space. Doesn't matter if the stack is 2 deep or 20, it takes the same amount of space.
Between them, DC and Marvel get only 33% of prime display, despite them representing 75% of product. After knocking out subscribers, I find that I will be displaying about 10% each of the DC and Marvel books I buy, and 20% of the others. Given that I'll be stocking deeper on books like "Identity Crisis" or "Avengers", the square footage of display skews heavily in favour of publishers other than the big two. That 1/3-2/3 ratio looks pretty solid.
This (at least in my store, which runs fairly close to the Diamond averages) completely shoots down any thoughts of DC and Marvel "crowding other publishers off the racks".
The last time that idea worked was back in the fifties, when DC prevented Marvel from getting rack space by virtue of DC being the distributor. The last time it was seriously TRIED was in the mid nineties, when it was Marvel's stated policy to squeeze out the competition, and that had to be one of the most disastrous marketing moves of all time- it destroyed the concept of "Marvel Zombies", people who would buy every Marvel title, every month. There used to be lots of them, but when "Heavy Hitters" and "Barkerverse" and "Marvel UK" started showing up, the zombies found that there was just too much to buy, and the new stuff was of pretty low quality. They started by chopping the ancillary lines, then, once they realised they were no longer completists anyways, they started chopping into the core titles that they had been buying "just because".
But that's another story. I sort of wonder if those people who talk about DC/MVL "crowding" might not be a bit ...unobservant. If there's 99 superhero books on the wall, and one stack of "Eightball", at a glance it's pretty easy to presume that it's a superhero store. It's a tiny step away from that to presume it's a Marvel/DC store. After all, aren't their names synonymous with superheroes? Yes, but they're not the only superhero publishers. At a glance, it's hard to tell if a book's from Marvel or Speakeasy or DC or Image or Alias or Devil's Due or Dynamite. There's enough diversity in the big two's appearance that virtually any other publisher's books HAVE to have similarities with Vertigo or Max or Marvel Main. Hell, even Bongo kinda looks like Looney Tunes. It's only by checking the coliphons that you realise that DC and Marvel are nowhere near as hegemonous as a casual look would indicate.
-Paul