Our thanks to DC for listening to the feedback and providing these exceptional offerings for the support of our finest day.

DC’s book products are distributed to the book trade by the Hachette Book Group, not by Diamond. Most “regular” book stores that buy DC’s book product almost surely buy from the Hachette Book Group, or from wholesalers (Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bookazine, etc.) that are supplied by the Hachette Book Group. That being the case, this incentive program pretty clearly seems to be directed at getting comic book shops to increase their poistions on this book, and have little if anything to do with how “regular” book stores respond to the book. (DC may well have other incentives/promotions planned for the “regular” book sector, but this one pretty clearly ain’t one of ‘em.)

>…shouldn’t the direct market keep in mind that if the books don’t sell,
>they still have to pay for the shipment back?

Yup. And I imagine that those comics retailers who’re savvy enough to track their freight spending will indeed keep that in mind.

An incentive promotion like this can always be scrutinized, analyzed, and constructively criticized (before, during, and after it’s execution), but (as has been pointed out above) the fact that DC’s made this full returnability offer underscores their faith in the product, and that’s not trivial at all.

IMHO, it’d be nice to see if Diamond started expanding the number of titles they allow returnability on so that it doesn’t become something they can say, “Oh, we tried it on this one title, but it didn’t work, so we won’t do it anymore.” IMHO, for the idea of a returnable product to work, it has to be on a much larger scale.

That’s just IMHO, though, and others or free to correct me where I’m wrong. I’ve worked in publishing, but only from the side of the publisher, never from the retailer. I’d be happy to be enlightened.

FINALLY.

Of course, I’m curious how this’ll affect ordering through other distributors such as Ingram who’ve always offered full returnablity (and certainly at a better price for the mid and low orders than Diamond is offering). Do regular book stores typicaly purchase DC titles through Diamond? Or through the usual major book distributors? I can’t imagine book stores using anybody that didn’t offer returnability on their product. Is this how DC plans also on getting better distribution in book stores as WELL as encouraging the direct market to purchase more books?

(And, because someone will point it out, I’ll just say it now, though full returnability does indeed shift a lot of the risk to DC from the retailer, it’s still worth remembering that the retailer does pay freight–both for stuff coming in and, presumably, for returns going back–which though not necessarily a huge amount, isn’t nothing and is probably enough to affect some retailers’ thinking.)

Heck, they could’ve just offered full returnability on any orders of X units, regardless of customer size. Or they could offer overshipment (”Get one additional copy for every three ordered” which would, theoretically, get more copies into the larger retailers.) Or some something different that can’t be interpreted as “Here’s a nice extra thing we’re offering, and if you’re a small customer, we’re making it pretty easy for you to qualify for it, but if you’re a big customer, we’re making it more difficult for you to qualify for it.”

Still, it’s indeed an eloquent statement on their belief in the product, and will likely redirect some business back to Diamond from that set of retailers that increasingly buy books from book trade wholesalers because of the partial returnability they offer. (Don’t know if this offer will sell significantly *more* books, but might significantly change the routes through which the books are sold…)

Well, except that leap in copies between 55 % and 57 %, from 6 to 15, which is a bit high, but I wouldn’t be able to say how many LCSs have the highest discount rate… there might be a bell curve involved in the analysis that preceded this offer.

The thing, though, is that with full returnability, the risk for retailers to carry this launch book is minimal, putting the risk more on DCs doorstep, in very much the same way the risk would be with them if they dealt with bookstore chains.

Based on that alone, they must believe in that line very much.

So since a customer with a higher discount has to order more copies in order to get the benefit of returnability, isn’t that soemhow penalizing the “better” customer? Making that “better” customer work harder to get an advantage more readily granted to a “lesser” customer?

I’m sure there’s something (many things, probably) I’m not understanding about this one…