Are Comic Book Resellers Detrimental To The Industry?

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[@Goblingraphx]

Great discussion. I do think there is a section of shops that have embraced the variant cover by having "shop exclusives" covers. Are those covers just taking the existing comics and adding an extra cover on it? Or they done through Marvel itself?

[@bryanrickard7712]

I think the spec market has been an opiate for the industry that has kept it from evolving to meet the needs of the modern reader. You don’t need to gain new readers if you sell 4-5 copies of the same book to a customer. To this day readers have largely been the secondary focus compared to variant scam customers and to shows

[@TheComicsPals]

Nailed it.

[@glennsimpson_aka_bobbysaccaro]

I think two discussions are being conflated here. Variants and speculation are two different things that may have a large overlap but not entirely. You can want a variant cover for your own collection with no intent to resell. You can also buy an "A" cover with no intention of reading it but only wanting to spec on it. There's also people who do both - they buy some comics because they want to own them, and they buy other comics to resell and finance their hobby. I'm pretty old-school, I come from the side of "you buy as many comics as you can till you die and then your family sells them to a comics shop for pennies on the dollar, and then other comics fans buy those comics." That's a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea. I agree that having people buy issue #1 with no intention of buying issue #2 is a problem, but with the hobby becoming more and more niche, I don't know that losing that would actually improve anything significantly.

[@TheComicsPals]

I appreciate the measured response here!

[@joeysham]

Incentives killed returns. Publishers used to let shops return books that didn't sell, and then shops would order for Incentives then return the regulars. They should bring back returns, with theboption to take incentives INSTEAD of being able to return books. It would up the inventory shops would bring in especially smaller titles, making things more accessible to more readers. It would hurt spec, but it would also drive the prices of Incentives up.

[@TheComicsPals]

This is an interesting idea I’ve not seen floated before.

[@spiralstorm616]

Im just afraid of a repeat of the 90s

[@nunyabizwacks6711]

the industry would be near dead without resellers. Full stop

[@nunyabizwacks6711]

the Sean guy the worst type of gatekeeper that also doesnt know what he's talking about whatsoever. "This is a problem, thats a problem"....in other words, his answer to fixing comics is to have about half the ppl that spend money on comics to stop....yea that'll fix it...😂. "NO RESELLERS, NO VARIANTS, YOU BETTER READ COMICS OR NOT BUY EM!!" One more point, you keep mentioning ppl cant get the book they want because its gone right? Guess what, that means it has been bought. Is it annoying? Sure....but it means a success has been had, not "hurting the industry". It means some shop sold all their copies for one, and also didnt over order. Sounds like best case scenario to me. Personal feelings dont equate to industry wide failure. You wanna talk about the real detriments to comic books? Talk about cover prices, talk about awfully ran LCS's all over (that have no regulation whatsoever), talk about awful movies and shows being pumped out, which prop comics up whether we like it or not, talk about the fact ppl just dont care about comics these days, talk about how comics arent a necessity in a time of high inflation and economic hardship, etc etc. Resellers are hardly the problem with comic books lmao. Sometimes the truth has to be faced. This is a dying medium, like many other things today. The internet exists.

[@TheComicsPals]

I’m not sure how stating my opinion makes me a gatekeeper but okay. Each of the things that you listed as problems in the industry are things we talk about regularly on the channel. This is just one conversation of many! I appreciate that you have a different perspective than mine and that’s fine. Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment.

[@glennsimpson_aka_bobbysaccaro]

Minor point of order - the reason a hypothetical "sellout to spec" is a problem is that it prevents the storyline from having a chance to attract people to buy issue #2. Instead of theoretically hooking someone to follow the story for at least a few issues, it's all basically over once the #1 issue is done.

[@glennsimpson_aka_bobbysaccaro]

@@TheComicsPals To be fair, about 90% of "gatekeeping" is people expressing their opinion. Gatekeeping is creating an atmosphere where people are made to feel unwelcome, not about literally blocking them. But it's also fair to say that makes some discussions difficult. Best compromise might be "I don't l;ike it when people xyz" rather than "XYZ is hurting the hobby". I.E. "I hate it when I go to a convention and keep tripping over cosplayers" rather than "Cosplayers are ruining comics conventions."