Hey, Folks!
Well, kinda sorta back to normal here behind the scenes this week! It’s been kind of crazy here in the last two weeks and I have been working diligently to catch everything up. We have been lucky enough to be the new comics choice to a brand spanking new customers and while we love our new customers it does take a bit of scrambling to catch our orders up. I’ve been ordering new comics now for over 30 years and for nearly 40 years I’ve been behind the scenes at my local comic shop learning how to manage stock. It usually takes about a month-6 weeks to normalize inventory with a sudden influx of new customers and I am well on the way to sussing things out. So if you happen to miss a comic or two on the rack, please give me some patience and know that I know what the difficulty is and I am well on the way to correcting it. Subscription service users also know that if you are missing something in your pulls then check with me or Brian…chances are we just waiting for additional quantities to show up from the distributors. And to the new customers that I am speaking about like they aren’t in the room…welcome to the comic experience of Monarch Comics!
I should talk about the actual mechanics of the subscription form so that we are all on the same page. I have been doing this weekly subscription list for a while now and while it is intentionally set up to be the simplest and most comprehensive lists things don’t always work out perfectly…lol. The list is almost always up and ready to go before 1pm on Thursday afternoons. It does take some time to parse everything between three different distributors and the process always has some inaccuracies due to the distributor and how efficient their office staff is. For instance, Diamond Comics has a “master list” of books due out every week. This list, for reasons that remain unknown, is released in two parts: Monday has the list of “main’ Diamond publishers and the second list is released on Wednesday morning with the complete list of the week’s titles supplied by Diamond. Sounds simple, right? The problem is that Diamond’s service has been on a slow slide to oblivion for several years now and there are weeks when whoever is required to update these critical lists don’t bother or do it wrong. This has the effect of cutting down on the amount of small press titles featured on the subscription list or listing things on it that aren’t actually shipping. The incompetence is mind numbing. So if you think there is something coming out that you don’t see on the sub list please ask us about it. It will be often a case of merely not seeing the item on my weekly reference lists.
I also wanted to mention that getting your orders in early, either Thursday or Friday, is your best bet at getting everything you want for the week. I have “X” number of copies of a comic already pre-ordered and I keep track of the numbers ordered from the subscription form as they come in. SO, I might have ordered 50 copies of Fantastic Four #whatever, but by the time I process all of the orders there may only be 3 copies going up on the rack. That’s why it is imperative to get your orders in early to make sure that I can cover your order with the initial shipments.
Now if I run out before your order is processed you may have to wait a day or two for my reorder of the item to reach the shop. Lately anything ordered from Lunar Distribution is generally here by Tuesday or early Wednesday, so you may not even notice it, but Diamond and PRH tends to take a day or two longer. Also, I don’t actually carry everything for the rack that is on the Sub form. These have to be special ordered in and again may take a couple of extra days to appear depending on which distributor I use.
Which brings me to the final point about using the sub form. Occasionally I will run out of something that I have on the form and I will not be able to obscure any more copies. This used to happen all the time, but I now have a pretty good handle on it. I will always backorder any books that I receive orders. I apologize ahead of time, but I do try to do my best secure orders for things that I have out out for sale and the sad truth is that sometimes a publisher, big or small, will simply not print as many copies that they need. Oftentimes these days there will be a second print (or third or whatever) offered immediately but will still take up to 3-4 weeks to actually be printed and shipped. Depending on how many requests I get or how big the books is I will generally order at least a small amount of additional prints, but I will ALWAYS order copies if I get specific requests for them. So always ask if you are interested in the additional printings.
I’m sure that I am forgetting something about the service but I think those are the main points. I guess I should mention that any special orders you put in or orders for items that I don’t normally carry are all ordered on Sunday afternoon in my weekly reorder list. Any special orders I receive before 3pm on Sunday will be included in that week’s reorder. I f I receive any special orders after that point will be included in the following week’s reorder and thus won’t show up until the following week. With special order comics the best thing to do is hit me with it at FOC…but that’s a whole other story for a different time…lol
I had some ore stuff to talk about this week, like the best comics that I read (Immortal Thor, Batman Dylan Dog, Ultimate Black Panther) this week and the upcoming FCBD, but I have officially run out of time and need to get started posting stuff so I will this here. NEXT week I promise I will talk more about comics then babbling endlessly on about the mechanics of the industry!
Have a great weekend, Folks!
Eddiw