Three Years Ago: The Direct Market Shut Down
What was the beginning of the end for Diamond Comics.
This week, I hit my first real solid block of the year, mentally and physically. On Tuesday night, shortly after I scheduled the Wednesday post for this Substack, I became quite feverish for an hour or two, before things subsided and I went to sleep. Or passed out. One of the two.
I was sleeping in the spare room, because we’ve been trying to train one of our cats to stop peeing on our guest bed/futon, so at around 3am, I had sent a message to my partner that I didn’t remember the contents of. When she woke me up on Wednesday morning, very concerned at what I had sent (something that didn’t sound like “I’m sick”, but more like “I’m in the midst of a panic attack”), I blearily noted that I probably had to skip work. So I took Wednesday off, for just the second time since we opened the store nearly eight years ago.
It was strange. So much of this business revolves around the flood of content that hits on Wednesdays, and while I know some shops sell their DC on Tuesday (as allowed), we never have.1 Having missed that this week, I feel a bit adrift. The store, of course, did perfectly fine in my absence. My partner Danica has always had things on lock, no matter what her brain might tell her every now and again, and our mega-employee Andrew is phenomenal. We’re finally in a position where one of us can go down, and things remain stable instead of becoming a scramble. It’s nice.
Anyway. It has made for another late post at the end of this week, one that is going to be a little more personal than something that speaks to the larger industry. So for those looking for something broader, apologies. For those wanting a glimpse into a bit of the micro of it all, read on.
Three Years Ago…
On Monday, March 23rd, 2020, Diamond Comics announced that they would stop receiving and shipping new product from their suppliers. This came hours after rumours started circulating, as the company had kicked things off by informing said suppliers of the move in advance of a full industry announcement. Obviously this was leaked, and made for a morning of absolute chaos before official word came in.
Time has a way of softening memories, but social media remembers.
The posts themselves seem fairly calm, but seeing them, I can remember what was happening behind the scenes. With COVID starting to cause many regions to shutdown, we were running day-to-day, waiting to hear when we would have to close our doors as a non-essential business. Our province was holding out for quite some time, because our Premier and his party tried to appeal to the far-right base that brought them to the party. We had started limiting the hours we were open, and limiting the amount of people who could be in the shop. On top of that, we were getting murmurs of what was to come - but we weren’t about to put something out without official word.
That finally arrived at around 5pm our time.
There’s two big things to talk about here. First: when Diamond communicated this information, their e-mail stated that there would be no comics shipping for April 1st - meaning the single issues that had arrived in shops would be the last for the foreseeable future. However, their website stated that things would be shut down on April 8th.2 I remember thinking at the time that this little element of chaos was so very Diamond. While they had been the standard in the business of single issues by default, they had abused their position as a monopoly of the format to become sloppy. In a moment of crisis, things were no different.
Second: You’ll note in those tweets that we mentioned having the ability to get many graphic novels from other distributors. Diamond was the only distributor we dealt with that stopped offering new product.3 Most ended up running a lot slower than they used, and Hachette (Marvel's book store distributor at the time) would only send you a reorder if you ordered a full case of product (which we weren't going to do), but new product was no problem to nab on time on all fronts.
That said, getting the news that our only source of single issue content would be closed for the foreseeable future was quite worrisome. While we we’re relatively certain we could weather the days to come, it put a big question mark on the entire future of the direct market. How long would Diamond be gone? When stores were allowed to open again, would they return? And just how many of the smaller publishers would be able to weather the storm?
All questions without answers at that point in time. All questions we pondered as we waited to see just what would happen next.
At the end of the day, my partner made a single post on her Facebook: “What a year this day has been.”
We felt every second of that day in minute detail. Every e-mail, every phone call, every DM, every tag… the stress of knowing something was coming without having the ability to pin point exactly what… and then the announcement that held within it the potential to wreck a chunk of this industry in one fell swoop.
It was a lot. It would be the start of something more. But we’ll get to that, on Monday.
Thanks for hanging out with me this week. Talk with you soon.
-B.
We have nothing against this practice, but Tuesday is our major processing day, and the idea of being open while we put the remainder of comics in people’s files is exhausting.
This was soon amended, but still caused a bit of chaos.
Diamond was still sending out re-orders, but only within the US - which also meant they are were the only distributor we couldn’t get any product from.
I'm curoous: Has your policy on DC Tuesdays/Wednesdays ever caused a conflict with customers coming in on Tuesday expecting to be able to pick up Batman? Have you been able to message your policy to customers in a clear and easily-accepted way? Or does it just not make a difference because Wednesday was the day for so long?