Breaking News: Diamond raises minimum PO requirement to $2500, Previews Adult scrapped!

January 16, 2009 in Comics Conundrum | 20 comments

EDIT: after additional consultation with Diamond, the below numbers are not correct.  The $2500 figure is indeed the wholesale benchmark.

I just got off the phone with my brand manager, who assured me the following is not confidential information.  So if this is being leaked too early, any blame goes to him!

In response to the weakened economy, Diamond is ending the print edition of the Previews Adult supplement, effective with the March issue.  The catalog will survive in PDF form for retailers.  Additionally, Diamond is raising the purchase order minimum from $1500 retail to $2500.  This affects ALL publishers, and will be significant for those who resolicit items often; books not expected to reach $2500 in retail orders (that’s copies x cover price) will be far less likely to be relisted in Previews.

This is going to take a while for me to digest, and will no doubt cause another firestorm across indy/small press comics publishers.  Expect a lot of commentary on this from across the web.

20 comments

  1. tina on January 16, 2009 at 2:06 pm

    Well oh my. :( I truly hope that the PDF edition doesn’t require the same amount of money to advertise in.

    Now for Adult titles [and this means BL of course] does anyone meet the $1500 minimum or is that just for the mainstream catalog?

  2. Simon on January 16, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    $250 for a full page ad. And all materials can now be in color.

    The $1500 requirement applies to all publishers, adult or not. Trust me, adult pubs actually do just as well or better than the vast majority of small pubs stuck in the back of the Previews grotto. (Don’t confuse PO requirement with the minimum sales requirement, which is $3250.)

    You may be asking why the new minimum should apply to adult comics, since we’re no longer getting a print catalog. But the brand manager explained that any relisted item is still getting a “line” in the Preview catalog and order form, and that’s why the minimums apply equally. That’s total BS in my mind, but I didn’t want to argue the point with my brand manager, who’s a nice fellow and probably had absolutely zero input in this policy change.

    1. tina on January 16, 2009 at 2:28 pm

      Don’t confuse PO requirement with the minimum sales requirement, which is $3250 Gotcha! :) That’s what I was doing.

      I still think $250 is steep for a PDF catalogue– I don’t care how many computers it’s going to. :/

      I agree with you though, if adult merchandise isn’t getting a print catalog, then it shouldn’t be charged as if it is– how much does it cost for them to produce this new PDF catalog? How much does it cost to send this catalog to their customers? Not the same as the dead-tree edition…

      1. Simon on January 16, 2009 at 2:38 pm

        I agree, it’s unfair. And the fear about the economy is just feeding into itself. Sales of adult items and small press comics WILL go down now. They’ve made it an inevitability.

        I had to end the call early with my brand manager, because the only thing running through my mind was an endless stream of expletives, and I didn’t want to to subject him to that. =p

  3. David Welsh on January 16, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    And the PDF edition is only for retailers? What about consumers, especially ones whose local shops don’t order shelf copies of adult material?

    1. Simon on January 16, 2009 at 2:44 pm

      One of the many thing I should have asked, but didn’t in the shock of the moment. But the gist is that retailer would have access to the PDF, which Diamond expects retailers to PRINT OUT themselves.

      1. David Welsh on January 16, 2009 at 2:46 pm

        In their superfluous free time. Wow.

  4. hirohisa4president on January 16, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    is this going to affect online retailers getting copies of ero through their distributors or are stores like jlist,animenation,rightstuf,animecornerstore,etc. not affected by diamonds policy to get their shipments?

    1. Simon on January 16, 2009 at 3:26 pm

      Speaking only for Icarus, we distribute to Right Stuf and JList, so they aren’t going to be affected, at least not directly. And obviously Right Stuf’s always going to have their own hentai anime in stock.

      What’s going to happen is that books and video are going to be resolicited less often, Diamond may not have products available (because they’re either going to order over $2500 worth of something, or none at all), so stores may find it hard to restock on certain items.

  6. Yaoi Press on January 16, 2009 at 8:17 pm

    Losing the adult supplement is a slam. The right thing to do is make the PDF available to all adults, not just retailers. If they do then that $250/ad would be worth it.

    Regarding the minimums, I see how this will kill some comic book publishers. That’s about a 632 copy sales requirement for a floppy.

  7. Peter Payne on January 16, 2009 at 11:46 pm

    It’s actually good news for places like PCR/J-List since we will fill any order, and keep all of Simon’s books in stock. The “much more convenient alternative to Diamond” niche is probably going to get bigger as Diamond serves their customers poorly.

  8. Robert Brown on January 17, 2009 at 4:35 am

    I’ve told Simon in the past that for the Anime Corner Store we’ve choosen not to buy Icarus direct because I feel like we’re already juggling to many vendors, so for Icarus titles we do use Diamond and one other distributor. Here’s a couple of thoughts:

    1) We order very large qnties of new Icarus releases up front for the Anime Corner Store, so restocks are not that big a deal to us initially. In many cases we try to stock several months worth of each issue in advance since Ero books have a much longer sales life cycle than standard manga issues. I will say that once that stock eventually sells down and the life cycle for a particular issue has diminished it has been helpful in the past to be able to reorder small lots as needed out of distributor stocks, and adding those issues to a regular Diamond shipment is very economical.

    Small retailers who replenish stock often, but in very small qnties, will likely shy away from carrying catalog items that are not readily in stock through Diamonds system, and Diamond’s method of handling backorders of non stocking item leaves much to be desired.

    2) Having to manually print out the adult previews supplement each month will be a pain in the ass for most retailers. Just something else to remember. I have a feeling some % accounts will end up missing some initial orders for titles listed there. Diamond’s current initial order format already soaks up a mind boggling amount of valuable time each month, even if you use the electronic tools.

    I have been afraid that many of the larger distributors would react to the current downturn by implementing policies to eliminate smaller accounts that are more costly to serve – even though that’s pure folly considering the primary type of retail account Diamond exists to service.

  15. mark on April 14, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    I want to say – thank you for this!

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