Hello retailers! First of all, thank you for signing up! We’re still figuring out how best to use this section, how helpful it will be, whether people will use it all, etc, but we want to give our retailers as many opportunities to connect with us as possible! We also wanted a part of the website where we could put things for retailers that the general public couldn’t access. Whether this in-store signage, video assets, or maybe even pre-release review copies.
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Hi, I’ve owned a shop for over 20 years now and have been a big supporter of Walking Dead, Invincible and pretty much Image in general. I just read that there’s going to be an exclusive compendium 3 going to barnes & noble? I’m not really sure why you would want to drive people away from comic book stores and into a big box competitor of “brick & mortar” small businesses, to buy your books? We (comic book shops) are what made you the company that you are, not barnes & noble! How many fucking times do I have to see compendiums at Target & Costco for 40 – 50% OFF and then exclusives given to big box retailers before I start to believe that you’re ONLY about the money? Yeah, I’ve heard the bullshit about getting people hooked with the early compendiums and then “hopefully” they come into a comic book shop to continue the story? If that theory was true and honest, then we, brick & mortar comic shops, would be the ONLY places to get Walking Dead Compendium 3, at least for a limited time, and then mass release it? I went to the retailer breakfast in San Diego and I very much appreciate the goodie bag of exclusives that we walked away with and it really does “seem” like you guys give a shit about us? I’ve heard Robert Kirkman do many interviews on various podcasts and he “seems” like he cares too but I can’t UN-see the things that I’ve seen and I think that your actions do NOT match your words. Free stuff is not a band-aid for lost customers?
Hey Kenny, we talked over email a bit so I’ll keep this brief here, but I’ll just quickly say that of course we love our retailers, we’re comic book fans first (I still say I work for a comic book company when people ask what I do), and we want to work as closely as possible with our retail partners,
This section is here for your honest feedback (positive or negative), which I appreciate you giving.
I would love to dialog and brainstorm here about what we can do to drive traffic to LCSs when Compendium 3 comes out.
Well, actually, I’m sure any/all retailers checking in here would like to know why one vendor is being given a theoretically “better” version (because of the poster) of a core product over the Direct Market. That doesn’t seem like the right course to take for a company with such strong DM roots?
For myself, at least, I won’t complain about the variant cover — I’m sure that I could get one too if I promised to buy x thousand copies of a book — but the poster seems like a step above and beyond to this observer.
-B
Brian Hibbs, Comix Experience, San Francisco
(If anyone else stumbles along this post, there’s a story about his here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/barnes-noble-gets-the-walking-dead-compendium-3-variant-edition that has the cover (ugly, with a two-handed Rick) and news about the poster.)
It’s my understanding that comic shops will have the compendium a week earlier than the book market (Amazon, B&N, etc), correct? You also get volumes a week earlier, I believe. We’ll try and do a better job conveying to fans that the FIRST (and best) place to pick up our collections is their local comic book shop.