Forum - View topicManga Answerman - Do Comic Book Stores Still Hesitate To Stock Manga?
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wildcard666
Posts: 4 |
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I work at a comic book store and we get very few requests for manga. When people ask we tell them we can order books but very few people want to wait to get the book. It can take up to two weeks for a book to arrive even if it is in stock at Diamond. Most people rather go Barnes & Noble (about 10 minutes away from us) or order online.
The only titles we carry that are guaranteed to sell at some point are Pokemon and Sailor Moon. All other titles just sit on the shelf even when we cut the price in half. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Did it seriously never occur to you that a business that makes its money selling a thing would not appreciate people using that thing without buying it? |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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There's a comic book cafe near me that stocks some manga, & the main thing I notice is just how much space gets taken up by them relative to how many different titles are being offered.
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OjaruFan2
Posts: 673 |
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Book-wise, nope. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Why? What makes books so different from any other kind of goods in that respect?
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10013 Location: Virginia |
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Back in 1997 when I started reading and collecting manga, three of the six comic shops in town carried some manga. At the time they were the only places manga could be obtained locally. None of the stores carried every thing and I elected to deal with the shop that was willing to order anything I wanted if it was carried by Diamond Previews.
A few years later, the local book stores (Walden Books, Books a Million and B&N) started carrying manga and the local shop lost the majority of their manga customers. As a result they quit carrying manga. The only manga they get in now is by special order. B&N is the only book store left in town and as poorly managed as their selection of manga is, they still carry more than the local comic shop could find space for even if they could sell it. Ironically the staff is fairly knowledgeable about manga and can help anyone who does want to order. I still check Previews every month and pre order all the manga that looks interesting. I get a 30% discount for buying in bulk. I check B&N frequently to see if I missed anything interesting. I also use Right Stuf! for back issues of manga since Diamond can't be relied on for that. |
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OjaruFan2
Posts: 673 |
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Honestly, I don't know how to really answer that. Not once have I ever been in a situation of an employee at a comic shop or book shop getting annoyed at me for reading without buying. Therefore, the whole logic of not treating those shops as libraries never occurred to me before. It just didn't. |
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merr
Posts: 487 |
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So is this why Dark Horse’s manga releases seem to go out of print so fast? |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10013 Location: Virginia |
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@merr
Diamond's whole distribution model is based on normal comic books (floppies). Their catalog, Previews comes out at the beginning of the month and comic shops order from it within a couple of weeks. Diamond orders from the publisher based on the total orders received from the comic shops and distributes to the comic shops two or more months later when the publisher delivers them. The comic shop is expected to order enough for both current distribution and back stock. As noted this is a problem since the shop cannot return unsold copies. When Diamond's system works everything is fine. If they make a mistake or run out of stock before filling all orders the comic shop is simply stuck (especially small shops). Diamond's customer service is less than optimum but they have a practical monopoly on the distribution of comic books and simply don't care. Back orders are something of a gamble and are dependent on Diamond having some back stock. Graphic novels / trade paperbacks are handled the same way. To keep them in stock the publisher has to relist them periodically. This includes all current manga. Unlike most other manga publishers in the US, Dark Horse is primarily a comic book publisher. As a result they are mostly dependent on Diamond for distribution. Many of the other manga publishers distribute through the networks set up by regular book publishers. This is part of why release dates for manga can get so mixed up. They can be different depending on where you buy your manga. |
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AkumaChef
Posts: 821 |
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So here's a question I find puzzling. As you said, a lot of customers would rather order an out-of-stock book themselves than have your store order them. I don't buy much manga so I don't know if this is the reason or not, but for other goods I rarely order them through stores because I know from experience that I can get them faster ordering them myself than I can through a store. So that raises the obvious question: Why can't the store get them as fast as a regular person can? You say it takes your store 2 weeks to get it from Diamond....how is that even remotely acceptable in a world where any random Joe can get it in just a couple days ordering from other sources? If Diamond takes that long to fill your orders can't you choose to order from somewhere else? Perhaps, even, from the same sources that a retail buyer might? If I can order from Amazon and get it in 2 days then surely your store can do the same, right? (And yes, I know that might be more costly for you but you can pass that on to the customer. Everyone already expects to pay more at a brick-and-mortar store than ordering online anyway) |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5925 Location: Virginia, United States |
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A book that is opened up and read through completely, becomes a used book. It is no longer new. Who wants to go into a store and buy a book that looks used, unless you are in a used book store. |
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ShawnOfTheDeadz
Posts: 5 |
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Isn't a huge problem Amazon? Why buy new volumes of manga at mrsp when amazon sells these books under sometimes at half the price.
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AkumaChef
Posts: 821 |
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I don't know any statistics, but I'm sure it is. I don't buy much manga but what I have bought in recent years I got on Amazon simply because of how simple it is. |
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nargun
Posts: 930 |
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Because the labour cost is too high. Each book has to be found individually, ordered individually, unpacked individually, invoiced individually. It adds up, pretty damned quickly. I have no idea on the actual numbers, but the following should give you an idea: Call retailer wages $10/hr, standard 50% overheads [rent/leave/electricity/&c] so $20. A volume of manga is call it $15, of which call it 50% is retailer margin. On these numbers you'd have twenty minutes, give-or-take. Actual reality is probably rather less. [this actually applies to you-the-shopper, btw: rather notoriously, people systemically undervalue their own time, which is why things like RyanAir and crafts shops survive. I buy my comics through a store because I'd rather pay someone else to deal with all that for me] Aggregating these transactions through a distributor means that most of this stuff you only have to do once or a couple of times a week rather than individually for each separate book. |
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wildcard666
Posts: 4 |
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It does come down to cost. We get one regular shipment a week which Diamond packs a week ahead of time. So adding something to the regular shipment takes about two weeks. We can get a faster shipment (usually 2-3 days) but the shipping cost is ridiculous. Getting a $15 manga could cost another $15 in shipping and no one wants to pay twice as much as the book is worth. In general, my store gives at least a 10% discount on all new and pre-ordered books but that isn't reasonable for the expedited shipping. Unfortunately, comic book stores don't really have options outside of Diamond. It is possible to contact individual publishers to set something up but that can vary greatly and most publishers aren't going to bother for small orders. For comic books the smallest minimum order I've seen is 250 books. So if the store isn't looking for a larger order it is best to stick with Diamond. |
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