Aint no publishers going exclusive with Diamond anymore…
Theyd be lucky to even get a contract with Lunar or PRH…
Diamond sucks. All of the publishers need to get away from it. Let them sell pops and junk like that.
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Shocker… they should have just stayed with Lunar.
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wow
who did someone blow ?
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Apparently it’s because of their association with another publisher they squeak in?
I’m watching The Industry of Comics youtube show and the retailers (Jesse James comics and Wonderworld comics) there are over the moon with Alliance Entertainment taking over Diamond. It’s 3hrs long so haven’t watched the whole thing yet but from what I’ve seen so far they’re saying Alliance is a legit company that is the opposite of Blackstone and a pleasure to deal with and very professional.
They know a lot more about Alliance than you or I and believes Alliance has big plans for the industry. At the very least this opens the door for comic books and all their related merchandise to be available at comic and other retail shops.
They’re saying comic shops will now have the option to think beyond comics and increase their business like selling comic book movies, pajamas, socks, backpacks, lunchboxes etc etc, and now other retail business like grocery stores and big box retailers will have the option to carry comics. Their reach is massive, this isn’t like Diamond running a mickey mouse operation.
Alliance significantly out bid the other potential buyers so they will have a plan in place. Hard to imagine they’ll just absorb the assets and use it as a tax write off. We will see but retailers are really happy about it.
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Unfortunately they had to take down the interview portion with the head of Alliance. He said some things that should be potentially off putting to comic shops ears. He feels (paraphrasing) it’s not worth Alliance’s time to sell a $10 CD. How about a $5 comic book? He admitted he has no clue about the comic business and happened to hear about the auction at an investors conference. I really doubt there will be much in the way of comics left to sell at Diamond once this all shakes out. Dynamite is really the last hold out.
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Damn should i even listen to the rest of the show? That’s a bummer. Dennis and Jesse were so excited at the top of the show.
Neither Dennis or Jesse sell new comics any more. At least they didn’t for the longest time. I find that very interesting.
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This ^^^
Dennis and Jesse both gave up on new comics for some time now. They only deal in back issues and mostly buying close outs and toy / comic collections from people. In their eyes it gives them a new place to buy pop culture related merch.
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This is why I had my doubts… they didn’t buy to recover things Diamond lost but just take the things worthy to them going forward. They want probably everything but the comics side of things since most of the publishers have already abandoned ship, so that ship has sailed. I’m sure Alliance is great but they’re gonna do great for all the other things probably less comic centric though…
Comic stores should be selling Pokemon and Manga, not backpacks and socks. Stores that do that deserve to go.out of business. Might be the dumbest thing ive read on the internet in a long time.
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To be honest from someone who has a small shop, nowhere on the scale of Dennis and Jesse. Some days (pop culture themed) socks, backpacks, and t-shirts keep the lights on. I do exactly what they do but on a much smaller scale.
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LOL, Jesse James is highly successful in the industry and has multiple shops. The advice he gives on The Industry of Comics is absolute gold and why people watch it every week. He was on one show that he talked about how he sold over 2500+ comic book themed socks for the week. He sells them online on his livestreams on top of just comics. That’s why this current show started off with Dennis saying that one of the 3 most important shows in their history was when Jesse James revealed how many socks he sold.
People who think small picture sells Pokemon and Manga with their comics. Jesse James thinks big picture and is highly successful at it. He was one of the early adopters of livestreaming his sales. I’ve actually watch their show religiously and have taken some of their advice and have seen tremendous results.
Example, people who think small picture speculates on first appearance, option news hype etc and follow key collector and goes hunting for the week’s hot books picking up a few copies here and there (basically doing what everyone else is doing). Big picture people go out and buy collections and full runs of always in demand books like Sonic the Hedgehog, ASM, stuff that will always sell. There was a show that they were watching and commentating of a very popular comic book Youtuber going to buy a collection. I will not name the Youtuber here but he has a very popular channel where he goes hunting.
Two minutes into the video and it was clear that this youtuber had no idea what he was doing. He was picking out keys that the seller was selling for a few bucks and thinking he hit it big. He’ll pick up a few here and there but didn’t realize the entire collection was gold (ie golden age/ silver age batmans and more obscure titles that the youtuber had no idea what he was passing up). Jesse talks about this is how a novice flipper/whatnot seller does it. What Jesse would’ve done is ask the seller how much do you want for me to take your entire collection off your hands. There were hundreds of longboxes of nothing but gold. This is what a professional would do.
They were mortified watching the youtuber brag about the books that he was finding and just buying a shortbox of books. The buyer didn’t have the knowledge to think big picture. Small minded people laugh at Jesse James selling comic book socks while Jesse is laughing all the way to the bank and opening up new shops.
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Jesse’s Facebook livestreams kept me sane during Covid. He sold so many books while shops were closed. And he does it all on Facebook where he doesn’t get charged a fee.
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Shops that hope to be just a comic book shop will fail. I know a few shop owners, and the only reason they are around is because they have diversified into various pop culture products. Comics seems to be a smaller and smaller part of the biz.
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Almost all the comic shops here in Central Texas are board game shops…
We need to start a website dedicated to comic book themed socks that are heating up…
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