Saturday, February 28, 2009

A Little Something for the "Direct Market is Dying" Folks

So I've been updating my Goodreads page as I read stuff, which generally includes some of the new graphic novels I've bought at the shop as well as novels, older graphic novels, etc.

And it's brought to my attention something that the "buy online, it's cheaper" crowd might want to consider.

Amazon.com, Buy.com, etc. don't get everything when it releases.

For example: Goodreads has no listing (and nor does Amazon) for the latest Boom! collections of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K, the omnibuses. Which, for the record, even at retail, are cheaper than buying the three trades at Amazon discount, and, more to the point, a great format for the stories.

Atomic Robo Volume 2, which I bought on Wednesday, read on Friday night? Amazon has it listed as "This title has not yet been released." Not even a "Available this Wednesday" kind of thing.

Same thing happened with Scott Pilgrim 5... although, admittedly, thanks to Diamond's warehouse move, it's now available on Amazon, and hasn't quite made it fully back into comic book circulation yet, although hopefully we'll see that resolved next Wednesday.

Unrelated to comics, I remember something similar happening with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. We sold a *ton* of that early on anyway, but we started selling more in the first week when folks were canceling their online preorders and buying from us instead, since the online retailers weren't even getting the books for another week or two, much less shipping them out.

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