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Al Piper explains how some retailers are deceiving their customers.
If you are not a comic collector you might as well stop reading now! Still here? Hope you have time because this is going to be a long one. And please share this to get the message out.
The short version is that current comic book releases should be priced according to the MSRP. Not by the whim of a retailer. There are rules in place and these rules are supposed to be followed within reason. No one is above this.
I recently responded to a post on Border City Comics facebook page concerning the pricing of comic books (Border City Comics is located in Windsor, Ontario – ed.) I need it to be known that while I am a friend of Tim Girard who runs the page and helps manage the store my loyalty ends there. We have had many conversations on this topic but my opinions and statement of facts are mine alone. I do not shop there exclusively and have no interest financially or personally in regards to their business.
What I do have is a very very strong inability to tolerate injustice and shady business practices.I have no desire to hurt anyone’s business or interfere with their pursuit of prosperity as long as they are being honest and fair. From my observations Border City Comics is an honest and reputable retailer, and I commend them on their business practices.
I became aware of a growing problem in Windsor’s comic community quite some time ago and have tried to temper my involvement up till now…but no more! The following comes from speaking directly to other comic business professionals, customers, and some personal investigation into the distribution of comic books.
Everyone probably knows about MSRP. The Manufactures Suggested Retail Price is applied to just about all commercial products. The amounts are not carved in stone; businesses certainly have the right to adjust pricing according to their individual situation. When goods are purchased for resale, retailers pay a portion of this price. For the remainder of this diatribe I will keep the topic specifically to comics and all figures will be approximate amounts (in Canadian dollars) for ease of understanding.
When a comic company publishes a book for distribution they assign a price of, let’s say, $4 MSRP. The company charges a retailer, say, $2.50. That allows room for profit and, depending on overhead and other factors, the books are roughly the same price everywhere. Minor variances in currency exchange and discounts to customers may cause differences.
Let’s just look at the Big 2 companies for a minute. Marvel and DC have been producing many of alternative or variant covers for the last several years. These books are published to order for the most part. That means that if all the stores orders combined amount to 100,000 issues, they print to that number, plus extras. This does not take into account adjustments to orders based on demand after the initial publishing. So if a store orders 10 copies of cover A and 15 copies of cover B, that’s what they get. Each book is priced out the same and customers can usually have as many as they want, and the price would be $2.50 per book, no matter which version you want.
Now let’s look at a “file customer” or “pull list” customer: he decides ahead of time what books he does or doesn’t want ahead of time. This is great for retailers because they can streamline their order numbers and minimize leftover stock and wasted money. If I have 4 customers that want Cover A and 5 want Cover B, I order a total of 9 books. Maybe some extras of whichever one I feel will sell. Release day comes, and everyone pays their $4 each and we move on. This is where we run into problems.
Some retailers purposely under-order the variants to create a false market. They tell their customers “I only have 3 of these comics for the 10 people that ordered them, so instead of $4 I am charging $12.” But, these variants were no more difficult to get than a standard comic; they did not cost the retailer any extra money, yet he expects his customers to pay more. The worst offenders actually charge their file customers the inflated price even though he specifically ordered the variant at no risk to the retailer.
So the customer intentionally orders a $4 book, and has to pay $12 because the retailer has assigned special value to it. Some retailers have even gone so far to hold back books until demand has increased after publishing and then sell them at inflated prices. There are clear rules in business against this and it constitutes fraud!
Creating a false market for personal financial gain is wrong, and depending on circumstances is criminal.
“Now” you say, “free enterprise means I can charge what I want and people can either pay it or not.” This is a falsehood! There are commercial guidelines in place to protect the ignorant. You can not mislead a customer or trick them for your own benefit. Actually you can, but it is called fraud.
Now I must mention that “incentive variants” are a different matter. These are books that a retailer must order a set number of Cover A to get even 1 copy of Cover B. A rule of thumb is to multiply the price by the incentive number. 10:1, expect to pay at least ten times normal cover price: $4 at 25:1 is $100, and so on. Different rules apply to these based on scarcity at time of publishing.
(We won’t even get into the secondary market of comics which occurs after initial published copies have been sold, and are now being resold for profit. That is based on customer demand.)
Current comics being sold by a legitimate retailer should be priced by the MSRP, not at the whim of a store owner.
If a retailer is telling you a book is expensive because it is hard to get the week of release, you probably need to shop somewhere else.
Al Piper is a long-time comics reader and crime-fighter. He appeared in this classic episode of the Syndicate, comparing Batman (1989) to The Dark Knight (2008).
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