drought followed by flood

The store is getting a huge load of new comics this week.

The publishers have gotten into a very bad habit of giving us light weeks several weeks in a row, then a huge week, then light weeks....and so on.

Makes it hard to budget. Makes it hard to satisfy the customer.

I'm hurt less by this than other stores, because I've tried very hard to make my store more than just monthly comics. But it isn't helpful. There's quite a bit of talk about this on the retailer's part, but the publishers just keep ignoring it.

The focus in all these companies -- Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, is on the media properties, and on the huge crossover events. So they don't seem to be paying attention to a steady even flow of product, but on quick impacts and heavy rotations.

Oh, well.

One of my main reasons for diversifying so much is that I've almost come to expect that each of the product lines will go through a cycle of dysfunction. Hell, that most of them will be dysfunctional most of the time -- but hopefully not all at the same time, all the time.