That's just painful.

Getting $77 worth of books from Diamond Comics next week, this following a $100 worth of books this week. Together, the profits probably wouldn't pay some of the utility bills at the store. 

Diamond used to have the exclusive distribution rights to Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse, which represent about 85 to 90%  of the comics sold. The other several hundred comic publishers make up the last 10%.

Well, the Big Four have left Diamond, so we're left getting the scraps from Diamond.

Obviously, it's really hard to see how this continues.

What's really amazing to me is how many comic retailers and publishers were pushing for this result. It's as if Diamond was a leaky boat and their feet were getting wet, so they started screaming about sinking the damn boat! When there wasn't another boat on the horizon!

I started seeing this trend about six years ago and started changing course. There was the choice of becoming a "collectables" store, but I'd already rejected that years ago. So I started looking for a life raft and the obvious choice was new books.

It was a solution, though I didn't realize how well new books would perform. 

So we will still sell Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse by ordering through two other distributors, and it's a major part of our store. More expensive and time-consuming, but that's the cost. But all the rest of the stuff we were getting from Diamond is in jeopardy, especially small publishers and toys. 

We'll do what we can, but I'm glad I'm not depending on those categories to keep us going. 

It's just painful to see happen.