Another oddity about this event was the lack of cover price information. Instead of listing the book’s cover price at whatever it should be, and then showing the Amazon price as a discount (as you can see in the image below), the cover price was listed as a flat $14.99, with no discount. This unannounced “sale” pushed many of the comics into the Amazon top 100 sellers. At the time of this writing, with prices returned to normal, they’re still there, as shown by this screenshot. Note also that the books are no longer in stock (likely sold through the inventory), with delays of a week or two before they can ship.

The rest of the top 10 includes The Incredible Hulk Omnibus Vol. 1; Iron Man Omnibus Vol. 1; and The Death of Captain America Omnibus, and the trend continues through the top 20.

Plenty of people who took advantage of this error are feeling entitled, with some threatening class action suits if they don’t get their discount books. How selfish. You knew the pricing was wrong, and yet you ordered anyway. If you get any books at all out of the deal, you got lucky. Saying you should get them all is pig-headed. Trying to take advantage of someone else’s error isn’t good karma (although I ordered a few books myself). Trying to profit from it, by ordering multiple copies for later resale, for instance, is just greedy.

Similarly stupid is the idea that this shows that “Comics are too expensive. You make them cheaper, much cheaper, and people will buy them.” Well, sure, if you sell product for 85% off, plenty of people will jump. But you aren’t making any money if you’re selling books for less than it costs to print them.

So what will Amazon do? And who pays for this mistake? We don’t know yet. Plenty of people have gotten confirmation of shipped orders at the $15 price. Others, who ordered multiple copies of the same books, have been told that they’re only getting one of any given title. Preorders and orders on out-of-stock books are still pending as I write this. My guess is that those are likely to be cancelled with apology letters.

BleedingCool.com, which was pushing readers to order hard, with eight different articles about the event, has revealed that 14,071 items were ordered just through their links. At that level, they get a kickback of 8.5% on each shipped sale. Assuming a price of $14.99 (might have been less), if all those orders shipped (they won’t) Rich Johnston and crew made a shade under $18,000 off of their readers. No wonder they were encouraging multiple purchases!

But let’s examine the cost. (These are round numbers, of course, and note that I’m just discussing one source. There were likely many more orders that didn’t go through that set of links.) 14,000 books at a cover price of $100 would, let’s say, normally sell for an average of $70 on Amazon (somewhere between $60 and $80). They sold for $15 instead, for a loss of $770,000. Not in real money, of course, since nothing says the same number of books would have sold at the higher price, but in potential revenue.

What about Diamond? If Diamond normally gets $50 a book (half cover), or $700,000, and now they’re getting $7.50, or $105,000, they’re out almost six hundred thousand dollars. If the publishers expect to be paid at their standard rate, and Diamond has to eat the loss (if it was their data entry error), that could be rather significant, even potentially harmful to their business. Coincidentally, today’s news was that Diamond fired three people from their book arm, with their tasks being covered by employees on the Diamond Comic Distributors side.

Update: (3/9/10) I realize I was amiss in not taking the math example far enough. Let’s continue. If Diamond takes 5% off the top as their fee, then they owe the publishers 45% of cover price, which means $630,000. (Note that I don’t pay as much attention to the details of the direct market as I used to, and so I don’t know how accurate the 5% fee is. Those with more information are asked to update me, please.)

Given all the assumptions we’ve made, then instead of earning $70,000 for handling 14,000 $100 books, Diamond is in the hole to the tune of $525,000. I don’t think they can afford to lose that much right now. However, note again that this example is hypothetical. The 14,000 number comes from one site’s orders. More were ordered elsewhere, and regardless of source, not all of those books will ship. Plus, Diamond may not be held to blame for this, or the cost might be shared among participants (publishers, distributor, and Amazon), or lawyers might have to get involved to figure it all out.

One additional ramification, as Caroline pointed out, is that this little snafu has made the books involved rather scarce, even if you want to pay a more reasonable price. Those who ordered for speculative purposes may be able to turn the books quickly, until more make it into the pipeline.

Archie Comics has made a subscription to its online comic site into something that works as a gift by attaching a physical object, a Christmas card. (Link/offer no longer available.)

For $49.95, the user gets a year’s access to the site, plus, if the order is placed before December 10, they can have a printed card sent to any destination in the US. Alternately, it’s available as a printable eCard with a personalized message and subscription information.

I have a couple of suggestions that I think could make this offer even better:

• A discount deal. The $50 price is the same as that offered at other times of years. Near the holidays, customers are bargain shopping. Offer an extra month free or an extra 10% off the price if bought in the month before the holiday.
• Commissions. Set up a way that retailers or websites can push this offer to their customers and get a percentage kickback.
• Alternate graphics choices. Maybe something winter-y as well as decorating the Christmas tree, or for alternate holidays.

But even the way it is, it’s a clever way to turn something intangible into an object that qualifies as a gift.

You can check out fonts created to resemble the lettering of David Lloyd on Kickback; Bryan Talbot on Alice in Sunderland; or Mike Wieringo. (All proceeds from that last one go to the Hero Initiative in memory of him.)

“We feel we have the greatest customers on the planet,” said President & First Tiger Richard Starkings. “And this sale is our annual way of saying thanks — so thanks for all your support this year and best wishes for a safe holiday and a Happy New Year!”

To learn more about digital lettering, check out Richard Starkings’ book Comic Book Lettering: The Comicraft Way.

I’ve got to get back to that show some day… I went to it years ago, when I first started going to conventions (and did six in one year), but it’s never been convenient since. (Labor Day is a traditional family weekend for me.) How’s the show? Who recommends going? Anyone got a good story about it?

It begins when a drug dealer and his men are killed off, sparking a gang war in a city that usually runs according to an agreement between the cops and the criminals.

Kickback
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Now it’s open season, and Canelli is trying to figure out who’s behind it all. He’s driven by nightmares of being trapped on a suspended catwalk, surrounded by metal and wires. As a child, he was present when his parents died, but he’s blocked out all memory of the subject.

When cops start dying, Canelli is shaken out of his habitual existence. He reconnects with his family, makes a stand he can believe in, and rediscovers himself through breaking his psychological amnesia. Reading his journey is like entering another world; the more readers are willing to immerse themselves in the story, the more they’ll get out of it.

The plot isn’t unusual, especially to fans of the genre, but the execution is by a master. Recommended, especially for fans of works like The Sopranos or Homicide.

There’s a preview available at the publisher’s website, and additional previews with commentary at Lloyd’s website. Comic Book Resources interviewed Lloyd (with preview pages).

My convention started early. KC and I drove up on Friday to assist with preregistration, and I wound up helping pick up guests on airport runs. (This is where having gone to a large number of conventions helps — I could recognize most of the invitees by sight, although I still got to hold those signs with last names written on them. I felt like I was in a movie. As an extra.) This task was very complicated, due to an airport whose middle was under construction, a layout I was unfamiliar with, flights from the West Coast that arrived early (thank you, Howard Chaykin, for finding me instead of the other way around), and way too much traffic due to the Yankees/Orioles game that weekend. By the time we got everyone picked up, I did the last run back in a cab with George Pérez, a charming man who was very gracious about my being flustered and fatigued.

The next morning, Saturday, I helped take Will Call tickets and give out wristbands for admittance. It’s always fun working registration, because no matter how much preparation you do, someone will always ask a perfectly sensible question that you don’t know the answer to. By the time you’re fully prepared for anything, the show’s well under way.

Then, of course, there was the fire alarm and resulting evacuation you may have read about. Thank goodness everyone was mostly compliant, once they found out it was for real. When they were ready to let people back into the convention center, since I was wearing a staff shirt, I got to be part of the crowd control. We formed lines in front of the doors in order to let the exhibitors back in first, before the general attendees. That was an unusual experience, but everyone was thankfully so patient, even when I was yelling at them (in order to be heard over the throng) “guests and exhibitors only”.

The rest of the day was lunch distribution for guests and snack distribution for artists’ alley tables. Sometime among all that I was able to accomplish a few personal tasks: I got signatures from Kyle Baker and Dick Ayers (diverse, hunh?) for my retailer who was unable to attend. I was pleased to chat with Thom Zahler, who told me to look out for the holiday issue of Love & Capes in December. And I was thrilled to get to meet Svetlana Chmakova and have her sign the outstanding Dramacon for me. (Although that may have happened on Sunday.)

Saturday evening, it was back to the room to change for the Harvey Awards. KC and I were running the registration table for that as well. (This caused Matt Brady, when he saw me, to remark “is there anything they don’t have you doing?”) I got to enjoy the yummy dinner and then it was backstage to prepare for being a presenter escort. The idea was that I’d go fetch the presenters from the audience just before their time to go on, so we could keep the show running smoothly and quickly. I’m not sure I figured out the right timing for that, though, until about halfway through the ceremony.

On Sunday, I was interviewed in my role as Press Liaison by the Variant Edition guys. They do a video podcast, and I’m really looking forward to seeing their convention coverage, since they seemed to be taping ALL the time.

I also spent some time walking around with a Baltimore Sun reporter who wasn’t very familiar with conventions or the comic industry. It was eye-opening to see what questions he had and what he was focusing on. I thought his story turned out pretty well, even so. I especially liked the opening:

It was easy to distinguish the New York Yankees faithful from the comic book fans, both of whom descended in droves on the Inner Harbor this weekend. The baseball fans were the only ones in costume.

Unlike last month’s Otakon convention, where nearly half of the attendees at the Baltimore Convention Center dressed like Japanese pop-culture icons, the seventh annual Baltimore Comic-Con gathering drew a more sedate crowd of comics aficionados.

The bookishness is by design, said organizer Marc Nathan, who criticized other regional conventions for focusing on appearances by “B-list, aging TV stars” to increase attendance, and said the Baltimore convention was an antidote to the mega-confabs of San Diego and Chicago, where film and video game tie-ins to comic book culture have overshadowed the books themselves.

Due to various illnesses (Walt Simonson had to leave the show early, for instance, and Jerry Robinson’s guest of honor spotlight had to be pushed back because he wasn’t feeling well earlier that day) and other schedule confusion, I found myself most of Sunday running around with a really marked up show schedule trying to make sure that panels were covered and replacements were found when necessary. Between two sessions, I bumped into Mark Waid outside the meeting rooms. He asked me a schedule question, and as I looked down at my list of circles and X’s and scribbled-in names, he said, surprised, “what is that, a football playbook?” It was a fairly accurate comparison. I’m not sure why that memory stuck with me, but it was that kind of show for me — crystal clear moments that add up to an overall “was that everything?” confusion.

My last show memory was interviewing David Lloyd for a woefully under-attended spotlight panel. He was the ideal guest; I’d ask him a question, and he’d respond in detail, covering various aspects of the topic, and in a yummy accent. (What can I say, I’m an Anglophile.) He seemed to be frustrated that he’s having to do so many appearances to hand-sell Kickback his new graphic novel, in the year of V for Vendetta. It’s certainly become a different market over the last few decades.

Then it was waiting with friends who were packing up their booth for a vendor’s crew to pick up their boxes, and then a long, painful car trip back home before collapsing in bed. Great show, can’t wait for next year!

I’m sorry so much of this was me, me, me. I wish I’d had more time to visit with folks, but it was good to be able to contribute to a show I love supporting. In case you’re looking for additional viewpoints, here’s what some other people thought of the show.

• Scott King on the evacuation
• Heidi MacDonald and her pictures (here you can see my dinner dress, in a photo I did not know was being taken, or I would have stood up straight) and the Harvey Award ceremony
• ICv2 on the Harvey Award winners
• Newsarama on the award winners, with pictures of the new Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Awards