AquaCityBoy
Veteran
Yeah a lot of them are more hobbyists than businessmen, and it shows when they complain about the most basic aspect of business: competition.
But the LCS sell trades too, so it doesn't even make sense to delay them. In fact, they'd be losing a portion of their sales. Sometimes people will buy a trade and if they like it, they'll get the latest floppies to get caught up. You push trades back and it'll be near impossible to do that. It's not the most popular way to read, but it does happen. So they'd only be losing out on their own potential sales.
Are you speaking from the perspective of the comic shop or the fan? Either way, it's not for the average person who comes in every Wednesday to get the latest books. It's for the section who purposely waits for the trade, either for price, or because they prefer reading that way, or they just like having a bookshelf full of graphic novels. But whatever the case, the vast majority of those people trade wait for a reason. It's not like they're just gonna start buying floppies instead.
I also disagree that not everything needs to be collected in trade. The only times issues should be left out is if they're tie-ins to crossovers, or the odd Free Comic Book Day issue that's usually nothing but a recap of the series.
I strongly disagree. The trades are a huge part of the market. There's a reason DC has been pushing Black Label and those YA OGNs so hard.
We also have to consider the fact that American comics are in a battle (that they are very much losing) with manga, which has the bulk of its sales though tankobon volumes. The industry needs trades out because that's a big market to tap into, and it gets their books more visibility, as they'll be in bookstores, libraries, school book fairs, Amazon, and services like In Stock Trades. Why on earth would the publishers want to stifle that?
The LCS owners would have been better off asking for trade exclusivity, so they get the trades say 28 days before all those other services do. That's still a little unreasonable, since a lot of people who buy trades don't have a LCS nearby or even live in other countries, but it would be more beneficial to the LCS than outright delaying them.
