Cover Price – A Coffee & Heroes Promise…..

It’s Sunday evening before the New Releases due for the 5th August, and I felt I had something to say…

This week, a one shot title – Dark Nights Death Metal: Legends of the Dark Knights – is due for release.  The first in a series of one shots tying into Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s wonderfully bonkers DC Prestige series.  We have 24 people in store who want all of these one shots for varying reasons and have had it on their pull list for months.  Some want to read every single tie-in issue, others are afraid of missing out on something special, and others are speculating that important characters may be introduced, and therefore the value of the comic will go up in price.

With this one, a new character called the Robin King is being introduced, and everyone is convinced this is the equivalent of Teen Titans #12 from the original Dark Nights: Metal run, an issue that introduced The Batman Who Laughs, and is now regularly fetching in excess of £80 in private sales.

We always preach the importance of a pull list, as it will give us a rough guide of how many of certain issues to order, and it guarantees one very important thing, which will never change at Coffee & Heroes – You are guaranteed that title on release day at COVER PRICE.

I have looked through various eBay stores and other comic stores, and they have this title listed at £29.99 (!!!) or thereabouts.  This is a title with a $5.99 price point, which we will be selling, bagged and boarded, in store at £6.00 per issue.

This is a MASSIVE bug bear of ours, and we feel it is something that needs more attention brought to it.

When you are paying these over-inflated prices, this is not money that is going to the creators – the people who poured their blood, sweat and tears into a title and put long hours into it to make sure it was the best possible product to be released.  This is money going to a store that paid the same amount to source it as any other issue.

Variants are a different matter, especially ratio variants as they will be available in any store dependant on them taking a risk on possible over-ordering on a title to qualify.  These will always be priced higher and aimed more at the collectors market.  However, we believe that Cover A’s / Main Covers will always be aimed at the Reader’s market first and foremost.

We understand how the Speculation market works.  And in a way, it can be part of the fun of the industry.  Issues will go up in value over time in some cases, and down in value in others.  But for any brick and mortar store, that should be grateful for each and every customer who walks through their doors, to put titles at over inflated prices, on RELEASE DAY, is quite frankly disgraceful and harmful to the industry.

It will turn away people who are new to the art-form, or interested in getting into it, because they are being priced out of being able to pick up sequential issues.

At the end of the day, retailers can charge what they want.  But we take tremendous pride in the fact that if you have a pull list with us, no matter how big or small, you are guaranteed cover price for when you pick it up.  If you pick it up off the rack in the first few weeks of release, it will also be cover price.

We want comics to be freely available to people, and for them to enjoy the medium itself, appreciate the craft of combining great words with fantastic art.  We don’t want them being caught up in the hype and speculation for monetary gain, simply to enjoy being transported to other worlds, and maybe forgetting about the problems in the real world for an hour or two.

So do support your local comic store, seek their advice on upcoming titles they think would appeal to you, and get titles on a pull list at the earliest opportunity so that they can guarantee them for you on Day One.

Alan