While we’re gearing up for a few end of year posts here, pointers to news items that are making a few ripples in the quietest week of the year. Of course as soon as we say that, Universal will buy Dark Horse.

§ Pioneering webcomics portal Keenspot is radically changing its business model; Gary Tyrrell has details, interviews, long comment thread, the works.

§ This is a skip week for Diamond. To fill the void, a few things are happening. Indy Comic Week is an attempt to spotlight non-Big Two offerings to the Wednesday Crowd, which we wholeheartedly support.

§ Also, DC took the first, halting steps towards street dates by shipping BLACKEST NIGHT #6 last week under dire threat that any store selling it early would be barred for life from human congress, or something like it. Rich Johnston has been all over this story, and although we don’t have any early sale info yet, it did get scanned and posted with a speediness that might rival the Flash. The clock is ticking! Can the retail community sit on their hands for just…a…few…hours…more.

§ Finally Haven Distribution sent out a press release yesterday touting their own efforts to provide some new product for those with gift money to spend. The complete PR is in the jump, and it’s a bit feisty:


So as you are all aware, Diamond is not shipping out any comics on the last week of the year. And we at Haven Distributors are quite grateful for that. We’re more than happy to pick up the slack. While Diamond is taking off, we’re working over time.

Seriously, do you really want your customers walking in after they get their Christmas gift money to find NO new comics on the shelves?

Introduce them to Spy Guy! Or Warlash… or Paradigm Shift… or Rotten… or I Am Legion… or Atomic Robo… or any of the over 3600-odd books we’ve got in stock.

Indy Comic Book Week is this week and you may have missed the window on getting those books as Haven is distributing several of the offerings for the event. It’s events like this we whole-heartedly support and encourage.

You can submit an order by our website, by email, by phone, by fax, or by our sales rep, Tony Shenton. If you don’t already have an account with us, I can set you up on the fly and ship out the order same day. That’s how easy it is.

BTW… we have volume discounts that could make your shipping free. And our Fed Ex discount is already pretty low to begin with. If you’re a ComicsPro member, you get bumped up a level on the discount ladder. It’s all explained on the Info: Retailers page (http://havendistro.com/retailers.html).

For those who have maybe not been paying attention, we’ve been adding new manga and a ton of assorted graphic novels to our shelves by way of Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. I was just told yesterday that Diamond is actually CANCELING your back orders from these publishers! Why do you put up with that kind of treatment??

Someone once asked me what kind of customer turnover I had and I just looked at them funny. Seriously, everyone who manages to make the big leap becomes a repeat customer. Once you sign up, you’re treated like a business partner, not just another account.

More importantly, many of our customers have seen a significant increase in product turnover by simply widening the variety on their shelves, shocking their customers with new books they didn’t know existed.

So if you’ve been waffling about whether or not to try Haven, this is a golden opportunity to give us another look.