Capital Punishment

Originally published February 11, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1056

As I’ve stated in the past, I’ve never been a big fan of capital punishment.

One of the primary concerns is that the penalty will be applied along racial and socio-economic lines. A poor black man convicted of murder, for instance, would be more likely to get the gas chamber than would a wealthy upper class white man.

A forfeiture (that of one’s life, in this case) so inherently unfair has no business being institutionalized.

So it was with great interest that I read a letter from Capital City Distribution, dated January 6, addressed to all suppliers (i.e., publishers) that announced some of “the more critical and dramatic changes that will be published in our new Supplier Handbook.” These changes, Capital advised, “are necessary for a number of reasons and have been implemented after much careful thought…”

Indeed.

Suppliers are further advised that these changes “are not for our convenience or for purely selfish motives but to improve the health of the entire supply chain by reducing costs and waste for the suppliers, retailers and distributors.”

Indeed. A laudable goal.

And how is Capital planning to do this?

Well, one way–the most impressive and controversial way–is through Capital Punishment.

Capital is very concerned about late shipping products. So are retailers and fans. I know I am (being partly responsible for some in my time.) Indeed, the letter describes late product as “a tragedy for all involved.” I don’t know if I’d go quite that far. A woman in a police station, sobbingly describing the details of her rape, is a tragedy. The L.A. earthquake is a tragedy. Pointless deaths in Bosnia is a tragedy. Somehow I have trouble placing late comics (remember when they were called comics, not product?) in the same category.

Mixed in with descriptions of new invoicing procedures, and the reasonable decision that #1 issues won’t be solicited without completed photocopies being made available (although that might not be economically feasible with painted books) is the announcement of fees to be charged for lateness. $500 for a product that is canceled altogether. Resoliciting the product will run $750. Or the supplier can ship the title returnable, and Capital will charge a fee of 20% of retail for all products returned.

Now technically Capital wouldn’t consider this punishment. Indeed, this fee schedule is “to partially cover the costs of listing and canceling the product.” Silly me… I would have thought that, after more than a decade in business, Capital’s cost of resoliciting would simply be considered a cost of doing business, and been factored in to the overhead somewhere. Apparently not. Either that, or it’s no longer good enough.

On the surface, all of this seems perfectly equitable. If publishers screw up, why should Capital City have to go to extra cost? Publishers should make a promise and deliver on that promise. And Capital City has every right to do business under whatever terms they wish.

There’s two problems I see, however.

First, the changes have been made effective as of February shipping. However, those titles have already been solicited. A contract of sorts already exists between Capital and its suppliers for February shipping–and March, for that matter–and that contract says nothing of penalties and late fees. Yet Capital has unilaterally changed the terms of that contract after the fact. That’s wrong. It’s onerous. I tend to think it’s probably even illegal.

The second problem is far greater.

It’s a load of dingo’s kidneys, and grotesquely unfair.

Why so? Because it is inherently biased and unenforceable.

Let’s say you’re Mighty Publisher. One of the Big Guys. And Capital City comes to you and says, “We will only do business with you under these terms.”

And Mighty Publisher says, “No.”

“Beg pardon?” says Capital.

“No. We, Mighty Publisher, do not wish to do business with you under these circumstances. We acknowledge that late shipping books are a problem. Resoliciting takes time and effort and expense for us, too, and we have lost considerable revenue on books that drew lower numbers in the second solicitation. We are working towards fixing the problem. But we will not pay your penalties, even though we could take the money out of petty cash and literally not feel it. Sorry.”

Now what?

What’s Capital City going to do? Refuse to carry Mighty Publisher’s titles? The retailers would love that. So would Diamond Comics, their largest competitor. Diamond and Capital handle an estimated 80% of the distribution market between them. This is the exact sort of situation Carol Kalish was concerned about when I started working for her a decade ago in direct sales: A very small handful of distributors controlling such a massive share of the market that they start wielding that power like a club.

Except, of course, Capital isn’t going to refuse to carry Mighty Publishers titles. For the sake of $500, they’re going to risk crippling their own customers? I can just see the letter: “Dear Capital retailers: Due to the fact that Mighty Publishers won’t cough up $500 to cover our costs, we will not be carrying those titles anymore, even though sales of those titles constitutes 20% to 30% of the market. We apologize for any lost revenue and lost customers you incur as a result of this decision.”

Yeah, right. Stand back for the stampede to Diamond.

Will the major publishers go along with Capital’s dictums? That, of course, remains to be seen. But the point is that they don’t have to because, although Capital may believe it’s dealing from strength, in fact it’s simply dealing from self-delusion. Capital cannot force the majors to kowtow. Capital cannot force the majors to play along. Hëll, I know of one major publisher who once threatened to stop selling to Capital altogether. Nothing came of that, but it’s certainly not an impossibility if Capital’s changes its terms… and Capital will have, in that instance, taken to new heights the notion of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

This, however, is where we get to the inequitable part.

Because Capital City can make it stick against the Indys.

The small publisher. The struggling publisher. The guy who’s just getting started.

The black and white publisher in the marketplace of the exclusively color-blind.

The non-superhero publisher shouting to be heard amidst the thudding of steroid-packed costumed bodies crashing together. The little guy trying to shoulder his way in there for rack space, just to be seen, during a week where a major publisher can pump out a couple of reprint titles and be guaranteed visibility. The non-entity that retailers never heard of. That customers have to hunt around to find.

The shoe-string operation who might not be able to afford to print the next issue because a distributor is days, or weeks, late in paying an invoice. Because if a distributor is experiencing a cash-flow problem, you know who’s going to get paid first. And it won’t be the little guy.

Am I saying that it’s okay when an Indy ships product late? No. It’s not okay. What I’m saying is that it’s patently unfair for Capital to introduce a ruling that cannot possibly be applied equitably. If Mighty Publisher falls outside of the 30 day grace period, the fees required to cancel and resolicit are chump change, as noted above. For a shoestring operation, however, it could very well close them down.

Now I’m an evenhanded guy. A fair guy. Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that the publishers go along with this. All and sundry agree to it.

Then I think Capital should agree to something, too.

How many times have fans heard the following from retailers, when going in search of some small-circulation Independent title:

“We weren’t able to get it.”

“The distributor didn’t have any copies.”

“We ordered it but didn’t receive it.”

“The distributor said it never came out.”

“The distributor never heard of it.”

I think that every time an excuse is offered and the screw-up can be traced to Capital City, then Capital should have to pay the publisher a penalty fee to make up for the lost revenue. I think that every time there’s a report that a warehouse doesn’t want to be bothered dealing with an order because the quantity is too small, then Capital should have to cough up $500. Every uphill step that an Indy has to take, every stumbling block that’s thrown into an Indy’s path because they’re small and not a big revenue generator and not worth the time of all concerned… let’s see Capital City cover that.

After all, it takes a warehouse as much time and energy to handle the paperwork for one or two copies of a small Indy as it does for a bundle of 50 copies of the latest full-color, holo-covered major publisher release. No reason to suffer the less-profitable inconvenience…as long as Capital is willing to reimburse the Indy for the disenfranchisement.

Now it’s always possible that Capital City might claim such things never happen. That all orders are processed with equal speed and aplomb. Maybe they’re right, in which case they’d have nothing to fear from a request by independent publishers for anecdotal evidence by the readership. Perhaps Capital City won’t mind if the Indys set up a hotline where frustrated customers could call in after a search through half a dozen stores for a small press title has yielded nothing except apologies or excuses.

At the very least, if Capital is going to hold the Indys to a vastly higher standard, percentage and dollar wise, than the majors…then I presume we can also expect Capital to extend courtesies along the same lines to the Indys. Such as, for example, giving a staggeringly high proportion of the cover space on Advance Comics (the Capital catalogue) to small press publications. If Indys are to bear the brunt of the burden, should they not also reap identical benefits?

Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

To be blunt, I have no doubt that distributors in general (and those retailers who care only about moving out the big, shiny, spiffy latest superhero release) would be ecstatic if the independent publishers would just dry up and blow away. The independent publishers who have enough problems already, and for whom this inequitable set of fees might very well be the final straw.

You see, that’s the insanity of it. The big guys, whose late books cause all sorts of major cash flow problems for the retailers… they can afford to fight or even ignore Capital’s fee schedule. And the little guys, whose late books barely make a dent in the collective retail consciousness… they can be put out of business by it. Perhaps the Indys themselves, and the effort taken to maintain them, are part of the “cost and waste” Capital wishes to reduce.

Probably the only ones in the distribution chain who would not be happy about seeing various Indys disappear are the fans.

The fans. The ones who actually still read the dámņëd things.

Remember them?

Aw… who cares about them…

(Peter David, writer of stuff, gives the “Best line I’ve heard this month” award to John Byrne, who was approached by Dragon*Con about the notion of a ComicFestian one-on-one with Todd McFarlane. Byrne’s reply to Dragon*Con: “I checked over the ComicFest Debate rules, and I can’t find anywhere that it says, ‘Loser gets to debate John Byrne.’”)