were are you moving to somewere still in texas?
yeah im escavating lots of stuff whil packignfour our move

We're actually moving within the same apartment complex; we just can't afford the rent on the three-bedroom anymore. So, we're downgrading to a two-bedroom. ^_^

ouch I can see how that woudl suck...
good luck with that and clearignout allthe packrat fodder >8)
ive been gettign rid of tons of stuff

Good luck all around with the move and Radio.

I think you owe Mark Evanier a quarter in royalties for using his catch phrase in your title ;) youre awfully busy! I wish you luck with the move and all you have to do.

Yikes! I live in Chico which is about 15 minutes from Paradise. The fires actually started out the outskirts of this city and spread over 20,000 acres! It's apparently contained now and roads to Paradise are reopening slowly, but they aren't letting evacuees back yet. I hope your friend and his mother are faring well still.

Oi, I hope your friend and his family will be okay!

Genus 91? I thought 88 hadn't even come out yet! Booking it months in advance?

\"Booking it months in advance?\"

I thought that was normal in print, to do arrange things months in advnace?

Correct. We must send the solicitation information to Diamond Comics in order to be listed in the Previews catalog four months before the comic is supposed to ship. (We are also supposed to have everything in hand at the time of solicitation, but that is difficult to do with the anthologies. We're just lucky that our rep doesn't make us send off proof that we have the whole book in hand, I guess because we've been around 11 years. They may crack down about that at any time. No telling with Diamond... ^_^; ) About two months before the book is supposed to ship, the Previews catalogs go out to comic stores, customers turn in their order forms to their local comic retailers, and then retailers do their ordering. Then Diamond sends us the purchase order and we print based on that.

We have a shipping window as well- if we don't ship by the expiration date on the purchase order, Diamond will cancel the purchase order. Other arrangements must be made in those cases, such as cancelling that solicitation and re-soliciting at a later date (which means another four months or more before printing), or we can do what is called an "order adjustment", where retailers are informed of the lateness and allowed to change (adjust) their orders, thus generating a new purchase order. (This also takes several months.) Any given company has an undisclosed number of these "chances" they are allowed to use, and any company that does these resolicits/order adjustments too frequently eventually finds themselves on the receiving end of a very terse letter about getting their act together or they risk not being carried anymore. ^_^; (It's just business though- non-delivery of product is not exactly a good idea for suppliers.) When we had our printer changeover issues causing a lot of lateness, we got very lucky that our rep was really helpful and we worked out a way to keep Genus and Milk scheduled (though, they both took a printing hiatus for the entire end of 2007 in order to get caught up on the books that were affected by the lateness...)

Thus, for example, in December 2007, we are soliciting the books for April 2008; in January 2008, we are soliciting books for May 2008; Feb. 2008 means books for June 2008, and so forth and so on. There's no way around this system, because this is the way Diamond does it and it's the way they've always done it. It's a pretty arcane and opaque system, but it's pretty much the only one there is so it can't be helped. (When they existed, Capital City, the other distributor used the same solicitation/ordering schedule. It's pretty much been in place since the comic direct market started.)

Blah! That explanation took forever! I'm used to this system, since I started in comics retail (back in 1990... oy), so it didn't faze me when I started working on the other end of comics. But I know this weird system is a big stumbling block for a lot of new publishers- it really seems Byzantine and inexplicable unless you're already soaking in it. XD

Wow! Diamond (and I guess most distributors) like to plan ahead, huh? Thanks for the detailed response! :3 Now I know...and knowing is half the battle! :D

Yeah, pretty much any distribution industry plans pretty far in advance, so suppliers have to be prepared early. ^_^

Although, in comics, there's only one distributor, and that's Diamond. They bought out all the other ones in the mid-1990's and all the smaller localized ones died out. So, for comics in comic store, there's only Diamond now. They are the law. XD

There was an anti-monopoly lawsuit brought against them at some point, but it ended up being thrown out because Diamond also distributes books, graphic novels, RPGs, DVDs, toys, t-shirts and magazines. Since there are multiple distribution channels for all of those other things, it was ruled that Diamond is not a monopoly, even though they are the only channel to get regular comic books into comic book stores.