Yes, his name is really Al

Yes, his name is really Al

This week Peter and I made a decision regarding the increasingly ridiculous “variant cover” market.  Not only was it beginning to become a bit of a logistical nightmare as we had to figure out ways of allocating a small amount of these alternate covers to the customers who wanted them, but it was costing us money as well as we had to buy more product to qualify for certain covers.

After reading a very interesting article on Newsarama about how A Comic Shop in Florida deals with variants, we decided to adopt a new policy towards variant comics.

Below is the email that went out to our subscribers.

Dear subscribers:

After quite a bit of thought and discussion, Peter and I have decided on a new variant policy for All New Comics.

Both Peter and I believe that Variant Editions are not a good value. We are required to purchase more product to qualify for them, and we are forced to pass that cost on to our customers, charging more for variant covers. This artificially inflated price does not last long because two months after the issue comes out, nobody cares. We feel this is not fair to our customers and we are adamantly against anything that harms you guys.

Peter and I both believe that what’s important about comics is the content, not the wrapper publishers put on the comic.

This is why effective immediately we are adopting a new variant cover policy.

All variant covers will be randomly distributed. This is the most fair thing we can do, and ensures that pretty much every one of our customers will at some point in a calendar year receive one variant cover.

The best part is there is no extra charge for you, and we will not have to absorb any extra charge.

We’ll put a little sticky on the bag if something’s a variant so that you’ll be sure to note the special cover, but we’re not going to treat them specially anymore.

We feel that this is the only fair way to handle the growing variant market, which is a market we believe is actually harmful to our business, and results in us having to adopt unfair practices that we don’t believe in.

If you have any questions or comments, please direct them to us, or leave a comment on the story on Brian’s blog.

Thanks.

So, what are your thoughts?