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Posted in: Comics, Current News, Dark Horse Comics, IDW, Marvel Comics | Tagged: comic shop, Penguin Random House, prh, Whatnot
Penguin Random House Accidentally Leak Comics Shops Ordering Data
The hot gossip of comics retailer forums in recent days has concerned a Penguin Random House data leak of around 800 comic book stores.
The hot gossip of comics retailer forums, WhatsApp groups, Telegram parties and the like in recent days has concerned a Penguin Random House Publisher Services data leak of around 800 comic book stores on the East Coast of the USA, noting what wholesale orders they had made for comic books from Penguin Random House last year, and from the first four months of 2023.
Penguin Random House Publisher Services has an exclusive distributor for IDW, Dark Horse and Marvel Comics, though Diamond Comic Distributors and others can work as a sub-distributor, and the UK can still just use Diamond UK. Most retailers use a mixture of distributors these days. But purely on the scale of this leak, comic book stores have appreciated being able to compare themselves with a rival. And to note how many buying clubs are on the list, to note the stores whose sales dropped to zero for 2023 so far, indicating a lack of business entirely.
The Top 25 East Coast listed accounts according to Penguin Random House:
- Midtown Comics
- The 616 Comics
- Third Eye Comics
- Atomic Empire
- The Comic Mint
- East Side Comics
- Forbidden Planet
- Gotham City Limit
- Comicxposure
- New Dimension Comics
- That's Entertainment
- 4th World Comics And Toys
- Beyond Comics
- The Comic Corner
- Jonathan's Comics
- Tate's Comics Inc
- Acme Comics
- Brave New Worlds
- Emerald City Comics And Collectables
- Memory Lane Comics
- Bulletproof Comics
- Mega Gaming And Comics
- Comics And Gaming Inc
- Ssalefish Comics
- Black Saber Comics
Friend of Bleeding Cool Jetpack Comics came 26th. The Penguin Random House list also includes a bunch of names from stores ordering nothing that have closed, moved into different business models or never existed in the first place. One retailer tells Bleeding Cool that many of those "don't seem to be legitimate stores, but rather online folks trying to grab cash, while the collectable markets were spiking. A lot of those Whatnot guys that have come and gone." Whatnot is an online streaming sales platform that was very popular amongst comic book sellers during lockdown, it looks like a number of them came and went fairly sharpish.
There are eight-four accounts on the Penguin Random House list that ordered nothing from PRH in both 2022 and 2023, and a further sixty-eight accounts that spent money in 2022 but have not in 2023 so far. Those sixty-eight spent $495,934 last year – and they spent nothing in 2023. However, of the stores that Penguin Random House lists, they have a combined wholesale order for 2022 of $26.8 million with a projected sale of $28 million for the whole of 2023, based on sales so far and expected industry sales patterns. And that doesn't include any stores that signed up new accounts between May and the rest of 2023.
It's not the first time this kind of things has happened, 2019 saw a significant similar leak from Diamond Comic Distributors that was most enlightening… and that was with far fewer accounts.
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