Ben Falconer of Phoenix Comics in Calgary, Canada writes in to share some the difficulties his store is experiencing due to the current climate of the comic book market.

I was interested if stores are experiencing a drop in pull and hold customers for their weekly new issues?  My store has lost 50% of its file customers.  Because of this and with the increase of miniseries being printed is leaving us ordering books completely blind.  Over the years we have based our pre-orders off of our regular monthly subscribers and added a little extra for the rack.  But with our monthly buyers all but disappearing I have been faced with a interesting prospect--maybe the pull and hold customers are the problem not the solution.

I am thinking of dropping all of the subscribers and basing the orders on a novel idea--we will only rack what we like.  No more miniseries with poor writing.  No more half assed stories and art with 'our' characters.  I mean at this point I have nothing left to lose.  My new issue sales are in the dumpster.  And if I carry the top 50 books falling under my criteria (story and art) then hopefully I won't have any more extras left over at the end of the week than I do now.

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