Since the beginning, Archie has shown its ability to be flexible and relevant in a variety of markets, whether it's the bookstore, newsstand, digital or other avenues. I will quibble a bit with your classification of Archie as a Direct Market publisher. It's the perfect, light, escapist fiction that's persevered over the years and appeals to all ages of readers. We are always trying new ways to package and distribute those classic stories, whether it's through print collections or digital releases, and there continues to be a healthy appetite for traditional 'classic' Archie content. We have almost 80 years of content, with new material being scanned and remastered every week. We're also rethinking how we engage with our backlist. So, the idea has been to spread out the publishing slate we'd planned for 2020, and let some of those books roll into 2021, with an eye toward back-checking those launches and making sure we're confident and comfortable before moving ahead. It doesn't mean we don't take flyers - I think anyone can see that Archie, at least over the last decade under Jon Goldwater's leadership, has been all about taking risks and realigning how people perceive our iconic library of characters. We have to be mindful of every book we produce and ensure the investment matches the risk. We're not a huge corporation like Disney or AT&T. In terms of challenges - we have to be more judicious than ever before. And the response from retailers to the product that we are currently producing has been incredible - it's clear that the direct market wants new Archie Comics and we're listening and reacting accordingly. Running a comic shop has never been an easy job, and we're all blown away by their passion and perseverance during these unprecedented times. Again, we're not alone in this - it's a global situation.īut to your point - yes, Diamond is back and we're thankful for that, and we're extremely grateful to the comic shop retailers who are engaging with customers and selling the books we create. Most importantly, it was about ensuring the safety of our staff and families, and that meant working remotely and changing the way we communicate with each other. We tried to do the best we could, make sure we were putting out product that could entertain and distract during these extremely difficult times. The mentality during those early days of the shutdown was to hang on and be flexible. The world had changed and we needed to adjust to those changes. It was simple math - with no money coming in from our comic shop distributor, and fewer comic shops open to sell your product, it didn't make sense to proceed as originally planned merely because it had been scheduled that way. In terms of production, like much of the industry, we had to put some projects on hold - some of which you're seeing pop up now and some you'll see in 2021. We are all in this together, so we tried to be mindful of that. We had to work on two fronts - first, how could we try and help retailers? We made best efforts to make our product returnable so the risk was minimized to those stores that remained open or were eager to re-open, we tried our best to be transparent and communicative when it came to changes in schedule, and honestly, just tried to put a human face on communications and discussions that are so often pure business. To our staff's great credit, we were able to pivot quickly when Diamond shut down. Alex Segura: The pandemic has been a challenge across the board, and we're certainly not the only publisher dealing with it.
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