Well, I have sort of an insider's knowledge on some of this, but basically: all floppy sales are through one distributor, Diamond. If you want to sell floppies, you have to do things Diamond's way or not at all. (If you are a storefront, you absolutely have to do things Diamond's way.)
Diamond's way is set up to benefit Diamond only, which means that if you, as a publisher OR retailer, don't want to risk losing a LOT of money on a given book - and nobody's got a lot of money to lose at this point - you have to stake everything on preorders of floppies, because if you don't, you can't work with Diamond anymore, and you have to work with Diamond. (And while some of the preorders are from individual collectors, this also includes pre-orders by stores - so a book that's beloved by the kind of people who own comic book stores will do well in the first few months of pre-orders - because pre-orders are at least two or three months ahead of sales - even if it doesn't do well with customers, but the publishers will take that as a sign that they should promote it harder, and so on.)
There is an entire, separate, segment of the comics industry that doesn't mess with floppies or Diamond, and goes directly to trades (and also doesn't rely on comic book stores as their primary retailers). That part of the market is selling very different books than the floppy-publishers (most kids' and YA comics and most translated comics, for example) and doing better every year even as the big publishers struggle and flop about.
Thing is, the floppies rely on Diamond, but Diamond relies entirely on floppies, and as the floppy market isn't doing great, Diamond isn't doing great, either. What I suspect will happen is that Diamond will either go out of business, get bought out, or get majorly restructured (note that Diamond is also solely owned, and still personally run, by one micromanaging 70-year-old dude - he is basically the one man who determines how the entire comic industry works at this point). If Diamond's iron grip goes away - either due to its policies driving the floppy market and itself into the ground, or its ownership changing - literally anything could happen. Breaking the distribution monopoly would help, but of course the stupid policies mean the market isn't big enough anymore to support a new distributor starting up.
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Diamond's way is set up to benefit Diamond only, which means that if you, as a publisher OR retailer, don't want to risk losing a LOT of money on a given book - and nobody's got a lot of money to lose at this point - you have to stake everything on preorders of floppies, because if you don't, you can't work with Diamond anymore, and you have to work with Diamond. (And while some of the preorders are from individual collectors, this also includes pre-orders by stores - so a book that's beloved by the kind of people who own comic book stores will do well in the first few months of pre-orders - because pre-orders are at least two or three months ahead of sales - even if it doesn't do well with customers, but the publishers will take that as a sign that they should promote it harder, and so on.)
There is an entire, separate, segment of the comics industry that doesn't mess with floppies or Diamond, and goes directly to trades (and also doesn't rely on comic book stores as their primary retailers). That part of the market is selling very different books than the floppy-publishers (most kids' and YA comics and most translated comics, for example) and doing better every year even as the big publishers struggle and flop about.
Thing is, the floppies rely on Diamond, but Diamond relies entirely on floppies, and as the floppy market isn't doing great, Diamond isn't doing great, either. What I suspect will happen is that Diamond will either go out of business, get bought out, or get majorly restructured (note that Diamond is also solely owned, and still personally run, by one micromanaging 70-year-old dude - he is basically the one man who determines how the entire comic industry works at this point). If Diamond's iron grip goes away - either due to its policies driving the floppy market and itself into the ground, or its ownership changing - literally anything could happen. Breaking the distribution monopoly would help, but of course the stupid policies mean the market isn't big enough anymore to support a new distributor starting up.