From what little I have seen of this instance, I stand by that perception.

While I am inclined to agree with you that they should let the market decide — and figure they ultimately will — let’s not discount their sense of the market; they do pretty much own it after all!

BTW, I find the idea that some people have floated (not you), that they are somehow morally obligated to distribute Comic Foundry, a laughable one; and I’m a bit of a Socialist!

They do still have the archives of their past issues up on the site, and other than a few creative cover designs, the content doesn’t really match up with his hyperbolic promise of “brand new concepts, ideas, formats and presentations”. It’s mostly the same ol’, same ol’ in a prettier package.

ETA: But yeah, sample PDFs would certainly help his appeal for support.

BTW, I’m a regular reader of Back Issue and Write Now. Keep up the good work finding interesting niches to exploit!

The self-righteous tone; the ill-informed references to other magazines; the attempted guilt trip; the f’n typos…!?!? Not-ready-for-prime-time, indeed!

CF presumably doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle direct distribution themselves beyond maybe a couple of major retailers, which isn’t a bad suggestion for getting off the ground while maintaining the web site which, judging by the lack of activity in its forums has seemingly lost most of its audience. I didn’t notice a subscribe option on their site, either, so it’s yet another sign that Diamond’s probably making the right call here.

While I might have been a little terse, I’m not trying to bash Leong or any of CF’s contributors; but you know how I feel about fly-by-night attempts at publishing. Grrr…

Granted, I realize I have a very colored view on this subject seeing how I live in NYC where there are numerous comic shops who could potentially carry CF — and on top of that I’m webmaster for Midtown Comics online, which does a good amount of business shipping books that other stores don’t carry to people who don’t live near a store (or whose LCS doesn’t carry said books).

All of which just makes me think that Tim could make just as much a go of things keeping CF.com going (if for no other reason than for the visibility) and just telling people to buy the magazine online from Midtown, or any other online retailer. Seeing how he lives in NYC, he could make a personal appeal to the buyer about carrying CF (which I imagine should go over better than appealing to Diamond) and maybe even work out some kind of fulfillment deal with Midtown if he wanted to use them exclusively.

Diamond’s not going to make people notice his book — he has to do that himself. And he already has a site with more visibility than a lot of people trying to get their books into Previews and more importantly into the hands of readers. Plus he has some exposure from doing the NYCC podcast, etc. He’s ahead of a lot of people in getting the word out.

I guess all I’m saying is, does he even need Previews?