In the wake of the revelation that CCL announced it was shutting down, and then a few days later said "nah bro, just kidding" I was left in quite a bad state.

I took many steps to test and build selling on various other platforms, none of which came close to being as useful to me. There are a number of reasons why but the primary reason is that none of the other platforms are as simple to upload books for sale, and as simple to do shipping calculations, making it worth our time as sellers to post non-key, filler run issues for a reasonable price. I looked at sites like AtomicComics, but their shipping situation is trash let alone the software. We all know ebay is worst, plus their fees are insane. I looked at a few others but nothing was both simple with an easy fee structure. I was at the point where I was just going to form a collecting on a tighter database, build by own order form processing, and deal with it on my own. I literally started that process and was a small percentage into it when CCL announced they were not shutting down after all.

This left me with the question - do I keep my store on CCL even though there are definite issues with it, or do I continue to building my own selling platform as I had started?

I had to do the math on customer reach and ease of use and I decided in the end to stick with CCL for now due to those concerns. I know their database is sketchy at best (i.e. many covers aren't numbered or labeled correct, especially variants, and it is nearly impossible and takes forever to add new stuff to it. There are just massive gaps that make it hard to post more obscure stuff, relying on crowdsourcing but making the process nearly impenetrable) and the lack of other pay options limit everyone to PayPal (like if they added STRIPE as an option it would really help bring in more customers I think) I still think the ease of use makes it the one place I can post what I would call "cheap bin books", books that in a retail store would usually be relegated to a $1.00 or less box. This is a huge market that makes CCL one of the few spots for easy back issues for retail comic shops to look for their customers. I have a number of customers that are just that, retail shops, looking for cheap filler issues for their customers at fair prices.

In the end I think that is what CCL needs to focus on for the sellers platform and know what their strength is. I don't know much of anything about past, current, or future ownership, but if they continue to focus on tightening those things around their real strength, I think they have a chance to corner a back issue wholesale distribution market that at this time just doesn't exist.

Written by 100PercentComics January 27, 2025