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JohnMayo wrote:
Given the exclusive deals Diamond has with publishers, it is virtually impossible for another distributor to "pop up". Including the Haven order code would be fine by me too. I think that the chances of anybody using it are exceedingly low given. The difference with Diamond is that a huge percentage of the comic books here in the USA go through that single distributor. And I'm not suggesting the Diamond Order code be the only way to be able to select comics, just a highly useful one.

I find it confusing that you are arguing against using a distributor level data element in favor of having each retailer custom code an integration process. Using the Diamond Order code would be much more universal than software with an API that each retailer could write code against since virtually none of them ever would. Such custom code would only be beneficial to the customers at that retailer using that comic book tracking software. I don't see the business case for any retailer to spend the money on that kind of custom code.

The Diamond Order code methodology would be useful for any user of the comic book tracking software buying any of the comics offered through Diamond. And I'm willing to bet that for most comic book fans, the majority of their collection was distributed through Diamond. Within that, the majority was probably distributed exclusively through Diamond. That having been said, no doubt there are plenty of people out there more interested in the more obscure indy comics or foreign comics who would find the Diamond Order code of little or no use.

The Title/Year/Issue combination is insufficient to identify a comic book. At the very least, Publisher and Variant are needed. Each of these data elements would be subject to the possibility of misspellings and inconsistencies from month to month. Like barcodes, the nine character Diamond Order code has no such problem with that. While the Publisher/Title/LaunchYear/Issue/Variant combination might be more useful for pre-Diamond era comics, I don't know how many people are somehow able to pre-ordering comics that old.

The whole point of this discussion is how to track pre-ordered comics, specifically those sold through Diamond. No claim was made that this would be any sort of universal solution.

I wouldn't care how the functionality is provided. I was just pointing out the simplest way for it to be provided.

You don't need an API as long as you document and maintain the file format. Think about it like this:

If I'm DCBS, I can easily build a file for you to import that contains all shipped and unshipped items (Diamond or not) for any given date range.

If I'm some place like mycomicshop or heritage, I can give you an import for any order or set of orders you've placed and include price paid, condition, etc.

Then you do some simple co-marketing that says any order you make can easily be imported into your collection maintained in Comic-base. *any* order -- whether it's the diamond era or not. Hell, maybe you even distribute the free version of the software digitally.

I agree that most lcs' might not do it, but the ones I've mentioned could provide a valuable service at fairly low cost to implement and maybe make some money via click-through buys, etc.

And Comicbase adds new users.

I don't think Peter Bickford would ever do it, bec. he seems to hold too much to his vest wrt how the software is built and maintained, and he would probably have to finally move off of access and onto a modern DB so he could roll back failures and do transactions, but I still think it's a good idea.

And it solves your use case too John.

Paul Nolan wrote:I used bought Comicbase up to version 12. To upgrade now it would cost me a further $150, which is insane money.

I am actually tempted to run Collectorz alongside Comic Book Realm at the moment as Collectorz has a half price sale on this week.

The initial on ongoing costs to stay current with ComicBase are another major factor on why I don't consider it a viable choice for me. I think it is way overpriced.

JohnMayo wrote:

Paul Nolan wrote:I used bought Comicbase up to version 12. To upgrade now it would cost me a further $150, which is insane money.

I am actually tempted to run Collectorz alongside Comic Book Realm at the moment as Collectorz has a half price sale on this week.

The initial on ongoing costs to stay current with ComicBase are another major factor on why I don't consider it a viable choice for me. I think it is way overpriced.

Totally agree on this. I don't think they can have more than a few thousand users.

Trev wrote:

JohnMayo wrote:

Paul Nolan wrote:I used bought Comicbase up to version 12. To upgrade now it would cost me a further $150, which is insane money.

I am actually tempted to run Collectorz alongside Comic Book Realm at the moment as Collectorz has a half price sale on this week.

The initial on ongoing costs to stay current with ComicBase are another major factor on why I don't consider it a viable choice for me. I think it is way overpriced.

Totally agree on this. I don't think they can have more than a few thousand users.

The website for Comic Collector claims over 100,000 users but I think that is across all of the different Collector programs.

Trev wrote:

JohnMayo wrote:
Given the exclusive deals Diamond has with publishers, it is virtually impossible for another distributor to "pop up". Including the Haven order code would be fine by me too. I think that the chances of anybody using it are exceedingly low given. The difference with Diamond is that a huge percentage of the comic books here in the USA go through that single distributor. And I'm not suggesting the Diamond Order code be the only way to be able to select comics, just a highly useful one.

I find it confusing that you are arguing against using a distributor level data element in favor of having each retailer custom code an integration process. Using the Diamond Order code would be much more universal than software with an API that each retailer could write code against since virtually none of them ever would. Such custom code would only be beneficial to the customers at that retailer using that comic book tracking software. I don't see the business case for any retailer to spend the money on that kind of custom code.

The Diamond Order code methodology would be useful for any user of the comic book tracking software buying any of the comics offered through Diamond. And I'm willing to bet that for most comic book fans, the majority of their collection was distributed through Diamond. Within that, the majority was probably distributed exclusively through Diamond. That having been said, no doubt there are plenty of people out there more interested in the more obscure indy comics or foreign comics who would find the Diamond Order code of little or no use.

The Title/Year/Issue combination is insufficient to identify a comic book. At the very least, Publisher and Variant are needed. Each of these data elements would be subject to the possibility of misspellings and inconsistencies from month to month. Like barcodes, the nine character Diamond Order code has no such problem with that. While the Publisher/Title/LaunchYear/Issue/Variant combination might be more useful for pre-Diamond era comics, I don't know how many people are somehow able to pre-ordering comics that old.

The whole point of this discussion is how to track pre-ordered comics, specifically those sold through Diamond. No claim was made that this would be any sort of universal solution.

I wouldn't care how the functionality is provided. I was just pointing out the simplest way for it to be provided.

You don't need an API as long as you document and maintain the file format. Think about it like this:

If I'm DCBS, I can easily build a file for you to import that contains all shipped and unshipped items (Diamond or not) for any given date range.

If I'm some place like mycomicshop or heritage, I can give you an import for any order or set of orders you've placed and include price paid, condition, etc.

Then you do some simple co-marketing that says any order you make can easily be imported into your collection maintained in Comic-base. *any* order -- whether it's the diamond era or not. Hell, maybe you even distribute the free version of the software digitally.

I agree that most lcs' might not do it, but the ones I've mentioned could provide a valuable service at fairly low cost to implement and maybe make some money via click-through buys, etc.

And Comicbase adds new users.

I don't think Peter Bickford would ever do it, bec. he seems to hold too much to his vest wrt how the software is built and maintained, and he would probably have to finally move off of access and onto a modern DB so he could roll back failures and do transactions, but I still think it's a good idea.

And it solves your use case too John.

You solution sounds great in theory but breaks down when attempted to put into practice. Exactly what data do you see in this magic file format you propose? How, exactly, would the data I get from DCBS sync up with the data in the Comic Collector Pro database? And why exactly would DCBS create a file in this format?

If you spend any amount of time looking at the various online comic book databases you'll quickly notice that they often don't agree on the name of many titles. Some use volume numbers while others use launch year to differentiate different runs. Most importantly, there is no alignment on the variant versions of issues.

My goal is not just to toss random data into the Comic Collector Pro database but to select the corresponding items already in the Comic Collector Pro central database. That way I get the main benefits of using an off-the-shelf program which is the additional data about the issues which they have in the database.

What you are suggesting is a fine theoretical approach but one that neither meets my needs nor one that would work in reality.

I've entered in all of the items that I have on order with DCBS into Comic Collector and created a filter for Comic.ReleaseDate equals March 30, 2011 to see if I could get Comic Collector to give me a filtered list of what will be in my next weekly shipment from DCBS that arrived today.

Out of the 42 items, Comic Collector correctly found 19, incorrectly found another 14 and didn't find the other 22 items. (The specific data is listed below.) I'm not expecting a perfect match. I expect a few "false positives" for items that shipped but didn't make it into my shipment for whatever reason (such as Walking Dead #83 and Sherlock Holmes: Year One #3) and a few "false negatives" for similar reasons. The problem is that Comic Collector found less than half of the items in this shipment.

With my home-brewed Excel solution, I parse the weekly shipping lists from Diamond, key off the Diamond Order Code and tag the items shipping that week. Even with the above mentioned cases of things shipping a week early or late, my system is usually only off by two or three items at worst.

Again, my goal is to be able to manage my collection from the pre-ordering stage. Having already entered the comics into Comic Collector, when each weekly shipment arrives I want to filter down the "On Order" items to what shipped that week, highlight the items I got and "Move To Collection".

I would appreciate any thoughts on a better way to tackle this.

Here is what will be in that shipment which will arrive today:
JAN110287: ACTION COMICS #899
JAN110795: AGE OF X UNIVERSE #1
JAN110724: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #657
JAN111021: AMORY WARS KEEPING SECRETS OF SILENT EARTH 3 #9
JAN110694: AVENGERS #11
JAN110746: BLACK PANTHER MAN WITHOUT FEAR #516
JAN110703: CAPTAIN AMERICA #616
JAN110709: CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SECRET AVENGERS #1
JAN110802: CYCLOPS #1
JAN110775: DEADPOOL CORPS #12
JAN110777: DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #883
JAN110270: DETECTIVE COMICS #875
JAN110526: DOCTOR WHO ONGOING #3
JAN110077: DOLLHOUSE EPITAPHS ONE SHOT PHIL NOTO CVR
JAN110548: ELEPHANTMEN MAN AND ELEPHANTMAN #1
JAN110463: GODZILLA MONSTER WORLD #1
JAN110281: GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #21
JAN110251: GREEN ARROW #10
OCT100949: GREEN HORNET YEAR ONE #9
JAN110241: GREEN LANTERN EMERALD WARRIORS #8
DEC100479: HALCYON #4
JAN110807: INCOGNITO BAD INFLUENCES #5
JAN111035: INCORRUPTIBLE #16
JAN110734: INCREDIBLE HULKS #625
DEC100295: JACK OF FABLES #50
JAN110291: JIMMY OLSEN #1
JAN110305: JLA THE 99 #6
JAN110306: JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #49
AUG100660: KICK-(bleep) 2 #2
FEB110001: PREVIEWS #271
DEC101070: RPM #4
JAN110696: SECRET AVENGERS #11
JAN110725: SPIDER-GIRL #5
JAN111047: STAN LEE TRAVELER #5
JAN110312: TEEN TITANS #93
JAN110887: TERRY MOORES ECHO #29
JAN110716; THOR #621
JUN100538: ULTIMATE COMICS X #4
JAN110785: WOLVERINE #7
JAN110293: WONDER WOMAN #609
JAN110792: X-23 #8
JAN110315: ZATANNA #11

Correctly selected by Comic Collector:
ACTION COMICS #899
AGE OF X UNIVERSE #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SECRET AVENGERS #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #875
DOLLHOUSE EPITAPHS ONE SHOT PHIL NOTO CVR
TERRY MOORES ECHO #29
ELEPHANTMEN MAN AND ELEPHANTMAN #1
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #21
GREEN ARROW #10
GREEN LANTERN EMERALD WARRIORS #8
INCOGNITO BAD INFLUENCES #5
JACK OF FABLES #50
JIMMY OLSEN #1
JLA THE 99 #6
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #49
PREVIEWS #271
TEEN TITANS #93
WONDER WOMAN #609
X-23 #8

Not selected by Comic Collector:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #657
AMORY WARS KEEPING SECRETS OF SILENT EARTH 3 #9
AVENGERS #11
BLACK PANTHER MAN WITHOUT FEAR #516
CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SECRET AVENGERS #1
CYCLOPS #1
DEADPOOL CORPS #12
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #883
DOCTOR WHO ONGOING #3
GODZILLA MONSTER WORLD #1
GREEN HORNET YEAR ONE #9
HALCYON #4
INCORRUPTIBLE #16
INCREDIBLE HULKS #625
KICK-(bleep) 2 #2
RPM #4
SECRET AVENGERS #11
SPIDER-GIRL #5
STAN LEE TRAVELER #5
THOR #621
ULTIMATE COMICS X #4
WOLVERINE #7
ZATANNA #11

Incorrectly found by Comic Collector:
Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #5
Batman: The Dark Knight #4A
Dean Koontz: Nevermore #1B
Flash, Vol. 3 #11A
Green Hornet: Year One #12A
Heavy Water
Kato #12A
Kato Origins: Way of the Ninja #11
The Oz / Wonderland Chronicles #4A
Penny For Your Soul #6
Sherlock Holmes: Year One #3A
Usagi Yojimbo, Vol. 3 #136A
The Walking Dead #83
Warlord of Mars (Dynamite) #6A

So basically,

Collectorz enter a release date from solicitation information and don't adjust it? because that looks like a list of Comics that are release on the originally solicited date, then a list of comics being released later than their solicited date. and finally a list of comics that were originally solicited for that date, but are late.

Paul Nolan wrote:So basically,

Collectorz enter a release date from solicitation information and don't adjust it? because that looks like a list of Comics that are release on the originally solicited date, then a list of comics being released later than their solicited date. and finally a list of comics that were originally solicited for that date, but are late.

That's what I thought too. In that case the only solution is to have an update feature in the program that will re-establish release dates using up-to-date info. Whether this program will do that or not, I don't know. I was going to play with it this week but it looks like John did all the work I was curious about.

If there's no update feature, then the only option is to manually change the release dates yourself every week after looking at a late sheet ... which I'm not sure you can do, but if you can, still presents a time sucking problem.

Paul Nolan wrote:So basically,

Collectorz enter a release date from solicitation information and don't adjust it? because that looks like a list of Comics that are release on the originally solicited date, then a list of comics being released later than their solicited date. and finally a list of comics that were originally solicited for that date, but are late.

There is an Update Comics Automatically feature which syncs the items with the master database. I just reran that again (I'd run it before doing the initial test last night) and got the same list.

If I had a way to translate the Diamond Order Code into the corresponding barcodes, I'd try going down that path. Unfortunately, I don't have the barcode data. This is one of many problems I could solve if I had the Master Data Files from Diamond.

JohnMayo wrote:

Paul Nolan wrote:So basically,

Collectorz enter a release date from solicitation information and don't adjust it? because that looks like a list of Comics that are release on the originally solicited date, then a list of comics being released later than their solicited date. and finally a list of comics that were originally solicited for that date, but are late.

There is an Update Comics Automatically feature which syncs the items with the master database. I just reran that again (I'd run it before doing the initial test last night) and got the same list.

You may have to use a hybrid. Look at it this way: either way you have to enter each title into Comic Collector at some point, and you have to enter it into your spreadsheet for ordering one time [I think that's how you're doing it]. If that's right, then maybe you can just tailor the spreadsheet to handle ordering and when you get items in you enter them into Comic Collector and just forget about the "on order' field.

Obviously that's not the preferred but it may be the only way to do it while still using this program.

I just played around with the program for awhile and I don't think it's going to be useful for me. My collection is only around 2k and I already have it entered into a web-based collection and a spreadsheet. I can do any type of report or sorting with those two things and don't need a third. Still looks like it's at least as good as ComicBase and much cheaper.

I want to avoid a hybrid solution if at all possible. Part of the point of the exercise is to get off of the Excel system.

I got the barcode reader today and my weekly shipment from DCBS.

I went through the stack of comics and scanned the barcodes which took about two and half minutes. Not too bad. I then figured out how to dump that barcode data into Comic Collector. I then had it search the queue of barcodes to find matches.

I had to rescan a number of comics to get the full barcode but I'll chalk that up to user error. I also had to pick which variant I got on a number of comics since the barcode wasn't that detailed. The interface was less than perfect since I had to select a barcode and then select the variant from a different list making it a multi-step process.

Once I had the list of comics correct (aside from Captain America And the Secret Avengers #1 which couldn't be found by barcode), I clicked Add Selected to convert them from On Order to In Collection and got "0 issue(s) added" since they were "Already in collection". Not amused. There is already a request in for adding this functionality.

Overall, I like the barcode device but need to play around with it some more.

I have been using Comic Collector for a few years now and like it. Yes the initial setup of inputting ALL your comics is daunting, but once they’re in its great to quickly look things up. They now have an APP for the iPhone/iPod which I love. Now when I go to small comic shows and I’m looking for certain comics I just turn on my iPod and open up Comic Collector and can search fast to see what I’m missing.

comicman66 wrote:I have been using Comic Collector for a few years now and like it. Yes the initial setup of inputting ALL your comics is daunting, but once they’re in its great to quickly look things up. They now have an APP for the iPhone/iPod which I love. Now when I go to small comic shows and I’m looking for certain comics I just turn on my iPod and open up Comic Collector and can search fast to see what I’m missing.

I expect the loading of my entire collection of back issues to be time consuming. It is the entering of my new comics that is proving to be much more time consuming that I think it ought to be.

FYI, I've posted a tutorial/review of Comic Collector 5.0 Pro on adding Pre-ordered comic into the database and another on Converting a batch of new comic fro m"On Order" to "In Collection".