Moving on (a bit)
So I have ranted in the past about Diamond Comics - specifically about their laughable release schedule for publishers who don't use Diamond as their #1 distributor - i.e., book publishers. After seeing my order from Seven Seas, including Strawberry Panic and the last Kashimashi, now hit over 7 weeks late, I've decided to hell with it.

My comic shop says they have an alternate distributor if I want to put manga through them, so all my orders from book-oriented manga publishers will go there from now on. That includes Del Rey, Seven Seas/Tor, and Yen/Little Brown. So I just put things like the 2nd SP novel and the Genshiken fanbook on that list.

This won't affect my weekly 'what's coming out' lists, btw, as I get those from Midtown Comics in Manhattan, which habitually uses a different distributor for its manga anyway. So it's way ahead of me on the curve. And I'm leaving the other publishers on there as they ARE Diamond-centric - Dark Horse, for example, gets stuff to Diamond long before book shops.

But yes, yet another example of why monopolies are bad.