This week, Diamond Comics Distributors presented a report to comics retailers on the Day-Early Delivery service that came into place this year, in which shops can get comics a day before they are on sale, with a secret shopping service in the USA and Canada to ensure the street date is adhered to.

And we discovered a few interesting facts and figures in the process.

The 1704 comic shops participate in Day-Early Delivery, representing 71% of regular ordering accounts, accounting for 87% of comics sales.

This also lets us know that there are 2400 accounts ordering comics every month through Diamond. This will include online stores, buying clubs and publishers who have buying accounts, one of which would qualify for Day-Early Delivery. It may not include chains that order through one account, or UK stores.

The first four weeks saw 500 successful visits to stores by secret shoppers, with 10 violations, making 2% of those visited in breach of the street date policy. Violators have had Day-Early Delivery suspended for a month as a result.

And while Bleeding Cool has pointed out the propensity of Secret Shoppers to be atypical customers, elderly women, the report assures retailers that this is not the case and there is a diversity of members, including the shops' own regular customers.

And if you believe you have been secret shopped and want to know exactly what your shopper thought of you, Diamond is making those reports available to the retailers in question.