The boring but necessary part
Terms & privacy
Written in plain language, because a policy nobody can read protects nobody. This is a one-person operation: the collector who photographs the books is the person who answers the email and packs the parcel.
Who you are dealing with
The site is run by Spyders Den Unlimited LLC, trading as Spyders Den Comics, in the United States. The LLC is the merchant of record for anything bought here. Contact details are at the bottom of this page and in the footer of every other one.
Buying a book
Two kinds of book are for sale. Back issues are single copies — the copy in the photographs, not another one like it. When one sells, it is gone; the listing stays up marked Sold as a record. New arrivals come from our distributors and are new copies, sold at the publisher’s cover price. There may be several of each; when the last one goes the listing stays up marked Sold out. A basket takes one copy of each title.
Prices are in US dollars and do not include sales tax. The price you pay is the price read off the catalogue at the moment you check out, plus postage, plus any sales tax due, which Stripe works out from your shipping address on its own page before you pay; a basket that has been sitting open for a week is re-priced from the catalogue rather than from whatever it remembered.
Putting a book in your basket does not reserve it. Pressing check out reserves it for 35 minutes while you pay. If you do not finish, the reservation lapses and the book goes back on sale automatically.
Card details are typed on Stripe's own hosted page, never on this site. This site does not see, handle or store card numbers at any point. Stripe emails you its own receipt; that email is your proof of payment.
A sale is complete when the payment clears. If a book somehow sells twice — two people paying in the same instant — the second payment is refunded in full and that person is told why, promptly.
Returns and refunds
The current policy, as set in the back office and shown at checkout, is this:
Condition is described honestly and the flaws are left in the photographs on purpose. If a book arrives and it is materially not what the listing said it was, that is a return — say so and send it back. "I changed my mind about the story" is not, but ask anyway; you will get a human answer.
Refunds go back to the card that paid, through Stripe. A refund does not automatically put the book back on sale, because only the collector knows whether it actually came back in the post.
Postage
Books are bagged and boarded, sandwiched between stiff boards, and posted in a rigid mailer with tracking. Postage is one flat charge per order, and free once the books on the order reach a set amount; both figures are shown on the shop page and in the basket, and again at checkout, before you pay.
Orders are shipped only for now. The store does not have a counter to collect from yet, so there is no pickup option until it opens.
Parcels are posted within the United States. Ask before ordering from further afield; it may be possible and it may not be worth it.
A note on timing: this is one person packing parcels around a day job, not a warehouse. No specific dispatch or delivery window is promised anywhere on this site, and none should be read into these terms.
Selling or consigning to us
Sending a description through Sell to us or Consign is the start of a conversation and nothing more. It does not commit you to selling, or the collector to buying, and it is not an offer or a valuation.
Consignment terms — the split, how long a book is listed, who pays postage, what happens if it does not sell — are agreed in writing, per book, before anything changes hands. Nothing is agreed by submitting a form.
No valuation is given without the book in hand. A number guessed from a description is worse than no number at all.
Your details
What is held, and why:
- If you buy something: your name, email, and the postal address you gave Stripe, plus what you bought and what it cost. It is needed to post the parcel and to keep the books straight. Your card number is not part of it — this site never receives one.
- If you offer us books: your name, email, whatever phone number and rough location you chose to give, and what you wrote about the books.
- If you ask to be notified about a new release: your email, the name if you gave one, which book and how many copies you said you wanted. It is used for one thing — telling you that book has arrived — and every one of those emails has a link that takes you off the list. It is an interest list, not an order: nothing is paid and nothing is reserved.
- If you just browse: nothing. There is no analytics script, no advertising pixel and no third-party tracker on this site. The covers on the Coming soon page are loaded straight from our distributors’ image servers (Lunar Distribution and Penguin Random House), which see the request for the picture the way any website sees a visitor; the site tells your browser not to say which page asked.
Who else sees it: Stripe, which processes the payment, and Netlify, which hosts the site and stores its data. Nobody else. Nothing is sold, shared, rented or handed to a data broker, and there is no newsletter to be added to.
You will never receive marketing from this site. The only automatic email the whole system produces is Stripe's payment receipt. Everything else you hear from the collector — including a note that a book you asked about has arrived — he typed.
Records of a sale are kept as long as the tax rules require. An intake enquiry is kept until it is dealt with and then deleted. A notify request is kept until you unsubscribe or ask, or until the collector clears it out. Ask and your details will be deleted, other than what must be kept as a record of a completed sale.
Cookies
No tracking cookies, and no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to. The site sets exactly three things in your own browser, all functional and none shared:
- Your basket — a list of book ids in
localStorage. No titles, no prices. - A note that you have already seen the splash screen this visit, so it stops appearing.
- Whether you ticked “Hide mature titles” on the Coming soon page, so it stays ticked.
Signing in to the back office sets one session cookie, and only the collector ever does that.
Getting hold of us
Email:
If something on this page contradicts what you were told in an email by a person, say so — the person wins and the page gets fixed.