Seven Hills, until recently one of the country's few distributors of comics-related books and graphic novels to the book trade, declared bankruptcy at the end of the year, leaving many publishers, including Fantagraphics Books, wondering if they will receive the sales income they're owed by Seven Hills, as well as unsold backstock. To discover the fate of many books that had been shipped to the distributor one might be advised to pay a visit to the Books & Magazines section of eBay.

The Journal has learned that an individual seller from Cincinnati, Ohio -- the home base of Seven Hills -- has been posting books for sale at the rate of nearly 50 a day for at least the past two months. A comparison of the seller's posted items and recent Seven Hills catalogs shows that many if not all of the posted books were published by Seven Hills clients.

The seller has been posting the titles under the User ID OPUS1306. According to a former Seven Hills employee, OPUS1306 was the personal seller ID number of Seven Hills owner Ion Itescu.

Sales through eBay are probably not the kind of distribution Seven Hills clients had in mind, especially since the posted titles are being offered at between 50 and 20 percent of their list price. Itescu has been incommunicado since abruptly closing the doors at Seven Hills and filing for bankruptcy, so the Journal asked Itescu's attorney, Norman Slutsky, if he knew of any explanation for why the Seven Hills owner might think it was OK to sell his clients' books on the Internet while failing to so much as return phone calls from those same clients.

Slutsky replied, "Seven Hills can't be selling anything unless it's through the [bankruptcy] trustee."

Harold Jarnicki, the trustee overseeing the Seven Hills bankruptcy, told the Journal he had authorized no sales of Seven Hills stock on eBay or anywhere else. "Seven Hills has those books on consignment," he said. "It doesn't own them. A lot of the books are obsolete titles, but even if he had them free and clear, he can't sell them [without authorization]. There are creditors who need to be paid."

Furthermore, Jarnicki said, "Mr. Itescu doesn't have access to the consignment books. They are locked up in a warehouse." He acknowledged, however, that nothing would have prevented Itescu from removing books from the warehouse prior to the bankruptcy filing.

If Itescu were indeed selling Seven Hills consignment books on eBay and keeping the proceeds, he would be in violation of bankruptcy law, according to Jarnicki. As trustee, Jarnicki said, he would investigate any reports of such sales received in writing by his office.

[To read the rest of this article, please see The Comics Journal #250.]

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