Diamond + Lunar Previews catalog ingest, how do you handle pre-orders 2-3 months ahead?

The comic-books supply chain runs on the Previews catalog, a monthly catalog of titles streeting 2-3 months out. Diamond Comic Distributors historically published Previews; since 2020 Lunar Distribution handles DC titles and Diamond handles Marvel + Image + others. Most LCS owners now ingest two catalogs.

The ingest pattern:

• Monthly CSV/XLSX import, each distributor publishes a Previews catalog as a downloadable spreadsheet (Diamond as DCD, Lunar as a CSV from their portal). Magento ingests via a custom php bin/magento panth:previews:import command that reads the file and creates Magento products in draft status.
• Product staging, new pre-order products are marked “coming soon” with a street date attribute. The PDP shows the cover art, creator credits, and a “Pre-order” CTA that locks the price.
• Order locking, orders for pre-order products are charged at order placement (matches TFAW pattern) or at street-date (matches Midtown pattern), configurable per shop policy.
• FOC (Final Order Cutoff), 3 weeks before street date the LCS must finalize quantities with the distributor. A Magento cron aggregates pre-orders and emits a report so the owner submits accurate numbers.

Without this workflow LCS owners either over-order (eat the loss on unsold copies) or under-order (lose the sale). Getting it right is the #1 operational lever on margin.