For retailers, "Deathmate" was harmful, due to the tying up of cash flow with books arriving late, especially given the $4.95 USD cover price (at the time, the average comic book cover price was less than half of that). Also due to waning fan interest, the re-orders were lower than initial orders. The Valiant "Deathmate" books (Prologue, Blue, and Yellow) had print runs of over 700,000 copies, but by the time "Deathmate Red" was released, it had a print run of 250,000, although retailers were nonetheless left with many unsold copies. At the time, comic book distributors would only allow unsold books to be returned if they were six months late. Retailers dealt constantly with late books from Image, which indirectly caused some comic book shops to close. Partially due to the lateness of Image publications, the window was eventually decreased to two months.