See, that's how it did work in the past, back in the 90s and early 2000s, when the Internet was still breaking free of the cocoon and becoming this giant mess that it is now. When comic fans got outraged, unless they had a friend who already bought the comic and could show it to them, the only way they'd know about what current events were happening was to buy the books themselves or have a friend in the shop who gave them the heads up. Back then, controversy sold books.
But now, the internet has made it so everything is free if you know where to look. If you don't follow comics now and your friend tells you "Oh man, Marvel just made Captain America a Nazi!", it's really easy to just find scans without Marvel seeing a cent from you, especially thanks to Tumblr.
What Tom shows here is a reluctance if not outright refusal to see that the free market has irreversibly changed, and the old ways of selling are seeing less and less returns every time.