DIAMOND COMICS DISTRIBUTION
or
PROTECT THE STORES
The blog I had written, my own theory on how the Neanderthals were smarter than us and are the ones who built everything, is being pre-empted BECAUSE...
There is big, disconcerting news in the comic book industry this week, that I will attempt to explain in an interesting way. I'll have a smattering of random comics to make it worth you opening this email, in case you find yourself not giving crap about comic book distribution.
Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade
Diamond Comic Distribution (the primary distributor for comic book stores) has filed for bankruptcy. Diamond was/is THE distributor for comics. Shipping everything from Spider-Man to Akira to Flaming Carrot to direct to just about every store in the U.S. and many overseas. Though very recently Marvel, DC, and Image comics have found other routes to distribute...which I'm sure played no small part in this.
Diamond Comic Distributors Files Voluntary Petition for Relief Under Chapter 11 - Diamond Comics
First thing to keep in mind is that at one point Marvel Comics itself filed for bankruptcy, they later rebounded to the point of becoming the pivotal force in pop culture. So this doesn't have to be as dire as it may seem.
Second thing is, there are many in the comic book industry, who are reacting to this news with glee (I'll be explaining why, shortly) which is very short sighted and lacking in seeing the big picture.
Diamond has been around for over 40yrs. That is 40 plus years that stores did not have to give one thought to how to operate without a central all encompassing distributor. The average reader might not realize this, but there are HUNDREDS of different comic book publishers. Even if you only wanted to stock your shelves with the top 200 books, you're still talking 50-70 different publishers. Imagine placing orders / dealing with that many publishers individually. There are a few other large-ish distributors currently...will they be around in 40 years? in five years? in 6 months? How will stores get their books and how much hassle will it be? It's been decades since we've had to ask such a question.
Diamond somehow managed to live through a complete shutdown of shipping companies in 2020, they've weathered strikes going on at UPS, and ever other damn problem think you could think of, since 1982, and stayed standing...keeping shelves stocked with comic books. Every person who is part of the comic book industry would do well to remember that. For whatever errors they've made here and here...this industry has always known who will get the comic books onto the shelves.
comic distribution...
How comic distribution works ( to comic book stores) is, publishers tell the distributor what they will be publishing, the distributor puts all those books into their catalogue, that catalogue goes to all the stores, they place their orders, the distributor collects the orders and sends the orders to publishers, they send the distributor the books, who then sends them to stores.
Sounds simple enough at small scale.. However...in Diamond's case the catalogue is 600 some pages, with oh... 5,000 to 10,000 items per month, going to several thousand different stores.
That is a logistical nightmare, that takes an amount of coordination, infrastructure and planning that I can only marvel at. In the 90s there were three distributors...then two...then pretty much only Diamond, with someone new popping up every couple of years, failing hard, and leaving only Diamond again. So, for several decades, Diamond Distribution was keeping the entire industry alive. Anyone could have usurped them, some tried, but in the end...the task I described , at the volume necessary, was too much for any one but Diamond to handle. If the industry would have had to rely on the parade of wanna be distributors that came and went, there would be no industry.
There are a couple new and quite competent competitors since 2020, but if they could handle the amount of business that Diamond does, if Diamond were to go belly up, is something I don't know and hope we don't have to find out. Because it's possible that they can't. Which would mean...the end of the game, for the majority of stores, publishers, and pros.
For those of you not seeing the reactions to this because of the view of Diamond by some in the industry, I'll summarize it as glee and snickering. Which, given what I just explained to you...is short sighted and foolish.
Publishers and Pros...
For independent publishers and small press Diamond had the reputation of being some evil gatekeeper. That was never the case, everyone got as fair a shot as you'd get in any industry and more fair than most. If they thought your book could make money, they'd carry it. You had three issues to get your orders up to 1000 copies an issue...which is bending over backwards to give you a chance, if you keep things in perspective. They carry Spider-man and Batman for f*cks sake and they're willing to keep books around that sell 1000 copies?!
A large part of the actual problem was that many indy guys, for some reason thought it was Diamond's job to get people to buy their comics. It wasn't and never has been. It's their job to make your book available, send you the order for however many comics the stores wanted, and then send them to the store. That's it. The rest was/is up to you. So the giant majority of indy books failed because they either sucked, didn't advertise well enough, or both.
And after having failed, rather than get better, they cried about Diamond, to whoever would listen. From time to time one would cry to me and after hearing me say that my working relationship with Diamond was just fine, they'd look at me like I had two heads. Being someone with little patience for mincing words I would lay it out plainly "they are in business to sell comics, I make comics people are willing to spend money on." That's a concept worth noting, maybe even more in this day and age. Because I am often at cons next to people with a massive online presence, but in real life...when it comes to people spending their hard earned money...not just clicking "like"...they sit there, alone, watching me sell books. Make sure your book is so good people want to own it. That is your job...not the distributors.
Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade
This industry has always had/attracted a malignant goutier of talented but ambitionless mopes and over the last decade or so it's turned into a massive tumor of (or maybe haven for) talented but ambitionless mopes. The type content to have, instead of a thriving fan base, a...weird stagnant adult circle jerk slumber party, with just enough people at it to satisfy their ego. Never thinking about/acting to get more readers from the industries current audience, much less bringing in people from outside the industry.
It's a weird mentality that I just can't get my head around...like...wtf are you doing here? Just get out of the way.
That's probably unfair...
I'll go at it another way... All you up and comers or people who want to become pros...You worked hard, yes? Your comic is good, yes? You believe in it, yes? and believe in yourself, yes? You want it to find an audience, yes? OKAY THEN, you don't want to sell 100 comics, or 500 comics, you want to sell 5000, 10,000 , more. and how are you going to distribute that amount? You gonna handle the shipping yourself? Spend a month labeling packages? Traveling the country selling them across a folding table at comicons? do the math on how many you can move that way...how many hours and how many conventions, and how much time all that'd take. No, you use a distributor who sends them to all the stores for you.
It's about growth, people. Think big...and you can do it. When Diamond said Arsenic Lullaby had three issues to get to 1000copies per issue, my thought was "if I'm only selling 1000 copies by issue no.3 I'll hang myself from the ceiling fan". I of course did not have to do that, but that's the mindset you want ( not the succeed or commit suicide) but thinking big. Your dreams deserve that much, for the sky to be the limit, yes?
And for that in comics you want DISTRIBUTION TO STORES.
Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade
See, being in a store means being in front of readers who haven't heard of you and are in the actual process of getting comic books. And being seen by the people working there who recommend comics...to people in the actual process of buying comic books. Or...you can see how many likes you get, and hope that some of them are people who buy comics, and will do extra clicking to orders yours, instead of just scrolling on to click "like" on something else. GROWTH...is what you want. That's why you need stores, that's why you need a distributor.
For that matter, stores need you too. Reading habits change over time (for most people). For instance, someone might start off reading Spider-Man then grow TF up and get tired of it...then years later go back and start reading Spidey again out of nostalgia. In between those phases of any given reader, in order for that store to keep that customer coming in, it needs books that are different than super hero crap to show said reader. Books like yours perhaps. It's all a sick co-dependent dance. Uhm...I mean a ecosystem.
Stores...
There are stores out there that loath Diamond for various reasons, mostly because of instances of lateness/damaged products, that sort of thing. Their most recent trouble in this regard, and a genuine problem, is that they merged their two largest hubs together at the very end of last year. AND...it has not gone smoothly and some stores are telling me it's been nigh two months of books being late.
That is not good. It's not good because in the world of the comic book reader, Wednesday is new comic book day. It has been for decades. They are in the habit/routine of going to their local shop on Wednesday for their new comics. That's not a habit you want them to break, whether you are a store, a publisher or a pro. I can certainly understand that pissing off a lot of stores. For that matter any lateness ever, or damaged goods...harms your business if you're a comic store owner.
But let's keep things in perspective. Let's give credit where credit is do. Much of what Diamond gets blamed for is out of their control, like- the weather, when the books actually get to them from the publisher and in what condition, what happens to the books in between leaving their hubs and UPS getting them to stores.
Whatever adjustments they make or do not during their bankruptcy...the bottom line is they fix that lateness problem immediately or they go the way of the dinosaur. and then what? Luna Distribution, for example, is very good...but can they take on all of Diamond's business, out of the blue, with less trouble that we're seeing from just two Diamond hubs being combined? Two hubs being combined by a distributor who's been doing this for four decades?
Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade
Truth be told to you all, this ain't really an industry in the position to give the finger to any entity making unintentional mistakes in it's role, or mocking it's struggles. It's just not. With the whole world quickly deciding they don't GAF about the MCU anymore...I don't think headlines of the largest comic book distributor going out of business is the image we're looking for. So, a bit of circling the wagons and figuring out how to make a positive out of a negative is what's called for here. Difficult as that may be...we all use our imagination, we can each figure something out OR...we could all wallow in the bad press, and mock the company that kept us in all in business, and watch comic book collecting become as relevant as collecting stamps or fishing lures...that'd be another option. I'd prefer the former option over the latter. Anyways...
I thank Diamond for all they've done, providing opportunity and assistance to me and many other indy books and I wish them a speedy recovery and all the success in the world.
to end this with an unlikely exclamation point...the Arsenic Lullaby temporary online store https://arseniclullaby.square.site/s/shop will be closing soon. I managed to get ALL the orders out in a timely manner, except ONE (which snuck past me but still went out in a week.) but I'm definitely pushing my luck on my level of competence, and will very soon be too damn busy. I had it up for the holidays and...I don't actually know how to take it down without screwing something up. I have to wait for webmaster Joe to have time to help me fix some website stuff and do it then. Definitely by the end of the month it'll be closed again. So, get while the getting is good!
As always...you can find Arsenic Lullaby comics HERE