If you have not heard the news, Diamond Distributors, the largest comics distributor in all the land, has
raised their benchmark cut off from $1500 to $2500 to cut the lowest selling books from their monthly ordering catalog (Marvel, DC, Image and Dark Horse, I am told, are brokered and do not have these rules applied to them).
"...in 2008 and prior, purchase order benchmark at Diamond cost – so our cost of goods – has been at a guideline of $1,500 of our cost. We’re raising that to $2,500 at our cost. So when someone brings a new product to us, we look at previous sales on that same series, or with a like artist, or on a like product, and evaluate if we think the new product will hit that benchmark. If we think we can, then we’ll list them. If we think it will be less than that benchmark, then we’ll have a conversation with the publisher what they’re going to do to help sell the product – get a sales and marketing/promotional campaign together or other means to help drive consumer interest to the retailers" -Bill Shanes of Diamond
What this means is that in order to have Diamond carry your independant $4 comic, comic shops have to order around 1550 copies of it, or around 2067 of a $3 comic. To put this in perspective, my comics normally sell around 3000... that's not bragging, that's barely over the benchmark, but it does safely clear it. I am still a relative unknown in the field but I have always worked on spin-offs or titles with a pre-existing fanbase to guarantee exposure, if I was to release a new, untested title would I see the same numbers?
Maybe... maybe not.... that's not the real problem for me.
When you sell around 3000 books, you barely cover the cost of printing them. The publisher has made little to no money, the creative team has made little to no money, the distributor has made a small sum and hopefully the comic store has made some money. This sad formula is what was already pushing me to look toward online publishing so this change does not really effect me all that much. I prefer to work within the established companies and established genres and build a small following that way.
The people who will be affected are the true trailblazers, the guys who print and distribute 22 black and white pages of abstract art, deep soul searching or oddball stuff like nazi weinerdogs fighting robot pickles. Most of the time this stuff is crap, (I'd say 50% of all comics in general are crap... I'm a glass is half full kinda guy) but there are the few bright and shiny diamonds that may be cut down by the cruel wheel of big business.
Hopefully this will be more of a blessing than a curse. The smaller stuff can boost the few remaining smaller distributors inventory with more exclusive titles, fly by night publishers and creators who release shoddy products will have to concentrate more on building a brand and an audience in advance, and $5 bimonthly double issues and webcomics will become more prevalent.
Comics will have to work harder to break out.
I don't think this is the best thing that could have ever happened to comics, Diamond is clearly putting its business before the industry, but I do think comics will be better because of it.
At least I hope so...
