As those of you who follow the Direct
Market know, Diamond
Comic Distributors has filed for Chapter
11 Bankruptcy protection. Long time watchers of the comic book
industry will understand just how surprising of a development this
is. For those that don’t, I’ll try and explain.
Once
upon a time, Diamond was the distributor for comics in North America
and the United Kingdom. That was after the distribution market
consolidated around Diamond in the 1980s; prior to that, there was a
great deal of regional distribution with comics. Distributors such as
Sea Gate, Pacific Comics (both as a publisher and a distributor),
Capital City, and —
here in Canada —
Styx, Andromeda, and Multi-Book among others. Even when
Diamond had a quasi-monopoly (and they were actually investigated
back in 2000!), other distributors still tried to come and go. My
personal favourite was Cold Cut, who I
ordered from pretty regularly back in my bookstore days. Another was
FM
International. Both Cold Cut and FM International were pretty
quirky, distributing indy and small press titles that Diamond either
didn’t distribute or tended to disappear in their cavernous
catalogues. And both are long gone now.
Due
to Diamond’s Chapter 11 situation, a number of writers have
written extensively on what Diamond was and what the changes in
Direct Market distribution since June
2020 have wrought with the company. I don’t want to retread
that ground. Instead, I wanted to discuss my own experiences with
Diamond, partially because I think it shows some of the problems that
Diamond had with small accounts and partially because some of these
issues go back prior to 2020.
As
a publisher, I have an account with Diamond and have had one since
2010. My Purchasing Brand Manager at that time was Jay Spence. Jay
was awesome and quite supportive; with his help I
was able to get my two-book graphic novel series, STARGAZER, into
Diamond’s catalogue Previews.
(Book 1 in the November 2010 issue with item code NOV101057 and Book
2 in the August 2011 issue with item code AUG111259).
While
these two books were admittedly pretty rough, though not quite as
rough as first graphic novel “the road to god knows…”
was, Jay’s encouragement and Diamond’s support led to
decent sales for my little black and white graphic novel series. And
STARGAZER is still in print and continues to sell to this day,
something I’m always a little surprised about.
It
would have been ideal to follow-up STARGAZER with something else
lickety-split,
but I knew that I needed to become stronger. And life sometimes takes
us in odd and surprising directions, and some of that happened to. At
any rate, time passed and when I was finally
ready to approach Diamond
again, this time in 2018 with
my ongoing series full colour
series WOLF’S
HEAD, I ran into problems.
The
first is that Jay had left Diamond to join Dynamite. All well and
good. What was less good was that I was having trouble reaching folks
at Diamond. Any folks. Emails
went unanswered. I actually
wound up tracking Jay down at Dynamite
and he managed to connect me with the right person. That
person was Leigh Tyberg and this is where things get interesting.
I’ve
saved my email correspondence with Leigh, because the emails
are
a great example about how Diamond and
their Purchasing Brand Managers worked. Or, in this case, failed to
work, something you’ll
see in a moment. To be very
clear, the Purchasing Brand Manager acts as
a Gate Keeper; they’re the ones who —
presumably with discussion
with other folks in the Purchasing Department —
decide whether
or not to carry a title. As I
noted above, Jay Spence was incredibly supportive of
both myself and STARGAZER, something I’m grateful for to this
day. Leigh?
Well, you’ll see.
When
it came to presenting WOLF’S HEAD to Diamond for distribution,
I had high hopes. I had grown a lot as both an artist and a writer
and
I thought the
plan I presented to Diamond
was fairly strong; WOLF’S
HEAD would be published
in 60 page graphic novel volumes, each volume
having an ISBN and a spine.
The inspiration for this approach, by the by, was actually a title
from Dark Horse Comics, a retelling of CREATURE
FROM THE BLACK LAGOON by Art Adams. At 52 pages, it was “meatier”
then a normal saddle-stitched comic but still affordable. And
I liked the format of that book quite a bit.
My
decision was also influenced by how
Diamond worked. Very quickly, comics and graphic novels
distributed by Diamond have
to meet a minimum sales threshold. This
threshold, called the Purchase Order Benchmark, was originally set at
$1,500.00 US but was raised to $2,500.00 US in
2009. Note that was not at
retail price but at wholesale. As George
Gene Gustines at the New York Times pointed out at the time, “a
$2.95 comic book would have to receive a minimum order of 2,100
copies” (2,100 ×
$2.95 = $6,195.00; since Diamond takes a 60% cut of
the retail price, 40% of
$6,195.00 is $2,478.00, very close to the Purchase Order Benchmark).
This sent shock waves through
the industry (hell, so much
so that the New York Times
commented on it!). Part of the reason this was so monumental was that
it marked a significant change from how the benchmark used
to work. As Diamond noted
back in 2007, “Diamond’s benchmark for comic books
solicited through Previews is $2,500 retail.” The new benchmark
was actually $6,250 (!) retail, because $6,250 ×
40% = (you guessed it)
$2,500! That’s a 150%
increase, the main reason that small press publishers of
saddle-stitched comics at the time were freaking out.
WOLF’S
HEAD, as a trade paperback with a higher price point, would have to
sell less copies
per volume then a normal
saddle-stitched comic to
reach Diamond’s Purchase Order Benchmark.
And having an ISBN for each volume would allow me to access online
retailers like Amazon as well as “brick and mortar”
bookstores. More venues
matter. As it turns out, the
online retailers have been a huge part of why I’ve managed to
continue publishing WOLF’S HEAD to this day.
It’s
important to remember that
Direct Market retailers (aka “comic book shops”) have to
buy their titles non-returnably. So they are always rolling the dice
on small press titles, especially small press titles from unknown —
or even lesser known —
creators. That makes them understandably gun-shy, especially when
they own their mistakes —
literally. Unlike bookstores, they can’t return their titles
for credit (and while there have been some changes in this regard
more recently, this was the case I faced with both STARGAZER and
WOLF’S HEAD). So comic shops are, broadly speaking, pretty
reticent to buy small press titles, though obviously there are many
individual exceptions to this. While
it may seem that a lower price point helps here, it actually doesn’t.
If a supportive retailer is going to purchase a title, they are
probably only going to purchase it in low quantities regardless of
what the price point is. They might waffle; maybe they’d buy
four or five
copies of a $2.99 US title and only two copies of a $9.99 US title,
but it’s likely to be around that (obviously this is anecdotal,
but I’m partially basing it on my own purchasing habits when I
was buyer at the bookstore I managed).
At
any rate, this is the situation I faced when I initially reached out
to Leigh and Diamond. You can see my initial email to Jay below. Since his reply was from his Dynamite email address, prudence dictates that I probably shouldn’t replicate it here (that or redact it heavily!). The key point is that he did manage to connect me to the correct person, as you will see in a moment. Oh, and as always I should add that Von Allan is my pen name; Eric is my real name. So when you see those references, you’ll know who is being spoken of.
What
follows is my correspondence with Leigh Tyberg, my Purchasing Brand
Manager. I’ll let that
speak for itself. The only thing I’ll add is please note the dates of the various emails.
And
that’s where it ended. Leigh (and Diamond) ghosted
me. The key thing that’s amazing about this is that Leigh and
Diamond never formally rejected WOLF’S HEAD. Obviously they
never accepted it, either. Ghosting
can be destructive behaviour when one experiences it personally. But
when a business does it? When a business that has a stranglehold on
the Direct Market —
which Diamond had at the time —
does it? Well, at least with a rejection you know where you stand.
I’ve been rejected boatloads of times. It ain’t fun, but
you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going. But the
waiting, wondering if you’ll hear back? Wondering if the
ghosting is just something else? That’s awful.
To
this day I don’t know what happened. I debated pestering Leigh
and Diamond again, but eventually COVID started and the distribution
side of the industry exploded. And
like many folks with COVID, I experienced a personal loss that put
the brakes on a lot of things.
That
said, I also don’t hold any animosity towards Leigh or even
Diamond, though I’d be lying if I said that the experience
wasn’t frustrating. Ghosting isn’t fun, but life goes on.
I’m disappointed that
Diamond —
apparently
—
had no interest in
distributing WOLF’S HEAD, but I’m also pleased that I’m
in no way affected by their recent Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing.
Despite it all, Leigh is
still listed at Diamond as a Purchasing Brand Manager.
The
funny thing about the whole experience was that,
in the intervening years,
I kept working on WOLF’S HEAD and I kept growing. That led to
receiving two separate
$4,000.00 grants from the City of Ottawa for my work on the series,
being
shortlisted for a Peter
Honeywell award for my work on it, and
finding an audience despite
the lack of access by Diamond. Despite
it all, WOLF’S HEAD still continues and
I’m having
a helluva good time doing it.
Who
knows, perhaps Diamond will rise like a phoenix and be reborn into
something new. Or perhaps after consolidating so much of the
distribution side of the Direct Market, they won’t rebound at
all. If so, perhaps their fall will be a cautionary tale of what can
happen when a company with so much going for it forgets that, at the
end of the day, it’s human beings that make a difference. And
it’s human beings, both inside Diamond and out, that matter.
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