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So I'm hearing that the last remaining comic book distributor in existence -- Diamond Comics Distributors, which effectively locked all other distributors out of the direct market industry and essentially held a monopoly over the retail side of the comic book industry -- has now filed for bankruptcy. After years of serving as the retail/direct market gatekeeper for ALL comic book publishers, last month Diamond has realized it can't keep the money flowing anymore. Of course, it realized that fact when THEY ALONE couldn't make things work anymore; Diamond deliberately turned their noses up at any publisher or comic book/graphic novel series that didn't meet their ridiculous sales benchmarks for decades -- my former publisher, Alterna Comics, found themselves on the Diamond's cutting block and backed out of the program in late 2010 I believe... and last time I checked, their sales actually went up after a few short months. They're now doing quite fantastic and have some comics that received NYT Bestseller status (keep in mind this is pre-2016 NYT status).
Diamond, which has been ripping off consumers, retailers, AND publishers and their talents, now has to face the music for all of the money-hoarding and exploitative business practices they've indulged in for the last nearly two decades. Not even the Big Two can save them. The question now is, what effects will this bankruptcy have on the retail arm of the comic book industry? And what changes will this force on the droves of corrupt and exploitative publishers who still maintain an undeserved grip on the medium's market? I don't know, but I feel like the comic book industry -- which has survived on shitty dealmaking with artists/writers, shelling out the lion's share of earnings through licensing deals instead of to the creators themselves, and through criminally exploitative business practices that led to things like the death of 38-year-old artist Ian McGinty in June 2023 (as confirmed by McGinty's own mother on social media) -- deserves this reckoning. The starving artist analogy persists because the powers that be in the entertainment industry as a whole want it to persist. Maybe this will shatter the ugly prospect that the only way to get a dream job in the comics industry, and by extension the entertainment industry as a whole, is to sell one's soul to the devil and sign a contract in blood that strips them of all dignity in exchange for shifty deals that change on the whim of cigar-smoking, untalented CEOs with only a head for numbers and nothing else. Some publishers are hoping for someone to buy Diamond so they don't lose out on the lack of Previews magazines giving an estimate on what should be ordered by each shop (believe it or not, by some crazy error of sorts, my graphic novel Lil' Hero Artists: The Original Series made it into the 2010 Previews and other distribution markets. Now it has a slot on ComicsPriceGuide.com for grading from near-mint to poor, but since 2010 the site requires an account to view price-grading for print copies of all comics on it), but I say good riddance to the distributor. It's caused so many headaches for any non-Big Two publisher and is basically the reason why artists and writers don't even entertain a modest shot at marketing and selling their work on a large scale.
When you have a publisher who tells you, "Your work sucks", so you publish your book yourself, then later you take your book to a retailer and the retailer tells you, "You aren't in Diamond's Previews? Then we don't think you're really even worth a consideration. Have you tried submitting to publishers?", it's discouraging and dismissive of your efforts. How do I know? I've been there. Several times. Until I got my first publisher contract from Alterna and learned I wasn't really cut out for being traditionally published. But I treasure my relationship with Alterna and the experiences I gained through them, and that's enough for me. The comics industry needs to be exposed and face its overdue reckoning, and that includes Diamond Comics Distributors (and its sibling Diamond Book Distributors). Scamming artists and writers to leech money off of their creations is a crime that should no longer be rewarded through crooked publisher business practices. Period.
The Implications of Diamond Comic Distributors' Bankruptcy, as discussed in this article at Publisher's Weekly.
Diamond, which has been ripping off consumers, retailers, AND publishers and their talents, now has to face the music for all of the money-hoarding and exploitative business practices they've indulged in for the last nearly two decades. Not even the Big Two can save them. The question now is, what effects will this bankruptcy have on the retail arm of the comic book industry? And what changes will this force on the droves of corrupt and exploitative publishers who still maintain an undeserved grip on the medium's market? I don't know, but I feel like the comic book industry -- which has survived on shitty dealmaking with artists/writers, shelling out the lion's share of earnings through licensing deals instead of to the creators themselves, and through criminally exploitative business practices that led to things like the death of 38-year-old artist Ian McGinty in June 2023 (as confirmed by McGinty's own mother on social media) -- deserves this reckoning. The starving artist analogy persists because the powers that be in the entertainment industry as a whole want it to persist. Maybe this will shatter the ugly prospect that the only way to get a dream job in the comics industry, and by extension the entertainment industry as a whole, is to sell one's soul to the devil and sign a contract in blood that strips them of all dignity in exchange for shifty deals that change on the whim of cigar-smoking, untalented CEOs with only a head for numbers and nothing else. Some publishers are hoping for someone to buy Diamond so they don't lose out on the lack of Previews magazines giving an estimate on what should be ordered by each shop (believe it or not, by some crazy error of sorts, my graphic novel Lil' Hero Artists: The Original Series made it into the 2010 Previews and other distribution markets. Now it has a slot on ComicsPriceGuide.com for grading from near-mint to poor, but since 2010 the site requires an account to view price-grading for print copies of all comics on it), but I say good riddance to the distributor. It's caused so many headaches for any non-Big Two publisher and is basically the reason why artists and writers don't even entertain a modest shot at marketing and selling their work on a large scale.
When you have a publisher who tells you, "Your work sucks", so you publish your book yourself, then later you take your book to a retailer and the retailer tells you, "You aren't in Diamond's Previews? Then we don't think you're really even worth a consideration. Have you tried submitting to publishers?", it's discouraging and dismissive of your efforts. How do I know? I've been there. Several times. Until I got my first publisher contract from Alterna and learned I wasn't really cut out for being traditionally published. But I treasure my relationship with Alterna and the experiences I gained through them, and that's enough for me. The comics industry needs to be exposed and face its overdue reckoning, and that includes Diamond Comics Distributors (and its sibling Diamond Book Distributors). Scamming artists and writers to leech money off of their creations is a crime that should no longer be rewarded through crooked publisher business practices. Period.
The Implications of Diamond Comic Distributors' Bankruptcy, as discussed in this article at Publisher's Weekly.
