Broken Frontier

It figures that as soon as I have a new series and a completed trade paperback to put in the Diamond Distribution catalogue, they raise their minimum order standards again.

I was already burned the last time Diamond raised its minimums. I had just started publishing my first comic series, Adrenaline. It was an eight issue series, but after issue 4, it was dropped for not meeting the new minimum orders. This left me with the task of having to complete the last 4 issues without the primary, and pretty much only means of getting a comic book into shops and in readers hands. I’ve just now finished the entire series. That’s the mountain climbing cover right there, which seems rather appropriate because I felt like completing the series was a bit like climbing a mountain.

But I can’t deny that the first four issues of Adrenaline did not sell well. I wasn’t making any money off of them, and neither was Diamond. I don’t want to make it sound like they were making an unfair decision, then or now with the even higher standards. But I did feel like I was trying something new with comics, not outrageously original or anything, but different than the typical types of comics and established niches. And it takes time to grow this type of interest and awareness, and I felt like my effort was cut off before it really had a chance to begin.

Now as the minimum standards increase again, it’s getting even more difficult to establish something new. To take a quick look at the numbers, Diamond’s new minimum is a purchase order amount of $2,500. This means that the percentage that goes to the publisher has to reach this amount, not the total retail price or the amount that goes to Diamond. Typically, the publisher gets 40% of the cover price. There are probably instances where they get less than that, but I’m sure Diamond doesn’t ever give a small publisher more than 40%.
So if a publisher keeps the price of the comic down to $2.99, their cut would be about $1.19 (maybe less), meaning that they would have to get at least 2,100 preorders or Diamond would cancel distribution for it.

And I know that 2,100 isn’t a terribly high number, and if a publisher isn’t selling over this amount, they’re not making much, if any, money anyway. Unfortunately, that’s just the state of the industry these days and plenty of promising titles simply cannot reach that benchmark, at least not when they’re just getting started.
For any creators and publishers who are now going to be faced with the inability to have their comics shipped to retailers, I would recommend moving on to other means of distribution. I put my entire Adrenaline series online to read for free. It hasn’t developed into any great economic plan, but people are still reading it and now that I have the trade ready, I should be able to get that distributed. The much higher price point should make it easier to reach the minimum purchase order, but there are no guarantees. 

If you ask me, as far as the dearth of truly independent comics being sold through Diamond, the damage has already been done. I used to enjoy looking through the back of the catalog. I know it was a crazy mess, but you could find some interesting new independent and alternative comics. This is no longer the case. I don’t look through it anymore because most of what’s left is just cheesecake/soft porn comics that seem to survive based off of the faithful purchases of dedicated, variant cover buying fans. So if there’s some way to finish the job and wipe them out, I’m all for it. But my guess is that they’ll endure somehow, probably do even better now that Diamond is also canceling their adult section.

My real concern has to do with the ramifications this high sales standard will have on the industry. For one, it makes it a lot harder to keep the cover price down. Some of the small press companies have come out and said that they’re going to stay at $2.99 despite the move by Marvel and DC to $3.99 for a regular size comic. But the new standards are based on the total price of sales, not on quantity, which actually works more in the favor of publishers who have raised their price.

Some small publishers might be forced to raise their price to maintain distribution. This is an odd strategy for new books because they are sacrificing the amount of readers in hopes that the few people that do buy the comic will pay more to make up the difference. Not a great way to attract a larger audience.

And what about all those great, lower priced “jump-on” issues. In my column focusing on APE Entertainment (Join The APE Evolution, Baby 11/26) I wrote about their plan to sell the first issue of a couple of their new series for only a $1 cover price. Since then, they’ve also solicited a $2 Athena Voltaire/Black Coat one-shot. This is a great way to get new readers to try out a title. But now publishers have to weigh this lower price, with the increased number of comics they will have to sell to meet the minimum. At $2, they would have to sell 3,125 copies. I would hope that they would be able to sell this many copies, but I’m just not sure if a very reasonably priced comic is enough of a draw these days.

Image tried publishing a couple of $1.99 comic with Fell and Casanova. It was a nice idea, I appreciated saving the buck, but I’m not sure it drove in the extra readers. While they both sold pretty well, I think that had more to do with the creators and how good they actually were. And even considering all of that, they still didn’t do that well.

I’m pretty sure you’ll see less experimentation with lower price comics. And you’ll also see fewer experimental titles as well. Even the more successful small publishers will be less likely to go out on a limb and pick up an unusual looking series, or one that does something a little different than what’s proven to sell.

So where does that leave us? Well, there’s no point in blaming Diamond or their new minimum purchase order standard. If they don’t want you, then it’s not a great place for you to be anyway. The trick is to find other ways to get new material out there, and keeping the price down would certainly be helpful. This points to the Internet as an appealing alternative, but that avenue hasn’t fully really revealed itself yet. Not that we have to rely on one particular method. We just have to continue to come up with other means, and if we do, all of comics will be better for it.

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Tyler Chin-Tanner started his own publishing company, A Wave Blue World, and writes and draws layouts for Adrenaline, its flagship series.
© 2008 Tyler Chin-Tanner.  All rights reserved.
Email: tyler@awaveblueworld.com
www.awaveblueworld.com