Let me add a few things here:

To my way of thinking, to distinguish between Diamond Distribution and Steve Geppi is nothing more than a legal fiction. And we've been told that Geppi holds only a small amount of equity in NPO. May I ask, HOW small? Is there any way we can find out exactly how much of NPO he owns? And what is meant by equity - the comics themselves? (Though I believe I remember reading that Geppi was able to cancel NPO's debt to Diamond with this agreement.)

The only ways that comics publishers have of fighting Diamond are: (1) sell more through conventional retail outlets, like chain bookstores ore Amazon.com; (2) form a united organization with a strong retail presence - hopefully comicon.com is a step in that direction; (3) see to it that when the current exclusivity agreements end, they are not renewed, and no new ones are created in their place.

P.S. - Isn't it ludicrous that you have to 'fight' Diamond at all?

"And we've been told that Geppi holds only a small amount of equity in NPO. May I ask, HOW small?"

According Diamond's John Davis, who has recently surfaced on the Comickaze Retailer Forum to present the DCD line, Geppi owns a percentage interest in NPO in the "single digits."

Paul Dubuc,
Checker Comics

He may own only a single digit share, but with Diamond as the exclusive order fulfillment mechanism, Diamond/Geppi can exercise almost total control over what NPO's product line will include, and discounts, and promotions, and etc. And if NPO doesn't do what Diamond says, DCD can squeeze them with such tactics as slow/no shipping and backorders.

Remember from DUNE: "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." Diamond could erase NPO tomorrow by denying them credit to buy their product. I doubt that they would -- but the possibility exists. This is a danger of exclusivity; to go ahead with business under these circumstances indicates something far more involved than a sales entity/fullfillment service business relationship.

Come to think of it, since Diamond is the exclusive distributor for the whole industry, they could put everyone out of business literally overnight. Heh... except for us little indie kids.

Yeah I'm being cynical and pessimistic. Someone want to give me a reason not to be? I'm all ears. I spent enough time in corporate to understand how it works.

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

But Diamond can't "destroy a thing" with NPO. It's only an order fulfillment deal, for Pete's sake! If Diamond doesn't want to do it, NPO will find someone else. End of story.

NPO is no different from any other comic book retailer, except that Steve apparently owns a small slice (say, 5%) of the shares of stock in it. Big deal - he owns 100% of the shares of the Geppi's Comic World chain.

And NPO didn't "have its debt cancelled" by this deal - they haven't existed before; they have no debt to cancel. You're probably thinking of AnotherUniverse, which Geppi in essence took control of because of their big debt to Diamond; but even then, he didn't cancel the debt - he bought AU with his own money, which was then used to pay AU's debt to Diamond. Only slightly different, I'll grant you, but it is different.


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Mark
Cold Cut

Mark -- Good to see you posting! Good especially to see Cold Cut it still alive and well.
___________________

Re:
"I'm sorry to be so dense, but I'm afraid I don't understand what the NextPlanetOver thing has to do with your Tyrant TPB. Why would Diamond doing order fulfillment for someone for two years keep Tyrant from coming out in TPB form? Why do you think NPO would have an effect on your advance orders from retailers? Couldn't you just solicit it and see what numbers you get?
I'm confused..."
________________

Apologies -- I've discussed this elsewhere on the board, and wrongly assumed that context was a given.

As both Mike Friedrich and Denis Kitchen seperately advised me while I was struggling on TABOO, "Don't publish unless you can afford to publish." Even with various financing and publishing partners, I pissed away a fortune I never had on TABOO.

Lesson learned. I published TYRANT as long as I was able to afford to.

In short: Even when TYRANT had some visibility, the dist. arrangement meant the Diamond check covered all my printing costs, the smaller Capital check (and cumulative total of the rest, including Cold Cut) was my profit, financing continuing work and reprints (TYRANT #1, 2, and 3 had multiple printruns, to meet demand).

Once Capital was gone, the ability to cover print bills with the Diamond checks alone made any publishing venture a far greater risk. Sans profit of any kind, there was no way to finance ongoing work. The sales attrition was of course antagonized by my slow publishing of work, for which I assume full responsibility.

Brisk sales of back issues continued into 1998. By 1997, though, Diamond policy changes about relists effectively depleted and then killed that means of income, too. All of which -- further depleted by the financial issues involved in my divorce, child care, moving, and meager living expenses, etc. -- brought me to near-bankruptcy conditions.

With the speed of geological plate tectonics, I continued work, whenever I could steal the time from paying jobs, though I could no longer publish that work.

Someday, I can and will.

Hey, I understand the frustration. No one needs or wants TYRANT back in print more than I. You want no more excuses -- "take the dive, Steve. C'mon, you chicken -- JUMP! Let's see your stuff!!"

Hell, I've been on that ledge for two or three years now, from your point of view.

I will self-publish as I can afford to. My financial situation is pretty dire these days. I am working day and night to pay off the remaining SpiderBaby debts. When I can pay for a print run of TYRANT trades, however meager, up front, I will solicit.

The days of soliciting to "see what happens" hoping to just cover one's printing bill alone are behind me, I'm afraid.

I DON'T TRUST Diamond, and they are my only means of dist. remaining that could even hope to cover the cost of a trade pb. For a brief time, the hope of an alternative dist. on the net under Milton offered some sliver of optimism -- but no, Diamond has their talons into that, too.

I have chosen not to deal with Diamond, or should I say "bank" at Diamond, since their dealings with King Hell brought Rick to the brink of ruin through no fault of his. One delayed or withheld check, one warehouse confusion (all more likely than ever, given Diamond's current warehouse shenanigens), and this completely unimportant, non-exclusive, bottom-of-the-pecking-and-paying order account is out of business on a NON-voluntary basis.

And what, I ask myself on occasion, if some power-that-be WANTED to compromise me in such a manner?
[I have worked hard for over a decade to earn a living in comics away from DC, too -- but everywhere I turn, there they are, as the recent Wildstorm debacle AND Diamond conference proved. It would appear that Levitz can shake Geppi more than the Justice Department can...]

Sales via any existing alternative, including Cold Cut, will not significantly finance a trade paperback in the current collapsed market.

Preorder via Connect Sales isn't a viable option -- not enough quantity, as I stated. Given my track record, it is reasonable to expect (hell, I have to count on it) the community response of "I'll wait till I see it or KNOW it's out," fueling my determination to finance even a minimal print run on my own to "prime the pump."

Until I can print TYRANT (or the SPIDERBABY collections) and sell in a venue that will carry a reasonable chance of recouping costs sans Diamond -- in which any scenario wherein their potential to do to SpiderBaby what they did to King Hell would be of little consequence in regards to my ability to pay my printer -- it is foolhardy to proceed.

The inability to pay a printer AFTER publication would be enough to push me into brankruptcy, and face the potential loss of my creative properties and trademarks as well as my shirt. The way things are going, those "properties" may be all I have to leave my children when I'm gone.

Would you bet it all in a wager with Diamond?

I must wait, Mark.

I ABSOLUTELY appreciate the interest and support Cold Cut offered and still extends, but it isn't going to pay my bills. Not even my printing bills.

Since 1997, I've been seeking, hoping for an alternative or sizeable-enough companion to Diamond-dependent publishing. Rick has been trying to build one, in his way (welcome to comicon.com).

It ain't here yet. It ain't even in sight, really.

I thought, for one week, NPO was an alternative. Foolish me.

Not.

For.

Two.

Years.

Thus, the point of my original posting. I hope this clarifies my point.

[This message has been edited by Stephen R Bissette (edited 03-31-99).]

Mark, thanks for the realignment! [img]/resources/ubb/smile.gif[/img] You're right, NPO could get someone else to do the fulfillment. Somehow I suspect it would cost them a hell of a lot more... but they could find another fulfillment contractor. They still have to buy most of their product from Diamond anyway, which is likely why they decided to deal with Diamond directly. No middleman, so to speak.

Steve, have you listed your existing TPBs at Amazon.com and GraphicNovels.com? Have you approached any of the book distributors? All you need to list on Amazon is an ISBN number, it's FREE. Yes, FREE. Biggest online retailer listing is FREE.

I'm asking because you don't mention any other method of getting your books out besides Diamond, and if you have TPBs with ISBN numbers on them (as opposed to comics which are considered periodicals and don't qualify), you have many more options. Since you haven't mentioned, I don't know if you've tried to go elsewhere. I'm going to the American Booksellers Association convention in LA at the end of April; I'm going to try to gather information about going thru booksellers with TPBs. I'll certainly share everything I learn with everyone here at Comicon. So I'll let ya know!

Now this is assuming you actually have boxes of unsold TPBs laying around. However, it looks like you're trying to finance new printing from preorders... I don't know anything about that. With our comic we're essentially paying cash up front out of pocket for the printing, and hoping we get it back in sales eventually.

We have sort of an opposite problem from you I guess... we're committed to producing the product on our own dime (fortunately we've planned this for a while now and contribute chunks of our income monthly), and then trying to get it sold. In other words, we're creating an inventory of product which we hope to sell, whereas you are attempting to finance the production by pre-selling the book to distributors. Am I right?



Okay, so you are going to try it the other way too. I think that's probably a good idea. If you know that you'll get orders immediately 1f you have a product ready to sell -- which I think you would, you're a well-known artist with a body of work and fans -- then having the product BEFORE you go to the distributors makes sense.

Yeah, it's a lot of money out of pocket, and in your current situation, it's gotta be really tough and also very frustrating to have to wait until the cash reserves build up, holding back your creativity. I feel for ya man... hang in there.

Just curious, how many pages and in what format are your TPBs? If you're doing them in color I can certainly see they'd be really expensive... but a 96-page B&W might not be all that expensive to produce, considering the potential return on the cover price.

Once again this is all my opinion, and I might be an idiot. But, Steve and anyone else who's trying this, you have my support. And I really hope this Diamond mess settles out into something that works better, and doesn't put everyone out of business.

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

[This message has been edited by Jeff Zugale (edited 03-31-99).]

Stephen: Now I understand; thanks for clarifying. I hadn't realized you were thinking of NPO as a web-based distributor, since I knew they were retail. Oh, well.

As a side note, I suspect web-based distribution is still a number of years away -- and that it will be at least 10 years before it becomes a challenge in any way to traditional distribution (and it may never be). The web simply isn't "there" enough yet. Given a choice between web ordering and physical ordering (or even diskette-based ordering but web-uploading, like Diamond), 95% of retailers are going to choose the latter -- and that percentage won't be dropping that fast.

Jeff: Stephen doesn't really have TPBs (unless you count Taboo -- hmmm... fairly sure they don't have ISBNs, though). He has periodicals, which I personally am slavering to see collected into a perennial TPB. But I understand his financial problems preventing him from wanting to really risk printing what are usually fairly expensive things (TPBs).

And w.r.t. Diamond's fulfillment being cheap, I wonder. I suspect it's more a case of not too many people positioned to be able to do this. In order for it to work, you either have to be a distributor, or you have to be located essentially across the street from one. That way, for the orders which come in, you have "instant access" to a reasonable breadth of stock for sending out. You also have to have more-or-less accurate inventory counts, so that the web pages can reflect what's in or out of stock.

Hmmm. You know, a large enough store or store chain could handle this. Mile High, for instance, could certainly offer order fulfillment services. So is there a large store or chain which doesn't really have a web presence but would be interested in selling more comics? Hmmmm... maybe someone like Comic Cavalcade in Illinois? Comic Carnival in Indiana? How about largish warehouses like Fantasy Dist, or Kingdom Comics?

The deal would be something like this: NPO markets the comics through their web site and takes the orders. They turn around and place the order with the retailer, giving him the address to ship to. In return for the quantity of business NPO would drum up, they would ask for (say) a 30% discount off retail price. Then NPO would pay the retailer the cost of the books (30% off retail), as well as pay them for shipping, as well as pay some smallish handling fee (maybe $2 or so?), and everyone's happy. NPO has made some simple profit without having to actually stock or handle books; the retailer has made some sales (perhaps a lot of sales) and only had to give a larger-than-usual discount. Win-win scenario, right?

In a way, that's all the Diamond/NPO deal is. You know, typing it out like this makes me surprised nobody *else* has set up this with a large store chain, or a small distributor. Even stores who are on the web (like Comic Cavalcade) won't hit all the marketable people out there - fans only think to go to CC for the hot bad girl stuff, but they have tons of other stuff too. So why not broker a deal with them in this fashion?

Just a thought (take two, they're free!),


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Mark
Cold Cut

NPO stuff:

I wonder if NPO is going to inventory books in addition to what Diamond has on hand. I mean, Diamond doesn't keep as much as people think in stock. Heck, I found that even in-print exclusive pubs will lapse out of Diamond's inventory for months at a time.

For instance, what if NPO finds a book that Diamond doesn't have on-hand? Will...

1) Diamond stock this book due to NPO promotion of the title? Or,

2) NPO inventory this book in some section of the Diamond warehouse for themselves to ensure proper levels.

As for financing the sale of SpiderBaby trades:

Why not collect direct orders from a number of larger retailers? Figure how many you need to pre-sell to finance the printing and try to put together the orders. Is something like this impossible? Collections are always a problem when dealing with lots of folks but you could ask for either COD or pre-pay with CC for terms. Once the orders are assembled, submit the print job and send out notice to those buyers that it's coming.

Or, shudder, take advertising in the trades?

Robert Altomare
GraphicNovels.com

Mark-

Not sure if you have read any of my other posts, but Diamond will essentially be providing an awful lot of service for NPO. The majority (quantity wise) of most comics are printed by Quebecor last I knew, which is some distance from Sparta, IL. Now how do they actually consider this as a "dropship" point?
There probably isn't a store within 30 or 40 miles of the warehouse. It is at least 250-300 miles or more from Chicago, and probably an hour or more from St. Louis. Champaign, IL is not much closer either, probably at least 150 miles or more.
No matter how they slice it, NPO is getting a bargin that I can only assume other subscription services in the area (M & M and Westfield) would love to have.
Odd that the fufillment center is so far from where the majority (again, qty wise) are printed. It all boils down to the promises made to the city and state back when the warehouses were built. And you can bet that Milton knew exactly what was available both space and machine wise at the Sparta location.

Regarding Taboo, ISBN, and Amazon...

The issues of Taboo that I own do indeed have ISBN, and they are listed on Amazon, but they are listed as either out-of-print, or (for one issue), selling at higher than the cover price.

If Stephen does indeed have copies of Taboo lying around, it can't hurt to set up with the Amazon Advantage program.


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Marc Fleury
Go to the John & Cori website right now> you doofus!
www.panel1.com/abdo/jnc

(That's my new sig. Not bad, eh?)