KIM said:<<**RICK: I wish Diamond discounts were better for Fantagraphics titles too, but someone farther down points out that it has more to do with sales levels than with exclusives-vs.-non-exclusives.>>

I dunno. It seems to me that no one knows what the long term effects of this structure really means for the non-exclusives. I'm not a business historian but it stands to reason that products that can be wholesaled cheaper than competing products will inherit the marketplace. It seems to me that the current situation serves to 'freeze in place' sales for exclusive books compared to non-exclusives. Retailers order by how the PREVIEWS catalog alots space (a function of Diamond's deals with the exclusives), not on whether a book is good or salable.
<>

And the potential number of new readers a book like MINIMUM WAGE could bring into comics dwarfs the tiny remaing superhero audience.

<>

If you are a retailer and this month's Previews is promising a special new exclusive title that is going to be 'bigger than the DEATH OF SUPERMAN', and you must cut something somewhere to stock up on it, *where* you gonna make those cuts? X-MEN or EIGHTBALL?

<<**RICK: I'm not sure what "what's the deal with the Fantagraphics presence in PREVIEWS?" means, exactly (it sounds like the opening line in a REALLY bad comedian's monologue), but if you're looking for details of our specific arrangement with Diamond I can't help you there. Like all publishers, we've
negotiated our way to something we're comfortable with, and the details are no one's business but ours and Diamond's. Sorry.>>

Specifically I was wondering if the small to mid-sized independent companies like FANTAGRAPHICS were able to get free color and space in PREVIEWS like the exclusives (while the 'doofuses' are flogged at $600 per black and white page). The fact that these deals are as closely held as state secrets only serves to inflame my imagination of course.
Does such a 'best bunk in the concentration camp' scenario explain why you seem so comfortable with your accommodations in the Diamond market?





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Rick Veitch
Invites You To Read THE DAILY RARE BIT FIENDS
updated every day along with news of the world's most popular artform!
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Ben: I'm not ignoring you, I'm just marshaling my thoughts.

Rick: "Retailers order by how the PREVIEWS catalog alots space (a function of Diamond's deals with the exclusives), not on whether a book is good or salable." Well, I think you're giving the retailers too little credit. The ones that are dumb enough to do this are dumb enough to not order the alternatives even if they WERE at the same discount. And this wouldn't explain the fact that a book like HATE will in fact outsell a goodly number of Image and DC comics, and most of the Dark Horse non-movie line.

"And the potential number of new readers a book like MINIMUM WAGE could bring into comics dwarfs the tiny remaing superhero audience." Of course. But that's pie in the sky at this point.

"If you are a retailer and this month's Previews is promising a special new exclusive title that is going to be 'bigger than the DEATH OF SUPERMAN', and you must cut something somewhere to stock up on it, *where* you gonna make those cuts? X-MEN or EIGHTBALL?" Well, bearing in mind that a Death-of-Superman title might suck consumer dollars away from the rest of the super-hero trash --assuming super-hero fans' budgets are not infinitely extendable-- but won't touch the sales of EIGHTBALL, I'd keep my EIGHTBALL orders level and trim and super-hero ones. But...shouldn't we be asking retailers this directly? Any retailers out there?

"The fact that these deals are as closely held as state secrets only serves to inflame my imagination of course. Does such a 'best bunk in the concentration camp' scenario explain why you seem so comfortable with your accommodations in the Diamond market?" In any business situation everyone will negotiate him- or herself the best deal, and neither party wants the deal to go public for reasons that should be obvious. And every party is terrifically curious about every other party's deal. That's the way of the wicked world. So I'm going to have to just stick with "no comment" on this one (although if you're in an investigative mood you could nudge NBM and Drawn & Quarterly and see if they'll spill the beans on THEIR deals -- and whether or not they're happy with Diamond).

I should note that that since we bill Diamond for over $1,000,000 a year, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that our deal might be different from what an unproved fledgling self-publisher is getting.

And I should point out that if we polled retailers and asked them, "If you got a better discount on Fantagraphics comics from Diamond, would you order more of them?," they would likely all answer OH YES, INDEEDY --regardless of whether or not they would actually order more-- for reasons that should be obvious after a moment's thought. I suspect this is the trap that Dave Sim fell into with CEREBUS.

At best, I could imagine that retailers might become bolder and order a few extra copies on initial sales, but such a large proportion of our sales comes from re-orders (early issues of ACME have sold 2 or 3 times what initial orders were, and we still routinely overprint ACME, EIGHTBALL, and BLACK HOLE by 100%, anticipating continued sales -- and of course on books, the balance is even more toward re-orders).

Kim: Don't worry, I'm not fishing around for an in depth investigative article on how these deals are structured (that's the Journal's job;-). But I am honestly interested in what has happened to some of my favorite loudmouths in comics (Dave Sim, Gary Groth and you) that has either shut them up entirely or got them blowing air kisses when it comes to the Diamond market.
Which is it: Fear? Perks? Contentment? Old age?

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Rick Veitch
Invites You To Read THE DAILY RARE BIT FIENDS
updated every day along with news of the world's most popular artform!
THE COMICON.COM DAILY SPLASHis always refreshing!
www.comicon.com/splash

Ah, referring to an earlier post -

My assistant Jeremy was reading through these things, and pointed out that the Steve Conley book I professed to love so much is called "Astounding Space Thrills" and not "Thrilling Space Adventures" as I had posted.

Worse, he asked the name of the really bad book I'd mentioned in the same post, and I remembered it without a problem.

I'm not sure if there is a moral here, either economic or marketingwise, but one thing I do know - If Steve Conley ever does a book called Thrilling Space Adventures, I'm going to have to buy about a fifty-year subscription just to rebuild the karma.

Rick:

Basically, Diamond is treating us fine, and there's no systematic outcry re: Diamond abuses among our fellow publishers. I talk regularly to Chris Oliveros and Terry Nantier, and I don't remember Diamond ever even coming up. The complaints about Diamond we DO hear often turn up to have no substance behind them, or to be genuinely flaky, or to be just the usual complaints about incompetence that every large company ends up fielding.

The Diamond "monopoly" is probably Bad with a capital B in the long run --it's certainly dangerous-- but since we're not sure in exactly what specific, concrete way it'll be bad, and since we're not sure what could be done to fix the situation at this point, we're keeping our yaps shut.

Anyone who wants to write a guest editorial about how horrible Diamond is for the JOURNAL is welcome to do so.

Maybe you should call up Dave Sim and ask him...

Gep's got Dave's balls hanging in the trophy room too!

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Rick Veitch
Invites You To Read THE DAILY RARE BIT FIENDS
updated every day along with news of the world's most popular artform!
THE COMICON.COM DAILY SPLASHis always refreshing!
www.comicon.com/splash

Back to Ben!

"Kim, in some of posts, you almost seem to be implying that a lot of the problem with Diamond is that they are in fact too lenient in what they accept."

I'm not sure I did that. I think there is a huge amount of awful abominable crap in the Diamond catalog, but it's all salable awful abominable crap. We know it's salable because if it wasn't salable crap Diamond would stop carrying it. QED. I don't think Diamond is carrying bad comics that don't sell; I think they're carrying bad comics that do sell, and I can't imagine any circumstance where they wouldn't do that. Lamenting that is a waste of time.

"I think that a lot of our problems are due to a lack of focus and a lack of consensus. If about 300 independent-friendly stores (what some people think the total number of independent-friendly stores is) aren't in any kind of agreement on what is good and what isn't, we're creating an environment where hardly anything can succeed."

I don't follow that at all. I would say there is NO medium where there is ANY consensus as to what is good (except for a small coterie of acknowledged classics...and even there, you'll get the occasional "MAUS sucks" or "I just can't stand LOVE AND ROCKETS"). All you need is for enough retailers to agree that something is salable and you're in business.

"Further more, if a lot of retailers have written off all independent titles as marginal (an even bigger problem), we're in even bigger trouble."

I guess it depends on how you define "marginal." But I don't think there has been any movement among retailers AGAINST independent titles in the last five years, and I refer back to the rock-steady continuing sales of the top alternatives: ACME, EIGHTBALL, BLACK HOLE. The dropoff in sales of the more marginal alterantive titles --the POOTs, the Collier comics, etc.-- seems not to come from any general retrenchment among retailers from the alternatives, but from a genuine failure of these titles to find their audience. It may simply be that there are too many genuinely GREAT alternative titles (especially considering that a lot of them are kept in print indefinitely, or recycled by unscrupulous greedheads, cf. THE BRADLEYS), forcing the weaker ones off the stands.

"Let me talk a little about indy comics creator Sam (THE MAGIC WHISTLE) Henderson. Kim, I know that you personally think very highly of Sam Henderson. (Actually, I think he's a riot too.) However, there was in fact, a heavily mixed reaction to a recent issue of TMW from the retailer panel that writes for the CBG. Some of the retailers gave the issue an A. Others gave it an F. He doesn't turn everyone's crank, but he does have a cult following. I personally don't consider Sam to be a doofus creator, but if the community of people who hawk and sell comics can't agree that he's great, he should be cut from the catalog too."

No, they don't need to agree that he's great. A majority of them needs to agree that his work is appealing enough that they can sell enough copies to warrant a slot in the Diamond catalog, which is quite a different thing. (I suspect that Sam benefits from the "protective umbrella" of being published by an established publisher -- a self-published MAGIC WHISTLE, or published by a new publisher, might not have made the Diamond cut.)

"Now let's say panels of retailers are equally divided about PAKKIN'S LAND, CATHY GUISEWITE COMICS & STORIES, James O'Barr's MAD GOTH ON THE RAMPAGE, and a slew of disparate comic books that all reach out to different people. I think that what happens is that (1) independent comics lack a cohesive identity...

Huh? As opposed to the "cohesive identity" of all the music at my local Tower Records? I'm lost.

"...and (2) if the creators do the comics for themselves rather than the retailers, the retailers become frustrated with the comics altogether."

Double huh?

"We might actually be better off if all the problem creators ran their own stores (like J.M. Lofficier...who I don't think is a "problem creator"...but I hope you see my point) and tried to sell their comics to the people who they think would buy them."

Triple huh?

"I think that any way out of the current mess we're in involves more dialogue, more reviews, more outreach, and more consensus-building. Based on what I've said above, wouldn't you say that's a reasonable conclusion?"

Unfortunately, it's the conclusion to every single debate ever debated in the 20th century.

I don't mean to be flippant, but parts of this seem to be pretty senseless. We're arguing about whether it's a bad thing that Diamond won't carry good comics that it doesn't think it can sell in sufficient quantities, and sure, it is. But is it Diamond's fault for wanting to make money? Or is it Diamond's fault for having an inadequate sorting process (i.e., are some good comics that could sell slipping through the net because they're being misjudged by Diamond)? Or is it the retailers' fault for not supporting good quirky books, therefore creating the domino effect where it's not worth Diamond's time to distribute them?

I dunno.

In my last post on this thread, I said:


Kim Thompson responded:


Well, Steve Lieber did say this:



Kim, since you more or less seemed to agree with Steve, I pretty much assumed you feel the same way. I guess I was wrong. Sorry about that.

Like I've said before, I agree with the gist of what you and Steve are saying, but I think that acclaimed newbies like Carla Speed McNeil, David Yurkovich, and Gary Sassaman would appreciate the perspective I decided to add to the discussion. It IS harder starting out than it used to be.

I'm sorry if I confused you with my last post. Allow me to take a few moments to clarify my views.

When I said...


...here's what I meant:

When Rick Veitch began RAREBIT FIENDS, he went on the record that he was hoping to sell 10,000 copies per issue. If the number of independent-friendly stores that he can sell it to declines, he's going to have to sell more copies at each store to make that number. From everything I hear and observe, you're going to have a tough time moving more than twenty copies of anything in a comics store. 20 times 300 = 6,000. Orders of 6,000 per issue aren't going to sustain a lot of creators, and they are going to stop producing. Clearly, clearly, it is in everyone's best interest for the number of independent-friendly outlets to either grow or at least remain stable. By all accounts, independent-friendly stores are continuing to go out of business. This means it's a tough game getting an independent title going even IF THERE IS CONSENSUS.

Is consensus important? Well, if there are only 300 storefronts to sell the comics to, it means an upstart publisher is going to want to do everything he or she can to get as many of those stores as possible behind their comics. If the most successful indy publisher can only get 100 stores behind them, we're looking at 2000 or less copies sold per issue -- i.e., the kind of numbers people like Sarah Dyer, Marc Hempel, and Rob Walton are getting for their titles ... the kind of numbers that cause people to bow out of publishing.

Consensus clearly wouldn't be as important if there were more outlets selling the comics and more demand, but that isn't the case.

I have to agree with Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, and Rob Walton on their assessments of the health of the market. Present conditions clearly leave a lot to be desired.

Now, let me elaborate on the next "problem quote". I said:

Preston Sweet of Main Street Comics wrote an article for THE COMICS RETAILER expressing the fact that, for his business, most independent comics (outside of BONE and Linsner's DAWN) are marginal. (In another article, he expressed his viewpoint that a lot of Valentino's Image "non-line" was unsaleable.) I would hope that you read Gary Groth's (I think) great response to this article. He was justifiably concerned about Preston's attitude, and, frankly, I think we all should be.

From what it appears, Fantagraphics has some stable support for its titles, and I am very happy for you. (I don't want you to go under like Kitchen did.) HOWEVER, I remain very concerned about the fact that deserving talents like Rick Veitch, Colleen Doran, and Rob Walton do not have that kind of support out there and are, in fact, not being well represented by people like Mr. Sweet.

Kim said:


I suspect as much too. This is just more evidence to me of an unhealthy market.

On to next explanation. I said:


A lot of retailers wrote off the Image non-line the way Preston Sweet did. Was this perhaps because they were "a slew of disparate comic books that all reached out to different people"?

Wouldn't you agree, Kim, that independent comics would be stronger if they had some kind of identity? Wouldn't you say there are a lot more people interested in Ska or Rap than there are interested in independent comics?

I don't think the Tower Records analogy you make is a good one because most people want CD's. Most people don't need to be sold on the idea that CD's are worth buying. They DO need to be sold on the idea that comics are worth buying.

Next quote:


It's pretty clear to me that it's relatively easy to set-up and publicize an online comics store. If creators don't trust the stores, wouldn't it be a healthy development for the community of independent creators to get involved in their operation? If vocal marketplace critics like Batton Lash, Jim Valentino, and Scott Roberts started their own online stores and showed Preston Sweet how it's done, wouldn't this be a healthy development for both stores and creators?

I just wanted to add that a lot of my views on the current state of the marketplace come from reading analysis from Rick Veitch, Batton Lash, Robert Beerbohm, and Jim Valentino. I'll happily go on the record as saying that all four of them are calling it like it is.

I've thought about going into the "war of attrition" that Beerbohm and Valentino believe is going on right now, but I'll save that for another post.

Kim said.....



One thing I will say conclusively is that there are an awful lot of comics that I'd like to see succeed that I'm afraid could end up in trouble. I remain very concerned for people like Mack White, Jessica Abel, and Jason Lutes. (And how well is BERLIN selling these days anyway?)

I think that inequitable discounting, a steep decline in the speculator market, very conservative ordering, and stores that just don't support the comics that I (and others) want them to support are all big problems.

I really don't think that Diamond is the only "bad guy" out there. I also think that retailers have been shafted by the present system in an awful lot of ways and can understand why a lot of them order conservatively in this climate.


That's pretty much all from me for now, Kim. I'll undoubtedly be back with more to say on these issues (and I'm sure you will be too).




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Ben Adams
Read PRISONOPOLIS and discuss MURDER BY CROWQUILL online at www.mediawarpcomics.com .


[This message has been edited by Ben Adams (edited 07-16-99).]

I think the direct sales market, which today I've taken to call the "Diamond Market", became distorted a long time before the Monopoly began.

By "distorted", I mean there's a product (a book), ie: supply, and a number of consumers buying this product, ie: demand, and anything that interferes with supply and demand is a distortion.

Major distortions in the past were caused by speculation, which resulted in the b&w glut which followed the TMNT boom (and caused the crash of Glenwood Distribution), and the flood of "bat-crap" merchandise that swamped the market prior to the Tim Burton movie.

Of course, at the time, the market was healthier and only the weak suffered. For example, I was editing FRENCH ICE (CARMEN CRU? Anyone here remembers?) for Renegade Press the year Batschmuck came out. We'd already done 5 or 6 issues, so we were coasting fine around 8-10,000 copies an issue when suddenly the bottom fell out. In the space of 4 months, we were down to less than 4,000.

FRENCH ICE came out on time like clockwork, the contents did not change, I doubt it lost its appeal, and there certainly isn't / wasn't any huge stacks of unsold issues. So what happened?

A market distortion happened, i.e.: the reallocation of cash flow (purchasing budget) by short-sighted, credit-impaired retailers away from FRENCH ICE and into bat-crap.

In the "real world", a retailer would have kept buying the same numbers of FRENCH ICE and gone to his bank to borrow money to buy the bat-crap which he was reasonably sure to sell.

But we're not in the "real world" and we all know that the only way an average comic retailer will get money from a bank is if he robs it.

So it began with Renegade, the weakest of the lot, like the Barbarians crashing through the borders of the Roman Empire until a few years later, they're parading on the Forum.

(Except for that indomitable village but that's another metaphor.)

A few years later, the Barbarians were crushing Marvel's Epic.

The first 6 Moebius books and the 3 Incal books (1986-87) all sold between 18,000 and 25,000 copies. Hell, the AIRTIGHT GARAGE was #3 on the $ Diamond (or was it Capital?) list that month.

Three years later, Moebius #7 (a direct sequel to #1 and #5, comparable price, format, quality & material) was selling around 12,000 and by the time we stopped, our last book sold about 5,000 and Epic was dead.

All this proves that, while there was a certain, quantifiable demand for our product, the distribution was, in fact, incapable of supplying that demand adequately because it was/is, in effect, cash starved.

And the distribution is cash starved because it (collectively) has made plenty of terrible purchasing decisions in a non-returnable market and management mistakes like that do add up over 8 or 10 years.

At that point, and after a brave attempt with Caliber, albeit in b&w, I decided that it was no longer effective to publish Moebius in the US comic-book market.

I may be mistaken -- I wish I were -- but that's my conclusion.

Now a comic book industry / marketplace which cannot support books by Moebius (or Michael Cherkas or Rick Veitch or Steve Bissette or Jay Stephens etc.) is, in my opinion, not healthy.

At Starwatcher, our attitude was sort of like the last episode of MARY TYLER MOORE. We left the equipment running on automatic (Dark Horse Moebius reprints), turned off the light, silently closed the door on the Diamond market, and went looking for greener pastures.

JM