The news reported in this Publishers Weekly article has gotten a bit of attention elsewhere, but I haven't seen much here, so I thought I'd post it myself.

Diamond Comic Distributors ("the largest distributor of periodical comic books to specialty stores") has announced the launch of a new division Diamond Book Distributors ("DBD") to distribute comics, graphic novels, and other pop culture items to the traditional book trade.

To many book trade insiders, the most notable part of this news is the fact that Diamond has made two impressive hires to staff this new division: Kuo-Yu Liang, formerly of Ballantine Books' sales/marketing department, as DBD's VP of Sales and Marketing; and Josh Haynes, formerly a Waldenbooks buyer, as sales manager.

Added to other developments (confirmed, rumored, or underway alike) in the world of graphic novel/book trade distribution, the establishment of DBD is certainly an interesting development in the book-trade-distribution side of comics publishing.

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A.T.Kokmen
Marketing Manager
Watson-Guptill Publications

This matter was briefly discussed in the Newsrama section of Comicon:
http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=13&t=001227

This will be interesting to watch. I think it will be good to have a comics-knowledgable distributor doing so much of the bookstore effort, someone with incentive and knowhow to push the whole form into the shops.