Deviation Actions
It was inevitable... Diamond and myself have never really seen eye to eye -they have helped & equally hindered the comics industry for over 30 years. I could go on for days about the companies they've "killed" via their almost unattainable new book order pre-requisites or how shops were made to order a certain amount of Marvel or DC books just to keep their contract with the distributor when they had Marvel & DC - many shops simply could not justify these costs nor did they have the customer base too and especially now, after the pandemic with sales down 25-50% at many shops they have needed to lower their orders just to stay in business. now, of course we also have the added competition of Random House and Lunar (among others) which has further hurt the industry as each company has companies exclusive to them just as Diamond does so dealers are forced to make decisions mainly on what they get a dealer discount for as most anyone that's worked in a comic shop can tell you we don't make money on the new books, and yes, no matter what some may say price does matter & $4.99 US (aka $8-$10 Canada) per book has turned off a lot of people when they can get a digital version for 1.99 or less. Competition is a good thing but, we as an industry need to come together and help one another to grow and the way to do it is to help more studios starting out- lower the order pre-requisite for a time period to help a company & its creators grow to find a fan base. focus on comics ONLY ie, comics, TPB's, manga, . TRY to lower cover prices if possible as higher cover cover prices do scare some customers off trying a book & that may be hard as printing costs have also skyrocketed since 2020. to bring it back to Diamond however- I have no doubt they will come out of this - but, they will have to change how they run their business fundamentally(and I'm not sure I can see Geppi doing that) so, I think it's time for them to focus down back to comics and become the home of small press and new creatives that will be of no interest to Random House, etc... (as Random House has already said they have no interest in Distributing small press comics) Remember, currently most retailers have to work with at least 3 distributors to fulfill weekly orders for their customers and this is not a sustainable business in that way especially with how hard hit financially the industry has been the last few years both stores & comic companies(some examples IDW, Action Lab, Dark Horse, Scout Comics, etc) if we work together we can bounce back bigger than ever but, the way things are now it's only a matter of time before total collapse. So, do me a favour folks... visit your local comic shop and try something new from a company you've never tried before - you may be pleasantly surprised. keep supporting your local shop and small press without you we can't keep going-lets keep the creative heartbeat of comics beating as long as we can.