By Bon Alimagno

The last few weeks have brought upheaval to the comic book industry, ignited by changes in the distribution policies of Diamond Comics Distribution. A lot of the coverage portrayed this as the death of the indy comic and the exile of many publishers from the direct market. Harris Comics is uniquely positioned to weather this storm, entirely due to our dedicated fan base and a very strong online sales operation. For the rest of the industry the way I look at can be summed up by the saying, “One door closes, another opens.”

There were a lot of changes put in place, some big, some small, and a few won’t be noticed. There are two that will have far-reaching effects across the industry. One deals with limiting reorders of pamphlets past 60 days, a rule that greatly hinders the ability of comics to use word of mouth and good press to grow sales after initial publication. (Thankfully, this rule change was not applied to Harris’ most successful source of reorders: trade paperbacks.) Another essentially means that a $2.99 comic book must sell a minimum of roughly 2000 copies to receive distribution. (This threshold doesn’t affect Harris’ regular editions, but does greatly impact everything else we publish: limited editions, art prints, etc.)

I’m not sure if it has sunk into the mind of the average comic shop goer what setting these rules mean. The new rules place a huge emphasis on initial sales, in a direct market largely resistant to anything different and new. A year from now it’s very likely what few non-superhero comic books you are used to seeing at your local comic book shop may disappear unless you frequent one that already features a wide ranging selection. The direct market is a vicious cycle: comic book shops are widely considered the best place to buy superhero comics, so most of the people who frequent these shops are people who read superhero comic books. Retailers who order comic books do so on a non-returnable basis. They have to place their bet on what comic will and won’t sell. If they bet wrong they are stuck with extra inventory that may never move. More often than not they’ll place their bet with a sure thing, something with a consistent track record or built-in fan base. Retailers then order mostly superhero books. Anyone looking for anything else will more often than not find a very limited selection appealing to their tastes, so they stop coming, leaving the store increasingly in the hands of superhero comic book readers.

Non-Big Four publishers will often find their books under ordered. In cases like that, they’ll hope that word of mouth and positive reviews stir interest in their titles and lead to reorders. Except now reorders are limited to sixty days, not that much time to grow an audience.

I’ve read some people say these new rules place the burden of marketing a comic book more where it should be: with the publisher. True enough. Yet how many publishers have the marketing budget to do substantial publicity? (How many of these critics have ever seen a Wizard ad rate card?) And how many comics can receive attention in a market already oversaturated with news from the Big Four? (God help you if you debuted a comic the day Batman died AND President Obama appeared on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man.) For better or worse the few column inches granted each comic book in Previews may be the most cost effective advertising available to a publisher. And now even that will likely not be available to them.

That all sounds bleak for anyone who doesn’t have an X or a Bat on the comic book they publish. But really, this is an opportunity to refashion the direct market into one that serves not one genre but all subject matter. I don’t know how we’ll get to this promised land, but here’s what I think it’ll look like:

*A small subset of the current direct market, let’s say the 500 stores that already do order a variety of material, become the foundation for a new direct market. These stores will look more like Rocketship in Brooklyn, New York and Isotope and Comic Relief in San Francisco, California: more bookstore than hobby shop. These stores will attract a diverse audience, one willing to read an entire medium’s worth of stories, instead of limiting themselves to a single genre.

*Publishers cease trying to compete with Marvel and DC since they’re getting distributed to stores where they don’t have to. There’s less pressure to publish heavy stock, glossy, full color comic books that look collectible. They turn to thinner, cheaper stocks and much more black and white. Print costs decrease and the comics themselves are cheaper and never exceed $2.99.

*A distributor, maybe Haven, maybe one that doesn’t exist yet, serves these stores and these publishers more effectively than Diamond ever could. Diamond’s infrastructure is fashioned to move hundreds of thousands of Spider-Man issues around the country with ease, but dozens of Vampirella limited editions with difficulty. A distributor that serves this new direct market properly would be just the opposite: making it easier to distribute fewer copies and ending the need for minimums. Profit margins per item may be small, but due to volume add up to making it worth it – essentially a “long tail” method of distribution instead of one so heavily concentrated on initial orders.

The easiest answer to so many of the industry’s distribution problems is moving to a fully digital model, one that requires no distributor and no comic book stores. But something is missing here. I love walking into a comic book store and browsing through a jungle of shelves. At least once a year I go to Jim Hanley’s Universe because they seemingly order everything and I try to look at, well, everything. I am always surprised by something new I’d never seen before: a new voice, a new artist, even a new shape and size to the comic itself. What we’re facing is a direct market where the surprises grow fewer and far between, where what we see is a retread of everything that has come before. If this medium is to grow it can’t condemn itself to that. Marvel is right, we must “embrace change,” though we must make it our own.

Bon Alimagno is Director – Publishing & Editorial for Harris Comics, publishers of Vampirella.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 10:32 am and is filed under Independent, Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.