Giving this a bump just because I think it's interesting and one of the founders swung by and added his thoughts! (Von)



Slowly but surely, the news about Indy Comic Book Week is making the rounds. I don't know the organizers but I'm debating getting involved. If you don't know, the general idea is that Diamond will not be shipping new comics to comic book shops on December 30th. They are experimenting with a street date for DC's Blackest Night series, but that's technically shipping the week before and should not go on sale 'til December 30th. Either way, that date marks an interesting opportunity for small press titles.

From the site:

We challenge writers and artists to self publish new material for this week, and offer it to their local stores. We ask for retailers to take this as an opportunity to showcase local independent talent on the new release shelves. We encourage fans to break from their buying habits and try something new.

So, what do you guys think of this idea in general? And should I get involved in it? If I did, it would most likely only be on the local level (since the reason Diamond is missing December 30th is that shipping in general is tricky that week), but still...

Von

P.S. tip of the hat to kaolinfire to pointing the whole thing out to me.

BUMP-BUMPED BY MOGGY! Because this is awesome. :)

----------------------------------------

Or something like that. But yes, the road to god knows... is now available for ordering on Amazon.ca, too! Yay!



Von

Ok! Links are starting to show up on the various ordering sites! The cover is now up on these sites and the ordering links are good to go!



Road can be ordered on Amazon.com right here!

Here's the Barnes & Noble link!

Canadian links and more will follow as the book slowly enters into various databases. I'm not going to do any type of media push until all that happens, but getting things rolling didn't seem like a bad idea.

Yay!

Von

P.S.: full disclosure: we do earn a few cents if you use those Amazon.com links I've listed. You don't need to do anything special and there's no extra cost to you at all. Just to be clear!

Moggy and I are both getting over the flu and a few other ailments. Weeeee, what fun! La Casa Von and Moggy has been pretty low key of late as a result. Anyway, this is the colour version of the poster design that I put up a little while ago. I don't know if Stargazer will be a colour work yet, so this kinda thing is really just giving me a chance to play and experiment. 'Cuz, y'know, that's fun.

( Larger version after the cut )

Von

Copyright (c) 2009 Eric Allan Julien

This is just the lineart. I'm working on a colour version, too.

( Bigger version after ze cut! )

Von

In today's edition of Shelf Awareness, there's a little off the cuff comment from Jim Salicrup, Papercutz's editor and long-time comic vet. He said this:

"Salicrup said that while the DC/Minx imprint was established to try to reach tween girls, the themes were too angst-ridden, and they wound up appealing more to men in their 20s than 11- and 12-year-old girls."

Since I haven't read most of the Minx line, I can't really attest to this. I kinda thought that at least some of them were funner than what this quote implies. I've long worried that "road" was too heavy and that really hurt it's audience (though this will be confirmed soon when I put the print version out) and I'm a little worried about "Stargazer" for similar things.

Sometimes, god help me, I wish there was a simple formula. Ok, ok. I really don't. Not seriously. On the bleak days I do, but those are thankfully few. :)

Anyway! Thoughts? Agree or disagree with Salicrup?

Von

Dave Baxter over on Septagon Studios has a very interesting article on how Hermés Piqué and Juan Romera, creators of a comic called Misery Depot, distributed it through various torrent and other download sites. Since I've experimented with this myself I'm certainly curious to learn about how others have found it.

What do you think?

Von

(tip of the hat to Brigid at Digital Strips for pointing the article out)

Well, it's taken some doing, but road has now been moved off of GaM's site and onto my own. With new artwork, completely revamped lettering, and quite a bit of new writing, too. I think all of these changes make it that much stronger and I kinda consider this the "remastered" version.

The new url is at http://the-road-to-god-knows.blogspot.com/

Will it ever be perfect? Nope, 'fraid not. I've fixed what I find really glaring, but there's still things I'd like to correct. I'll probably always feel that way, but it's time to move on. It's a rookie project and I think it's still fairly green despite the changes. Flaws in artwork aside, I also really underwrote it - that meant the storytelling was weaker than it should have been and scene to scene transitions didn't work all that well. I think they work better now.

The book version will be coming out in the not to distant future and the same goes for free ebook versions, too. Right now it's still a webcomic but hopefully the site navigation works well.

Let me know what you think, ok?

Von

About a week back, ICV2.com ran an interview with Bill Schanes, Diamond's Vice-President of Purchasing. While it covers a lot of the same ground as the earlier Newsarama piece, there is one interesting bit (at least to me) that goes into a few numbers:

...A $2500 purchase order at Diamond’s cost of 60% off is about $6200 retail value. That would give us gross profit at Diamond on a blended average discount to retailers of 44% off retail of about $950, and a contribution to fixed costs, overhead, and profit of $200 or $300 after all the different departments and operations handle it. At $2500, Diamond’s not getting rich...At $1500 we were losing money on every purchase order, and that’s just not healthy.

If we assume a profit of $300, then Diamond's per title expense is roughly $650 ($950-$650). With that in mind, I did a quick spread sheet to compare the new Purchase Order Benchmark with the old (see pic, below). Note that it does bear out the assumption that the old $2500 benchmark actually cost Diamond money. This assumes that the reported expenses of approximately $650 is accurate, of course. While I have no reason to disbelieve it, it's important to keep in mind that there's no independent way to verify it.



As the fallout from this continues, both Haven Distributors (formerly Cold Cut) and Ka-Blam (see note at the top of the page) are making moves into Direct Market distribution to pick up the slack. Or rather, Haven is evolving to include a pre-order model while Ka-Blam's exact plans are still unknown. Will retailers embrace new alternative distributors? Dunno. With the bigger indy publishers tied up with exclusive deals at Diamond, it's impossible to get a sense of how this will play out. Time will tell.

Now, a question: does anyone have any thoughts about Fanflow? What do you think? Is exclusive content behind a subscriber wall a good idea? It's been done before and seems to have faded out, but Fanflow is bringing the concept back. Good? Bad?

Von

Newsarama's Matt Brady did an interview with Bill Schanes, Diamond Vice President of Purchasing, regarding the new Purchase Order Benchmark. While I think it should be read in its entirety by anyone interested in the business of comics, a few tidbits did standout:

NRAMA: Why were these changes needed?

BS: I think, as everyone is aware of, the economy across the whole world – and the United States not being immune to that – has been pretty tough through 2008, and there don’t appear to be any immediate signs going in to 2009 that things are going to change that much. Diamond’s sales were down last year – within a realm of acceptability, but they were down, and we’re looking at decreases in 2009. So we’re looking at ways that we can reduce costs on our side on the lowest selling, least profitable lines, and we felt this was a reasonable approach to reduce some costs and still provide a very high level of service to the vast majority of our clients and our retailers.

and:

NRAMA: Along that same line, in that the benchmark applies to every product with a code, some publishers have said that the new rule will have somewhere between interesting and devastating effects on their relist titles and their backstock that they can offer through Diamond...

BS: Right – it does apply towards what we call “Offered Agains” – some folks call them relists. Basically once a product comes out, and has gone live in the marketplace, and the publisher or Diamond wants to put it back in the catalog, we call it an Offered Again – it’s our name for it – and that’s generated some amount of revenue for all those concerned. The problem with putting it back in the catalog is that is has the exact same cost attached as a new product. We still have to process the orders, still have to pick and pack them, ship, and handle shortages and damages. There’s no difference from an operation cost standpoint for an Offered Again product and a new product.

and:

NRAMA: One myth to possibly bust with the benchmark change – does this mean that Diamond is now closed to new products from new, smaller publishers?

BS: Of course not – it has never meant that. But we’re also looking for things that sell – so are retailers, and so it everybody else. So if we see a new comic cross our door that looks promising, with a good concept or a good creative team, we’re going to give it a try. But when we have a brand new creator or a brand new talent team, that’s a judgment call. Hopefully we make the right call based on our years of experience here, but we may occasionally miss one. There are times that some creators have called me and said that they think we missed s good one, and sometimes we agree, and sometimes we don’t. But that’s a healthy dialogue, and we’re very open-minded with that.

Now, while I don't fault Diamond one bit for running their business in whatever way they wish, I thought it would be useful to give a contrasting opinion on Diamond's operations from a few years back. In Todd Allen's The Business of Webcomics are segments from an interview that Allen conducted with Tony Panaccio, then Vice President of Product Development at Crossgen Entertainment. Some relevant bits:

"Let's look at exactly what Diamond does for a moment," Panaccio explains. "1) They print a catalog, which they make outrageous money on. That catalog costs them about $1 per unit to make. They sell it to consumers for $5 per unit, and make an average of $5,000 per display ad, with more than 150 pages of display ads per issue. 2) They take big boxes and make them into little boxes and ship them, via UPS, which costs them very little. That's it -- there are, perhaps, four field sales reps, a few sales executives in Baltimore, and that's it. For an entire industry.

"Now -- if your main business is boxing and shipping, your margins are reduced with each new publisher that enters the market, and with each new store that opens. If 75 percent of all your product comes from 5 vendors, and the other 25 percent comes from a combination of 40 vendors, your margins actually rise when some of those other 40 vendors go bye-bye. If 75 percent of all the product you ship goes to 750 locations, and the other 25 percent goes to the remaining 2,400 locations, then your margins actually rise when those bottom feeder stores go bye-bye. Fewer vendors and fewer shipping points equals a higher margin of the product you are guaranteed to place no matter what, because you are a monopoly and have no competition.

"Diamond's primary business model is to shrink the comics industry down to its lowest common denominators and squeeze out any potential competition for its premier publishers" (Private Interview).

and:

"It is my belief – and I am not alone in this belief, but I am sure that many of my colleagues feel it is not in their best interests to voice their opinions on this matter – that the Department of Justice blew it when they initially investigated Diamond to examine its compliance with the anti-trust laws on the books right now," Panaccio said. "While many analysts within the DOJ could see the argument for technical compliance, especially when it is presented solely by Diamond’s lawyers, I believe that any sitting judge would have seen through Diamond’s definitions of ‘broker’ and ‘distributor’ in relation to their vendors, and ruled that Diamond was indeed in violation of anti-trust laws. In my mind, Diamond is one of the worst-case scenarios of monopoly in American publishing, and the resulting power and influence wielded by Diamond in the marketplace is unfair and illegal. It is fundamentally unjust that this criminal conduct is allowed to continue while thousands of retailers, thousands of creators and dozens of publishers locked outside the premier vendor club suffer under a system that was constructed solely for the purpose of entrenching and rewarding a select minority."

Food for thought, hmmm...? See, what I find interesting in all of this is that there's been little discussion on the uncompetitive playing field that the smaller publishers operate under. A really good example is Diamond's re-order penalty - retailers are charged 3% surcharge when they re-order a book from a non-brokered (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Image) publisher. I was hoping that Diamond might announce that they were going to eliminate that with this PO Benchmark announcement, but to date they haven't. Worse is the fact that the smaller publishers operate under more onerous discount terms to retailers then the brokered folks do. In the latter case, these publishers set their own discounts that Diamond must comply with (and, I should add, this is one of the reasons why I've long argued that Diamond is not a distributor in the classic sense. They are really a freight-forwarder. They do not own the books from the brokered publishers - they simply move them around). In the case of the non-brokered publishers, however, Diamond sets the discounts to retailers. Which means that if a publisher gives Diamond a 60% discount off retail, retailers might only get 40% to 45% off cover (my suspicion is that it's the latter and that Diamond operates on a 15% margin). On top of it, these titles are non-returnable. While I don't believe that if these two discrepancies were corrected indy comics would suddenly thrive, I do believe sales would be that much stronger. Retailers aren't stupid - if you only have "slots" or shelf space for X number of titles, you are going to carry the ones that can maximize the greatest amount of revenue (margin) in the shortest amount of time (stock turn). Since most indy comics lean towards slower turns, the discount is what could be normally used to offset that to some extent. With low discounts and slow turns, that's a recipe for poor sales. Direct Market retailers have learned this - they only need to look at the black and white implosion and the later crash after the Death of Superman speculator bust and what it did to their retail brethren.

I also think that Diamond may have made a long-term mistake with this. As I said to fuzzy_queen the other day, The DM was built on comics - the good ol' 32 page saddle-stitched variety. By going "trade only" (as Diamond has effectively done), they may find that there's far more competition in the marketplace. Especially if Diamond's discounts don't change and if they keep the re-order penalty in place. By all accounts Baker & Taylor competes quite strongly on discount with Diamond for GNs. And they're returnable, to boot. I'm also pretty sure that most of the DM-exclusive publishers (like Fanta and Top Shelf and whatnot) are not exclusive to the book trade - and thus comic shops could get exclusive books from other distributors.

One of the things that stopped retailers from moving orders away from Diamond in the first place was that it could effect one's overall dollar order and thus a retailer's overall Diamond discount. But if some GNs just aren't carried at all by Diamond (due to not hitting the new threshold), then getting books more efficiently (and perhaps at a better discount) becomes much more reasonable. Ditto for re-orders.

It'll be interesting to see how all this shakes out.

Von

Word has been going around about some major changes in how Diamond distributes small press comics in North America. In a nutshell, they're raising certain sales benchmarks to new, higher levels. These levels will make it that much harder for certain titles and certain publishers to be viable in the Direct Market.

I'm phrasing it this way since there's quite a bit of confusion regarding exactly what the new benchmarks are. Until that gets clarified, I'm not going to speculate. But here are some quotes and other bits and pieces that are known/speculated right now.

From Simon Jones, Icarus Publishing:

I’d like to take a small amount of time to explain what the purchase benchmark increase means in the real world, and perhaps betray my own misconceptions in the process. But this is as best as I understand things now, absent a more public and detailed announcement from Diamond themselves.

Diamond, the undisputed ruler of direct market distribution, asks vendors to meet two sets of sales guidelines. The first is a general sales threshhold applicable to initial orders, somewhere between $3000~4000 retail, that Diamond expects comics to meet to continue to be listed in Previews. New comics are given a few issues to reach that plateau. If the comic doesn’t, or falls below it after a few issues, Diamond will ask the series to be cancelled. While the sales threshhold is applicable to all products, this is most relevant to the concept of comics as periodical magazines; serials which have limited shelf lives.

The second type of sales minimum is the purchase order benchmark, which before today was $1500 retail. This is the minimum value for which Diamond is willing to issue a purchase order. The difference is subtle, so it’s best explained through examples:

* Comic Ace issue #1 has a cover price of $5, and retailers order 1000 copies, putting its retail value at $5000. It surpasses both the sales threshhold and the purchase order minimum. A purchase order for 1000 copies is issued by Diamond, and Comic Ace issue #2 appears in the next Previews catalog.
* Comic Bee issue #1 only garners orders for 500 copies, totalling $2500 retail. Diamond issues a purchase order for 500 copies, but warns the publisher that if orders for issue 2 does not increase, they would not allow issue 3 to appear in Previews.
* Comic Cee issue #1 gets an abysmal 200 orders, for a total value of $1000. Despite retailers ordering 200 copies, they will never receive them… Diamond refuses to issue a purchase order at all for Comic Cee because it missed the PO benchmark.

Dan Vado, SLG:

The average person reading this may not realize that most small press comics (and by that I mean floppies) do not meet that benchmark. I think if the average reader knew how lousy some of our sales were they would be stunned. I can't tell you how many times people have wandered into our booth at one convention or another and engaged me in conversation and walk out scratching their heads and reeling to find out that the comic or graphic novel they just love more than anything sold maybe 300 copies total.

The other effect is that what few books we published as floppies will probably not ever see the light of day. While a first issue might sell well enough to meet the benchmark it is more than likely that everything from a second or third issue on will not. Again, I think your average reader might be shocked at how poorly some comics sell. So, if you're a small publisher or a self-publisher and your plan is to release a mini-series and then collect it as a trade, those plans might change.

It's a tough spot for everyone to be in. Diamond is in essence asking everyone to sell more in a recessionary environment or find themselves out of the catalog. Short term, a lot of publishers are going to find themselves with no distribution. While that might sound like I am angry with Diamond, I am not. I am unhappy, but the industry's current situation is one that has been coming for some time, recession or not. Some of the fundamental flaws in the industry and the way things sorted themselves out in the post Marvel/Heroes World debacle are coming to roost in a time when even the best run non-comic business is in danger of folding. The economic base for comics and the direct market is built on jelly. The number of people living hand-to-mouth in this business, from paycheck to paycheck, having to work two and three jobs is stunning and always has been.

More as this develops...

Von

quietdarkness was nice enough to do an interview with me for Collector Times (for the December/Christmas issue, no less). It's just over here.

I yabber on about the art corrections to "the road to god knows...," mental illness, Diamond Distribution, and other blather in general. And there's some side by side comparisons of old RTGK art and new RTGK art, too.

Von

A few years back, sparked by a discussion on the CBIA, I decided to take a look at the sales patterns for Robert Kirkman's Invincible. Mainly because those patterns were so odd. It was considered (and has become) this rising star in comics; what was interesting, when I looked at the sales on the first 10 issues or so, was how poorly it had been performing. It was losing, not gaining, readers at an alarming rate. If those losses had continued, I wouldn't have been surprised to see it canceled.

Then something happened. Sales reversed and started becoming quite stronger very, very quickly.

Trying to figure out what that "something" was became the core of a wee essay I wrote. I wound up shelving it (mainly because I had meant to do a similar examination on The Walking Dead but never got a chance to do that). All the kerfuffle over the summer, along with Todd Allen's recent piece, made me take a look at it again. I freshened it up a bit and put it online.

It can be found right here, for those who wanna take a peek.

Von

This is pretty remarkable. The Governor General Awards shortlist was announced and the graphic novel Skim was nominated in the Children's Literature - Text category. While the GGs still don't have a separate graphic novel category (meaning that only writer Mariko Tamaki gets recognized rather than both her and illustrator (and cousin) Jillian Tamaki), this is still a very nifty achievement. I'd love to see Skim win, too.

And yes, I'm more than a little jealous. Sigh!

Von

Jen Contino over at The Pulse was nice enough to do an interview with me. It's right here.

A sample:

THE PULSE: Speaking of tough, in these economic times it must be a challenge to find the funds to self-publish your own work, especially considering how hard it is to get potential readers to try a new book. How long did it take you to save enough to collect your short stories "the road ...," Li'l Kids?

ALLAN: Well, the costing and expense tends to be a subtle thing. The main expense has been lost income as I gave up a full-time job to do art. So there's been part-time and freelance work, but I definitely lost money doing art full-time. I consider it an investment in my future, though, so that's not a big deal. In terms of actually self-publishing, though, I've done things in a bit of a different way than traditional offset printing. I printed "Li'l Kids" using Lightning Source (LSI), a print on demand company owned by Ingram. The reason I went with LSI over other POD companies like Lulu is that they have an unparalleled ability to feed data through a variety of channels. That's meant that my little book is available in many more places than it would have been if I had done it through anyone else. And what's amazing about it is that it's done in an extremely cost-effective way; in a nutshell, I'm using a short discount publishing model that's more closely aligned with academic book publishers than it is traditional small press comic book publishers. With very little effort on my part, my book is available through retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble and also distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor. And on and on.

Where my book is not available is with Diamond and thus Direct Market retailers. That probably won't change anytime soon. Why I chose this model and my rational behind it is probably something we just won't have time to get into now. I do think, however, that the next decade or so is going to change fundamentally how graphic novels are delivered. While I'll never fault Diamond for what they do (they are a remarkably efficient distributor), the problems for small press that deal with them are daunting (discounts off cover to the tune of 60%-65%, short discounts to retailers (to the tune of 45% and lower), the re-order penalty if a retailer sells out, and the lack (for the most part) of any type of stocking support over and above initial retailer orders). The math is pretty simple and straightforward and it's not good. A publisher needs to really understand what they're getting into when working with Diamond and, on top of it, what Direct Market retailers will need to make sure they try a book (always remember that when dealing with non-returnable material at less than ideal discounts, retailers will always order cautiously if there isn't a proven track record and other clear marketing interest from their customer base).

The danger, I think, that both Diamond and retailers face is that other avenues of publishing and distribution have opened up over the past 10 years or so. Webcomics being an obvious example. By side-stepping the Direct Market channel and using a short discount philosophy for graphic novels, creators and publishers can be profitable by selling far fewer copies then they'd need to in comic shops. If new talent can't find a way onto store shelves, then the intelligent ones will look elsewhere. They'll develop their talent elsewhere and then, down the road, when they're more established may not look at the Direct Market at all. I think the danger of being stale is actually something that more retailers as well as Diamond should consider.

Hopefully I'm not yabbering like a mad man. :)

Von

Well, the last update for the main story is now up on GirlAMatic. That means the entire 142 page story can finally be read. Three short stories will follow starting next Monday (though some of you will have seen them before) and then that will be that.

It's a somewhat bitter sweet feeling. But a very, very positive one.

( Cross post from GaM plus news on books is in the cut! )

Von

Y'know, I read Seth Godin's blog pretty regularly. He's a smart guy with a nice turn of phrase and I hope I've learned a few things from him, too. Today's post is the first one I really felt like sharing, though. For this bit in particular:

"A few years before that, I had published a book about a political issue. An activist's handbook. I had 20,000 copies in my garage when I found out about a large march in Washington. I bought an outdoor booth and trucked the books down to DC. I stood on the Mall in my little booth and watched more than 250,000 people walk by in less than two hours. Every single one an activist. Every single one a demographically perfect match for my handbook. After 100,000 people had walked by and we'd sold only one book, I lowered the price from around $10 to $1 just to prove my point--that it wasn't the book and it wasn't the price, it was the ability of the audience to listen that mattered. This group, in this moment, was there to march, not to shop.

Most people, most of the time, steadfastly refuse to pay attention."

Some of you may recall a four part series I wrote last year on exhibiting at conventions (Part 4 (with links to Parts 1-3) is right here). It's funny thinking of what Godin wrote above since I felt exactly (and I mean exactly) the same way about exhibiting at to both the Alternative Press Expo and the Small Press Expo. He dropped his prices to $1.00. I gave my books (well, galleys and ashcans) away for free. To no avail. His audience was there to march. My audience was there to do many other things than buy comics from unknown creators. Huh.

As I write this, many, many comic book and webcomic folk are about to descend on Southern California for the truly massive San Diego Comicon. And while some artists will do far better than break even, I really doubt that will be true for the majority.

"Most people, most of the time, steadfastly refuse to pay attention."

Exactly.

Von

Just wanted to give a nod to charlotte2004jd, the winner of my little road to god knows... contest. As it turns out, she used her own first name for the winning guess. A few of you did, but in her case her name was the right name.

charlotte2004jd lives in New Zealand, so it's kinda neat that some of my art will be winging it's way down that far from here. The drawback is that it'll take a little while to get there. Ah - the ol' slow boat! She's also co-owner of a bookshop in the Whangarei (y'know, I have no idea how to pronounce that) area of New Zealand. If you happen to be in that area, please do drop by and say "hi."

So wish her a big congrats for a good guess and a very lovely first name! :)

Von

Well, no winner yet but I thought I'd list some of the more frequent guesses so far. Here goes:

Jeanne
Jean
Joanne
Jane
Joline
Julianne
Justine
Jesse
Jacqueline
Joy

None of those are correct but they're all very good guesses! Please keep trying by emailing me (rtgkcontest@gmail.com) and try to put "RTGK Contest" in the subject line! :)

This is fun!

Von

I had posted an entry on Tony Shenton's situation the other day and I just wanted to touch base with a quick follow-up. Tony updated his own blog where he discusses the situation with Fantagraphics a bit more. For instance:

"Why did they hire me? Well, first of all, their sales manager and I compared notes, and I called several shops who did not already talk to him. And because Diamond Distribution only carried, at that time, a certain amount of their books, but not a majority of them. This situation exists today for a lot of publishers. Diamond needs to have a shot at making a profit, so they must look for a certain level of performance from all the titles it carries. Dropping underperforming titles is good business for them in many ways.

But this makes them look like an evil empire. After all, after the distribution wars in the 90s, Diamond emerged as the winner, and Fantagraphics was a frequent and loud critic of many of their business practices. Which is why this move by Fantagraphics seems odd and out of character.

It's not. Fantagraphics is seeking to reduce expenses, increase income, get a positive cash flow, and get more books into stores. I think perhaps all but the last goal are attainable with this new arrangement. I just happened to get run over in the process."

Worth a read.

Edited to add that Tom Spurgeon did a follow-up interview with Tony Shenton, too. It can be found here.

Von