Waiting For Tommy XXX
By Richard Johnston |
How To
Get Diamond Distribution To Distribute Your Comic The Easy Way
The
eight Waiting For Tommy interviews have concluded... some
more successful than others, but all a topic of debate and
discussion across the message boards. As you read these words,
a number of invites have been sent out for the next batch
of unfortunates, ready (or not) to be probed, prodded and
generally mucked around with for your entertainment.
Until then, something
I've been asked to write for some time.
I often hear tales
of woe from prospective self-publishers, when dealing with
Diamond. Despite some of their titles being pretty darn nifty,
they just can't get Diamond to distribute them. And those
lucky few who do often find after a few issues, that Diamond
drop them.
So how did I,
who, let's face it, has lesser writing skills and certainly
lesser drawing skills, get handfuls of comics self-published
and distributed through Diamond, fresh out of college, without
any real experience in the world of publishing and business?
Pull up a chair.
Diamond Comics
Distribution are the easiest, most efficient and most profitable
way of getting thousands of comics across the USA, Canada,
Great Britain and a number of other associated countries.
The low amount of comic book outlets compared to most other
retail enterprises, combined with just how spread out they
are world wide would often mean far higher costs, both financially
and in effort, both on the publishers' side and on the retailers'
if each publisher had to deal with each retailer one on one.
As Future Comics found to their cost. Despite criticism from
some quarters, Diamond is responsible for keeping any kind
of diversity in most comic shops alive by offsetting the profits
on popular titles onto those less popular.
Nevertheless,
Diamond is a business and in the business of making money.
It doesn't expect every book to sell like X-Men
(especially since that figure's been getting lower by the
day), but each book has to hold their own. And in this market
that can be very tricky.
As a result, Diamond
has two measures for distribution and continued distribution
of a title. One is the quality of the work, the other is keeping
up a number of sales.
In this
two part article, I'll be teaching you how to circumvent both
and get your title in Diamond's monthly catalogue.
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