Comics Shops Turn to Book Distributors for Graphic Novels
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on July 18, 2006 Sign up now!
by Judith Rosen, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 7/18/2006
Now that mainstream publishers are increasing the number of graphic novels on their lists, some comics shops are turning to book wholesalers to supplement their weekly deliveries from Diamond Comic Distributors. "The choices are out there for retailers, whether they want to order from Ingram, Baker & Taylor or Amazon," says Joe Fields, owner of Flying Colors Comics & Other Cool Stuff in Concord, Calif., and president of ComicsPRO, a retailers' organization.
"The savvy comics shops are reaching out," affirms John Davis, director of pop culture markets at regional wholesaler Bookazine in Bayonne, N.J. "The bread-and-butter appeal of someone like us is that we carry a lot of stuff, like Abrams Image, at close to Diamond's discounts." Bookazine's counterpart on the West Coast, Partners/West Book Distributing in Renton, Wash., hasn't been nearly as proactive at seeking out comics shops, although it does have some comics customers, according to buyer Trent Shaw.
Not surprisingly, many of the buyers who have turned to book wholesalers for the graphic novel version of Ann Martin's The Baby-Sitters' Club: Kristy's Great Idea (Scholastic/Graphix), adapted by Raina Telgemier, and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy (Houghton Mifflin) come out of the book business. For example, Ed Evans, co-owner with his wife, Dina Evans, of All Things Fun! Toys, Games, Comics & Adventure in Berlin, N.J., was previously director of sales for Koen Book Distributors. "Graphic novels are a huge part of our business, and we try to manage our vendors to see what ships first into where," he says. "Sometimes DC will be faster through the book trade, sometimes Diamond will be. On the comics side, we do the lion's share of our business with Diamond. And even on the graphic novel side, there are more that you'll find Diamond pick up. You'll see that with Marvel, which will do something special and it will turn out to be a graphic novel." He also orders direct from publishers like Scholastic.
Jim Crocker, owner of four-year-old Modern Myths: Comic Books and Games in Northampton, Mass., was formerly with Borders Book Group. Although his store is too small to order direct from Random House and other large houses, he frequently fills in graphic novels from Baker & Taylor and Bookazine, as well as Cold Cut. Crocker views his biggest competition as chain superstores. "On that mainstream stuff, Barnes & Noble certainly is my competition. They have 30 linear feet of manga. That's why we have to stay on top of things. I got Alison Bechdel's new book from Bookazine as the catalogue came in from Diamond offering it." Although the periodicals he orders from Diamond are what bring in customers week after week, Crocker worries that it's only a matter of time before comics classics like Sin City move to book publishers.
For Jim Mortensen, owner of 10-year-old Comix Revolution in Evanston, Ill., Diamond isn't always the first distributor in the cascade when it comes to new graphic novels or even evergreen ones like Art Spiegelman's Maus (Pantheon). Instead, as a self-described "just-in-time guy," he frequently turns to Baker & Taylor, which offers free shipping and next-day delivery. When he factors in a 3% reordering fee for Diamond, he finds Baker & Taylor's discounts competitive. "Being out of stock is not an option," says Mortensen. "I do weekly orders at Baker & Taylor, and to back that up further, I go direct to distributors like PGW, Consortium, Cold Cut or Last Gasp—or to the publishers."
To be fair, distribution is a two-way street, and some complaints about Diamond not making graphic novels available in a timely fashion arise from publishers' unfamiliarity with the direct market. "As more Main Street publishers are getting into our world," says Diamond Comics v-p of sales and marketing Roger Fletcher, "there's a mutual building up of relationships. I think we are making progress. But there's a learning curve. They need to understand what our deadlines are to put product in the monthly catalogue." At the same time, Fletcher notes, "we're making an effort to stay more on top of what's getting mainstream exposure."
For now, the discrepancy between what mainstream graphic novels Diamond can deliver and comics shops' needs is creating an opening for book wholesalers like Ingram, Baker & Taylor and Bookazine. Just how big a chunk is anyone's guess. But given that the majority of comics shops lack a computerized inventory system to stay on top of what's selling, many prefer to rely on Diamond. Still, as Fields notes, "the bottom line is: comics retailers have to be super-adaptoids. That's how we survive."
