The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Yesterday I wrote about Diamond Comic Distributors decision to increase it’s Purchase Order Benchmark and what I thought about it all. (That very long post is here.)

But whilst I was writing it I thought it would be nice to see what someone with a different position in the industry thought of it all; I’m just an interested consumer of comics after all. What I really needed was someone who’s intimately involved in publishing comics. And then I thought it would be good to get the view of someone actively involved in comics retailing.

Well I happen to know Kenny Penman and Kenny ticks both boxes. He’s one of the founders of Forbidden Planet International and more recently he’s decided that he wants to be a publisher as well. So he set up Blank Slate Books with fellow FPI director James Hamilton to publish some of the best of British and European work that just wouldn’t find a home anywhere else. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know I’ve thoroughly enjoyed what he’s put out so far and the work of Oliver East and Mawil is a welcome addition to my world.

So, with such a relatively unique position in the industry what does Kenny think of the Diamond decision?

(This interview was conducted very quickly yesterday, I fired a few questions at Kenny and then followed up some of his points for clarification. Edits have been made only for the sake of clarity and to keep a narrative flow)

Richard: Hello Kenny, sorry to burden you with this. I thought you’d maybe want to have a few thoughts here about the recent Diamond threshold announcement and what you, both as retailer and publisher, think of it.

Kenny: Hello Richard. I suppose I look at it from two different points of view. As a retailer I’m possibly less anti Diamond’s monopoly position than many other retailers I see quoted on the web. Given their extremely dominant position they are a VERY benign monopoly. I’d also note here that given how parlous the economics of the other comics distributors that existed at one time in competition with Diamond (Capitol etc), comics shops might be lucky there currently is one consolidated player otherwise the whole  distribution market, riven with competition, would likely be disappearing. Diamond also get confused by many as being a wholesaler – in other words somewhere you can go any time to get all the products you want from stock. Whilst they do carry out a part of this function it isn’t their main game so when I see retailers complaining about out off stocks on graphic novels etc. I wonder why they just don’t approach other distributors/wholesalers – Baker & Taylor etc. and cover themselves there.  It’s perfectly possible to do. Also they do run a system of new comics  distribution which barring the odd glitch is VERY efficient. So, as a whole, I’m not down on Diamond – certainly another strong stable distributor in the field might allow retailers to play one off against another and perhaps  increase their margins but I doubt that is happening any time soon when it’s  been reported that all US magazine distributors bar one are currently running at losses. Let’s try and make the best of what we have.

Richard: Yes, I’ve heard a lot of other retailers say something similar over the past few years. The Diamond of today is a much better distributor than the almost amateurish beast I remember dealing with back in the early 90s at Nostalgia & Comics. Some of the tales we used to be told were shocking. Now, onto the increased threshold decision?

Kenny:  Back in the early 90’s what became Diamond was probably still Titan in the UK and there were problems there caused by being a relatively weak ‘regional’ distributor, then we went through the Heroes World fiasco before things more or less coalesced as they have now. If you have been around a long time in this business you know it’s the best it has ever been purely in physical distribution terms, and actually probably in range also, Fantagraphics weren’t getting featured space, or small Art publishers like Sparkplug getting catalogue space 10 years ago. Graphic Novel reorders weren’t getting high fill rates and turnaround in the same week. If you are a store who specialises in Manga, Art publishers and Indy’s you might think differently but for the vast bulk of the UK retailing community the service is really pretty excellent when I compare it with many of the other suppliers we deal with in other supply areas. Mainstream comics go on sale in New York usually Wednesday, they go on sale in the UK on Thursday – that’s pretty impressive on the operations front when you think about it.

Regarding the threshold rise, with my business head on I almost think weeding the wheat from the chaff is to be applauded, if it brings a sounder economic base to a business that, like it or not, is crucial to comic shops survival. Does anyone who is actually in the  business of comics retailing, rather than sniping from the sidelines, really think that Diamond disappearing and a new system of distribution emerging would help the industry right now? Given the mounting and already substantial pressures on all  business it would likely result in the death of 75% of comics retailers before the wheel could be re-invented. I also welcome, as someone who wades through Previews, that there will be less of it. The day of the full service comic store is probably long gone but we at FPI still run a lot of books that are probably marginally loss making for us were we to amortise some of our costs against their sales/against profits/less unsolds. Some gems will slip below the radar I suspect, and that’s a shame, but a more restricted offering to stores might well result in them tightening their belts without actually knowing they’ve done it. In times like these, that may be an unexpected benefit for the industry. Whilst  I know that for many of the creators who produce some of the books that won’t make it into Previews this seems disastrous but for many retailers it will be a cut-off valve from buying unsaleable junk (and let’s be honest, even in a purely subjective way, Previews always has a share of that).

Richard: Okay, that’s the sane and sensible business side. Now how about the Diamond threshold decision from the slightly less sane point of view of the newly established co-owner of Blank Slate Books?

Kenny: As a publisher it is of course a worry. I also, though I have no basis to think this other than  common sense, think that it is being exaggerated a little. I simply don’t believe that it will make much difference to any of the noted publishers – of course the front of the book companies are safe due to their ‘exclusive’  arrangements but I also suspect many others are as well. I just don’t believe  Diamond will be running a draconian rule over companies like Top Shelf, D&Q, or Fantagraphics saying these books are ok they make the threshold but these ones don’t so we won’t run them. I’m sure they will remember every Collected Peanuts, Lost Girls or What It Is and decide that they will run ALL releases from these houses – anything else would be a little nuts given these are proven producers who have delivered hit books in the past. Given Diamond also has an interest in making sure that many of these companies view them as an option  through Diamond Book Distributors, that’s even more reason to support a few loss making books to get the pearls of the output.

Where it will get hard is for very small publishers or new, trying to emerge publishers. Blank Slate, my company, made the minimum’s on our first two books just about. I don’t think we have a chance of making it on some of our upcoming unless the market changes a lot. I’m hoping that Diamond will adopt a policy, and Bill Schanes in his recent interview hints at this, where they will try and run a subjective eye over what’s being offered and allow the publishers in question a little leeway to see if they can get their books up to making minimum. It isn’t, far as I can tell, a first strike you’re out policy although it may of course become one as the market adapts to whatever economic tsunami is coming. Had I not had my books in Previews currently, I’d have lost about 60% of my sales on our first two books. Of course that’s a devastating decline but maybe it will force publishers to change the way they work. The web comic model shows that audiences can be built and given many small publishers (including ourselves for now) can be  construed as vanity publishers they probably have some flexibility in their model given that instant generation of profit probably isn’t always the necessity or in some cases the aim . Perhaps some go-get-em alternate will decide to act as a clearing house for other small publishers and unite to offer a service to stores directly. Of course the real problem is that the majority of comic stores are totally indifferent to most of the releases from small publishers and won’t even give them the time of day – it is this that is at the root of the low numbers which are now forcing Diamonds hand – not so much the distribution model. If you are a publisher lucky enough to have books that were getting into the mainstream bookstores you might feel you are covered by sales through those outlets – personally I wouldn’t bet on it – I suspect buying there will be heavily reduced across the board and that will have impacts on profitability for us all. Fewer books you ship at a time, less profit you make. In the end publishers who can’t find comics that make the minimums over say a 2 year period probably should be giving up anyhow – but if they choose to continue – the good ones will find new ways to distibute direct to consumers that might allow them to keep on publishing. We’re all self-publishers now.

And that was where we left it.

Thanks to Kenny for those thoughts. Interestingly the idea of publishers uniting and forming a clearing house type arrangement to sell direct has already been mooted by Dan Vado of SLG in a letter to Tom Spurgeon of Comics reporter (link):

Dan Vado: “On another side note, next month SLG was going to be rolling out a website for retailers only where they could reorder our books and get our vital info without sorting through all of the consumer crap on our regular site. I am going to be offering some publishers an opportunity to participate by listing their stuff on that site, in essence trying to become a distributor myself. There might be some opportunity to make money on that bottom half of the scale that Diamond cannot handle right now.”

One other aspect that I’ve seen increasingly put forward as one way to go is that this may well be the thing that makes everyone think seriously about online comics as an alternative business model. Instead of a publisher printing comics and then collecting them, one potential solution is to build an audience with the comics available free online and then release a print collection at a later stage. I hope to God no-one in the publishing business is even thinking about a paid online model. Because I just don’t think it will work for something like comics. The format’s wrong and the availability of free comic torrents is always going to be an issue. The music industry can barely make a paid online model work and they’ve got a lot more money to spend on it and an awful lot more people who actually want the product than comics have.

Whatever happens in the short term and the long term, we’ll be around to talk about it here on the FPI blog.

And I promise the next post will have something fun to talk about!