Diamond Comics Distributors Inc. has filed chapter 11 bankruptcy (restructuring) as of this week. It was a shock and not really a shock. I wasn’t quite sure how they were staying afloat, but many industry pundits continued to assure us that even losing 90% of their comic book publishing was not a crisis since they had games, toys, and other merch to fall back on. I’m not industry pundit, but I didn’t really buy that line of reasoning. Either way, the proof is in the final result, and it seemed like that was not a tenable situation. It sounds like Diamond tried to adjust quickly to their new reality but were not able to change their business fast enough.
There is a lot of blame being assigned, and I’m sure there is a lot of blame to go around, but, at the end of the day, if your business is failing, looking inward is the only sensible option. I have had some experience with Diamond as an online retailer, and although we were an extremely small account, there were definitely some issues, even way back then.
During my online retailing days, our weekly orders with Diamond were small and not very complex, but I could only count on one hand the number of times I did not have errors in my order. In contrast, I used to order my comic directly from DCBS, and I could count on one hand the number of times my orders were incorrect. Also, Diamond’s shipping methods were woefully inefficient and expensive. As an online comic retailer, the margins were pretty slim, so when they would ship a single item in a full-size box, rather than putting it with the other items, it was a pretty big financial hit. It finally came out, years later, that Diamond was making a profit on their shipping charges to their customers. All that being said, their online ordering system was pretty robust, and they had some pretty nice clearance sales for retailers. Not to mention, they would allow you free admission to SDCC for yourself and your employees, every year.
Diamond had everything locked up with exclusive deals with all the major publishers until Covid, when DC Comics executed a clause in their contract to change distribution due to Diamond’s inability to move their product. Some will blame Covid and DC Comics for bringing the whole house of cards tumbling down, but if it was all built on a house of cards in the first place, whose fault is it really?
Diamond isn’t all bad, but they did have their issues. They deserve credit for starting Free Comic Book Day which is a pretty cool thing for comic book companies and stores. I do feel some of the things they are being lauded for are fairly disingenuous. For example, they are being touted as a friend to the small, independent publisher, but they never really were until they lost the exclusivity with the larger publishers. Honestly, the mess the direct comic book market is, is mostly due to their ineptitude for the last twenty plus years when they had the sole reins on distribution. They would sometimes try to be innovative, but it was usually them being pulled kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
The real question is if things will be better or worse for the direct comic book market as the chips continue to fall and we get to see if Diamond is able to restructure and stay viable in some capacity. I mean some of their biggest creditors are other comic book distributors and publishers, so I sincerely hope they don’t pull others down with them. There are good people who work for both Diamond and other companies in the comic book ecosystem, so, for their sake more than anything, I hope everybody comes out of this stronger and better in the long run. Time will tell.
Yeah, when Literati Press, an indie publisher, was getting Glamorella's Daughter distributed through Diamond, the amount of insanely challenging hoops to jump through didn't give me the impression they were cheering us on. At least they are taking action, and maybe can pull themselves into current business practices.