Bucking the system
No doubt you've read about Claypool Comics' woes with Diamond. Basically Diamond has told Claypool they plan to cancel Deadbeats and Soulsearchers and Company, starting with the issues shipping in April, unless Claypool can push their sales up.
Over at The Engine, AiT/Planet Lar publisher Larry Young shares some advice for Claypool and any other publisher who may find themselves in a similar position:
Everyone rending their garments and all about small pressers getting a bum deal from the Diamond benchmarks really need to start thinking.
Assuming no one wants to actually, you know, get the word out about their book and sell it legit, it's easy to game the system. Non-brokered publishers have to pay $1020.00 for a full page Previews ad, yeah? You're spending that much to be seen as serious, right?
But because you're doing comics, you're getting your fix from a Local Comic Store, it's safe to say? Convince your sympathetic LCS guy to order 410 copies of your $2.95 book, and pay him back his cost with the money you've saved by not booking a Previews ad. Even at half-off, there's your $600 benchmark right there, and you've saved three hundred bucks and change. Any other orders just put you further up.
You could have him order 150,000 copies and allocate to everyone else who orders and not ship his "order"and you're higher up than BATMAN.
I mean, there's things you can do.
posted by JK Parkin @ 8:56 PM
3 Comments:
I'm not sure I'd call it "advice," really, but if you're back-of-the-catalogue, you really need to adopt a by-any-means-necessary attitude about getting your books into people's hands.
And if you're worried about the Diamond benchmark, $600 is nothing in the grand scheme of things... and if it *is* to you, maybe you should rethink your strategies.
Lar
I told my LCS owner that very same strategy when Diamond first stated the new policy change. Not about not placing the add, but that a small publisher could possibly order the number of issues they'd need for the benchmark.
He didn't agree with me, stating that if the small publisher had the funds to do that, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot by not ordering the advertising space in Previews.
Also, Larry, if they could order 150,000 copies of their own comics, I'd say they could afford the advertising space. ;)
Me? I say do what it takes to stay distributed by Diamond, even if it means ordering the benchmark yourself and selling the copies at cons, your own website, eBay, Amazon, WHEREVER!!
No, Chris; you misunderstand that last bit. I said, somewhat tongue in cheek, that you could get a sympathetic LCS guy to ORDER 150,000 copies. The publisher, of course, doesn't actually SHIP that order, but would "allocate" the shipment to everyone else with legitimate orders and not ship the artificially inflated order. This would make the publisher appear to have the Number One book that month, over BATMAN and the X-MEN. :)
I was informed yesterday by my peeps over at Diamond that this cheeky plan wouldn't work now, because they've recently begun reporting SALES and not ORDERS, but, you know, the point remains: there's things you can do.
Lar
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