Recently Diamond Distribution, North America’s largest comic books distributor, raised its benchmark for sales from $1500 to $2500 and its been having negative feedback all around.

For those of you that don’t quite understand what that means, most of the indy titles you love would no longer be distributed, most books that have sold under 300 copies (which are a lot of the books on the top 300 list) would not be distributed, and it would become that much harder for new creators to get into the business. Why? If there’s no chance for the new guy to even get out there, astronomical numbers to defeat before your book even hits the shelves, then it ain’t gonna happen.  They aren’t even going to include the adult merchandise catalogue with their regular catalogue anymore.

What can you do?  Gripe.  Let them know you aren’t happy about this, about the titles you like disappearing, about their new corporate stance.  Also, promote awareness of alternate distribution options.  The new emerging Comics Monkey for instance. http://www.comicsmonkey.com/blog/

This is incredibly daunting for emerging creators trying to get into the business, now realizing that their titles may never even have a chance of hitting shelves.  For more information, please check out the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52702298706 or the Monkeyslunch Forum post for thread updates: http://www.monkeyslunch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=489