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In Praise Of… Diamond Book Distributors

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool reported on Oni Press moving their bookstore distribution from Diamond to Simon & Schuster. You know, the company everyone was boycotting when they were publishing Milo a few months ago. And Jude Terror did this oh-so-hilarious illustration.

Oni liked.

So why would anyone stay with Diamond Book Distributors? And why do publishers, who strike deals with big bookstore distributors ever come back?

As it stands, book distribution is flat. Very few ups and downs, even if you have an adult colouring book line. In comic books you may notice that every two or three years mid-size comic book publishers switch distributors in an attempt to get a better deal, a better push, a better shelf presence. But not many are finding it.

Some may get better presence that Diamond Books – but Image Comics' decision to still with them, and the success of The Walking Dead has meant that it probably saved Diamond Comics as a whole, at one point one in every two comics they distributed to bookstores was the Walking Dead, but it has made for better inroads into the bookstore market since.

Now, it is likely that Simon & Schuster, Random House and others can do better. Bookstores are their lives. But publishers may want to balance that against that Diamond Books give comic publishers the same payment deals they do for direct market sales, usually one to two months after receiving the books. They will also absorb and manage returns, taking them from one bookstore and sending to another if they can, without needing to bother the publisher. But they are transparent about what has sold and what has not. The biggest criticism I hear about Diamond Books is that they aren't the best at selling the books in to new markets. But there's a flip side to all this.

Other bookstore distributors will be lucky to pay out within 6 months to a year. At which point a chain that the big bookstore distributor sales people persuaded to take 20,000 copies suddenly returns 19,900 of them eleven months later, the publisher has to accept them and the resultant cashflow issue could be enough to take a small publisher down, especially if it overextended to meet the order.

In fact I was once told of a publisher who, through a big bookstore distributor was told they had to accept more return numbers than they printed – the books are often destroyed rather than returned as the shipping back can be more than the price of printing.

Now of course, publishers and distributors are free to negotiate and I'm sure Oni Press got a strong deal with Simon & Schuster in order for them to move.

But the notion that there's real book distribution and then there's Diamond Books, is a fallacy. And as for making deals, sticking with Diamond Books can also help you get leverage on your direct market deals as well. There's a reason Image Comics are staying where they are… for now.

Until everyone just goes direct with Amazon of course for Wednesday drone deliveries. Tick tick tick…

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