Comments on: Industry Issues — UPDATE

by: amateur asians

Sat, 23 May 2009 19:45:52 +0000

great blog and interesting articles ive added your site to my rss reader…thanks a bunch

by: Joe Field

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 01:30:00 +0000

“There were some 5000 stores then, if we have our math right.”

Among the dozen or so direct market distributors in operation then, there was a high-water mark of 9000 or more accounts. A number of retailers did have accounts with several distributors, in which case they may have been counted as more than one “account”.

It’s hard to quantify the criteria for defining “stores”, but I think 5000 is low for the high point.

by: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:26:29 +0000

I redid the math on those Diamond sales figures five times and was positive I was calculating something incorrectly because it means that, on average, Diamond accounts grossed $185,714.29/year. Assuming that there’s probably 20-30 major accounts making twice that much, if not more, how many of the 3,500 accounts are scraping by on $50k or less each year?

And what, exactly, defines “comic specialty stores”? Is that brick and mortar only, or does DCBService.com count, too? Does Midtown Comics count as 1 or 2 accounts? What about the bodega down the street from me, and several others like it here in the City, all of which seem to carry 15-20 Marvel & DC titles every month? If they’re among the 3,500…yikes!

by: Judy Hansen

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:14:16 +0000

I would like to correct an error in Chris’ comment. I represent clients through the Hansen Literary Agency. I still have a few clients such as the Will Eisner estate, Wendy and Richard Pini, Mark Schultz, Bryan Talbot and Chuck Dixon through the old Kitchen and Hansen Agency.

But after negotiating to revert all of Will Eisner’s graphic novels from DC and place them at W.W. Norton, and many other deals, as the partner in the old agency who actually did all the trade book negotiations and contracts, I moved foward with my own agency.

All of the clients mentioned including Scott McCloud, Kean Soo, Kazui Kibuishi, Hope Larson, Svetlana Chmakova, and many other fabulous creators and wonderful clients are exclusively represented by the Hansen Literary Agency.

by: Torsten Adair

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:45:44 +0000

The first two points are solved(?) by the Internet. As a college student in the boonies of Eastern Iowa, I used mail order to get my comics fix, with an occasional journey into Iowa City.

Newspapers offer many extra strips on their websites than they do in their papers. Syndicates now offer subscription services for comic strips and other features.

There are many creators publishing online, and then self publishing. The most visible being the Unshelved guys, who were at BEAgiving a great talk and selling lots of books and shirts. They visit lots of library conferences, and are the Dilbert of librarians. (example: A patron returns a book. With a raw slice of bacon bookmark. True story, with three people in the audience having also experienced this.)

“It takes a lot of work, and a long time, to become an overnight sensation.”–T. Adair