I think at at least one point in all of our lives, we’ve bought a comic book not in a comic book shop. Whether it be Amazon or what have you, these things happen. And I’d suspect that most of you out there have bought a comic or two at Borders, a national chain that you most frequently hear in competing with Barnes and Noble.
Today we’ll be talking about Borders in a different light, however. According to a report from Bleeding Cool, it looks like as of last week Diamond – the world’s biggest comic book distributor – is no longer shipping comics/trades/graphic novels to Borders across the country. Why? Apparently Borders has suspended payments to their suppliers, which includes Diamond. Of course, this means that the bookstore giant has millions of now unsold books that are unpaid for, and according to the article it looks likely that the books will be returned.
This obviously puts a huge blow to the modern comic industry. We do occasionally pretend that comics are still incredibly high selling, but we know that outside of our little fancave, comics aren’t a huge thing world wide. However, there are tons of comic publishers around the world who use Diamond, and while Marvel and DC will probably not be affected too much by this as they don’t used Diamond for bookstore distribution, smaller publishers could be hurt greatly by Borders’ move here. Diamond is in talks to resolve this (why wouldn’t they?), but the fear is that this will greatly hurt the industry as it stands today, and some publishers would not survive – which would be awful.
One can only hope that the issue will be resolved and for the better. The last thing we need is a punch in the comic industry’s gut.
(via source)
