April 15, 2002
Bankruptcy, the Internet, and Indie Comics
Last week, I was reading a column I occasionally read about the comics industry. And it told a scary story.
LPC had filed for bankruptcy, and was defaulting on payments to a lot of its publishers. LPC is (according to their web site) the 3rd largest book distributor in america (of course, their website also claims they are "financially secure", so keep that in mind) and they were taking an active role in selling "comics" to the big bookstores, especially the indie comic publishers. At the Alternative Press Expo 2 years ago, most of the publishers thought that LPC was going to be the way they found new audiences since the comics industry seemed to be collapsing. Sales to comic book stores are almost all handled through Diamond, which has a virtual monopoly on the distribution end of the system. (Smaller distributors specializing in indie stuff do exist, but aren't really competitors to Diamond. And the story of how Diamond got to that position is an interesting one, but for another time. This was the best link I could find right now.)
Well, the comics industry continues to sputter along (apparently 30,000 copies sold per month is considered a reasonable run these days. Looking in the small print in some of my comics from the mid-eighties shows that back then 150,000 was a pretty typical distribution) but now it looks like some trouble for the bookstore distribution. And potentially big trouble for smaller publishers that were counting on those checks to clear.
Top Shelf was the first to make an appeal to fans on the popular comic messageboards. They needed cash to continue operating, and offered a sale for people buying directly from them. Otherwise they would be history. 12 hours later, they said they had enough orders that things looked like they would turn out ok. This is a good thing, since they are one of my favorite publishers, putting out all sorts of good stuff like James Kochalka's stories about monkeys and robots and things like Steve Lafler's stories about jazz-playing bugs.
I had started making my mental list of what books to pick up when I discovered they had already announced things were ok. I decided to hold off on placing the order in case there were other publishers in trouble. I could also make the trip to the local comic store to buy the books, which would also help out the stores that might not be having a good time with this.
Sure enough, Drawn and Quarterly announced they were having trouble as well on the message boards. And they still haven't posted any "all-clear" announcement, so I made my order. They don't have the range of interesting stuff that Top Shelf has, but they do make Optic Nerve, which is one of the best comics ever. Losing that would be terrible.
So how does this story end? Will D&Q be saved? Will LPC find a way to keep distributing? If they go away completely will another company take their place? Distribution doesn't seem like an easy business these days. Will this actually help indie comics since they got people to try new stuff and order directly?
I was disappointed the companies hadn't posted any of this story to their web sites. For those of us who don't keep close tabs on the industry, much less the messageboards (not a good use of time, really), the story could have gone by unnoticed. If they want to support more casual comics fans to grow the audience for comics, they need to work on having friendlier and more accessible ways to get involved. Also, the online ordering at both companies left something to be desired, as does almost every comic company website.
It is easy for me to see why the comic industry has stayed in such an isolated bubble despite having produced some really incredible work at times.
Posted by babar at April 15, 2002 01:32 AM