—meaning, that RH’s position in the book market is not equivalent to Norton’s and Fantagraphics’ position in the comic market is not equivalent to DC’s. It’s not a comment about what you know or what Eric knows—it’s a comment about the positional power of the companies involved.

As for sales reps, I’m certain Rory’s right about Random House’s sales reps being a huge advantage in terms of sheer might, but that’s not necessarily a reason to overlook other huge advantages and cost-savings, especially given how increasingly consolidated market share has become amongst a few major players (B&N, Amazon, Borders, B&T, & Ingram are probaby 85% of the market for most new graphic novels) who don’t need to be serviced by a giant team of field agents or whatever.

Or maybe it is! I guess I’m saying I could easily make arguments for both, and so I would love to know their final thought process in deciding.

Getting back to Rory’s comment about the number of sales reps. A major publisher probably has a sales force that numbers in the dozens–several to cover national retail chains, others for trade wholesalers, others for independent booksellers, others for so-called “special markets”, more for big box merchandisers, and so on. Does DBD have that many folks in place as an active sales force? Is DC’s in-house staff comparable in scope? Could DC build its own comparable staff? I mean, yes, I could easily believe that RH’s sales force is indeed significantly larger than DC’s current own, or DBDs, or many (but not necessarily all) other book trade distributors.

Does DC have it’s own “sales force” for the DM? I seem to recall that being one of the advantages to their exclusive deal in ‘95, that they would have access to all sales info and could employ their own sales team.

Yeah, none of us not in the deal will ever know everything that went into the decision, but for what it’s worth, a little web searching turned up this:

http://www.randomhouse.biz/publisherservices/coreservices

which is an overview of the capabilities Random House has to offer to distributed lines. I certainly ain’t an expert in such things, but warehouse capacity and fulfillment activity they describe there seems pretty impressive to me. Plus, that site describes RH’s sales force as “the largest, and most esteemed sales force in the industry.” Even allowing for a bit of hyperbole to that statement, if the big difference between what DC’s getting out of RH now vs. what DC got out of Hachette has to do with the sales force, maybe RH’s sales force was somehow more impressive than other distributors.

Diamond’s are great; they just don’t have enough of them.

Oh, I’m sure that DBD pursued the DC’s book trade business. I wouldn’t be surprised if book trade distributors other than RH and DBD pursued DC’s book trade business. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if every other book trade distributor in the biz was trying to get the line…

But there are so many factors that could influence decision-makers in these sorts of deals, that I don’t know that a fear-of-consolidating-eggs in the Diamond basket would be a central concern.

I’d like to hear the argument behind that statement. I would argue that there is no one who understands the Fantagraphics/Norton relationship better than Eric Reynolds and myself, and I’m curious what you mean above.

Sez you, neener-neener.

I understand the differences insofar as both DC and Random House are extremely large corporations existing within giant conglomorates, whereas Fanta and Norton are independent companies. But the basic idea of a GN publisher teaming up with a regular ol’ book publisher-as-distributor is not new.

Your comment about Hatchette vs. RH has no bearing on my comment at all, although for what it’s worth I think you’re correct.

And actually, I was not one of the people who drew this to Heidi’s attention. I read it here first. So there!

next time, heidi, when you want to write “A couple of people drew our attention…”, just say that eric emailed you…

On another note, I wonder how hard Diamond Book Distributors lobbied for DC’s business? They must have tried, given Diamond/DC’s exclusive relationship on the DCD side. I wonder if DC was worried about putting all its eggs in one basket or if Random House just simply looked that much more attractive. I guess we shouldn’t expect to see DC purchasing Diamond anytime soon. I’m referring, of course, to DC’s exclusive contract inked with DCD in 1995, which gives Diamond “the right but not the obligation to buy Diamond outright between the 10th and 16th year” of the deal (i.e. 2005 and 2011), as reported in TCJ #177 (May 1995).

This new deal is interesting because with Diamond already warehousing so much of DC’s books due to their 1995 deal, there would have probably been a significant cost savings in consolodating their book trade business into DBD. The fact that they chose not to is curious, although I can only speculate as to the reasons.

In the 1995 deal, DC even seemed to be hedging its bets against WPS and looking towards a future book trade relationship with Diamond. Quoting the infamous “Levitz memo”:

“Diamond becomes available as a low cost supplier of distribution services which have potential economic benefits for our other distribution venues, including as leverage against the $2 million distribution fees we currently pay WPS.”

It seems to me that the potential economic benefits are as much or greater now than they were in 1995, given that DBD didn’t exist in 1995.

I like what Matt Brady does, but I sure would have loved to hear what Levitz has to say about any of this.