Over at PW I reported on Consortium starting to distribute Alternative Comics and Secret Acres to bookstores. They currently distribute Uncivilized, Toon Books, Nobrow and Koyama Press, as well as publishers such as Fulcrum and Enchanted Lion who put out a lot of graphic novel material. (And a lot of other distinguished small press publishers as well.)
I understand that Consortium has been very important for publishers like Uncivilized and Koyama—and that Consortium is pretty aggressive about bringing new comics publishers into their fold. At CAB I also heard a bunch of griping about Diamond—mostly shipping dates catalog listing and so on. Small things, and Diamond is pretty much the rock of the industry, but if people are getting better service elsewhere they are likely to move.
One thing about the publishers picked up by Consortium—they may be small presses that publish a lot of indie cartoonists, but many of their books aren’t necessarily limited in audience to hardcore indie comics readers. For instance, Wendy, shown above, is a popular webcomic and a devastating take on socialite culture. Sam Henderson’s books are just funny gags, Nobrow puts out a ton of books that are just great to look at, Uncivilized books are smart and accessible, Edie Fake’s work has gotten acclaim many places, Toon Books are award winning crowd pleasers and so on. Getting better distribution seems to be a very important move for all these publishers and I expect we’ll hear more about this in 2015
Robyn Chapman has some thoughts about this and what it means to micro presses here.
Arsenal Pulp is another little known client with a decent GN list.
Manic D publishes a wide variety of geeky titles.
Searching the Consortium site, I found 173 titles under the Graphic Novel category.
Toon Books is owned by Candlewick Press (Walker Books), which is distributed by Random House Publisher Services, which, it could be argued, is the “500-pound gorilla on the cover of Strange Adventures” of graphic novel distribution.
Diamond Book Distributors did save the industry after CDS collapsed, and still has major clients:
http://www.diamondbookdistributors.com/default.asp?t=2&m=1&c=53&s=528
I think you’ll see more of this… distributors dealing with comics publishers just like they deal with any other publishers; small presses experimenting with the occasional graphic novel, and possibly, slowly, creating a backlist of titles in the subject.
Publishers Group West (PGW) is also picking up more graphic novel/comics publishers. I think this is due to a combination of things: more great books getting published, more comics publishers are becoming better educated about the overall market place, and distributors becoming better educated about the comics medium and graphic novel format. Maybe the right word to use is Convergence? It’s pretty cool to see that there are more options available to everyone. Competition is a very, very good thing.
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