The Secret of the Wednesday’s Haul

From Brian Hibbs newest Tilting At Windmills column on CBR:

Personally, in the last year or so I’ve been sourcing most of my [FANTGRAPHICS] reorders either through FBI, or through B&T when I just needed spot-reorders. The fact is that as a publisher with an “F”-code discount at Diamond, it cost me the same price to buy from Diamond or “bookstore,” so why not buy from the “bookstore” channel?

(Of course, I can still buy from “bookstore” going forward - this deal is only impacting Direct Market sales; but, as a DM retailer I don’t have to buy from the DM. For me, the difference is I’ll no longer be allowed to buy directly from FBI. WW Norton is still carrying FBI’s books for the book channel.)

The emphasis is mine.

Hibbs, a direct market comic retailer with his Comix Experience shop in San Francisco, doesn’t have to order Fantagraphic books from FBI’s exclusive direct market distributor? That seems like a very messed up system to me. I know that there’s a lot of shops that probably don’t have Hibbs’ savvy and don’t spread the wealth using book distributors to supply their stores but it seems like this deal between Fantagraphics and Diamond is getting to be a lot of talk about nothing. If Fantagraphics books were only available to direct market retailers through Diamond, that would be one thing. But it’s not even that. Heck, for the time being, Diamond isn’t the exclusive direct market distributor since I think two other smaller distributors (Last Gasp and Bud Plant?) were grand-fathered into the deal.

Who cares who distributes Fantagraphics? I mean really? Who?  And that’s where Hibb’s heads toward as well in his column.  He points out the pluses and minuses and they appear to counter-balance themselves out for the comic retailer.

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