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Tim Broderick on Diamond’s New Policies
posted September 15, 2005
 

Tim Broderick
http://www.timbroderick.net

You know, if you take the Diamond announcement this week and then consider the debate regarding Craig Thompson taking his books to Pantheon, you could come to the conclusion that maybe the direct market - in general - is not serving the needs of independent creators.

And one way to address that is for cartoonists to shop their books around to non-traditional comics publishers.

Yes, I realize I'm starting to sound like a crank.

I think if you're producing a quality, sophisticated story and not just the comic book version of Moby Dick that people rank under the cliff notes edition, then I believe you'll find a publisher and an audience.

Submit to non-comics publishers that work in the particular genre your story is in and get your books shelved with other prose books of the same subject matter. I think that's the future for independent creators. We have the examples of Spiegelman, Sacco, Satrapi and now Thompson.

BTW, I don't mean to dis the smaller, comics-only publishers or comics shops. I appreciate what they do and I'm fortunate enough to live in a town with at least two great shops that allow me access to the fruits of smaller publishers. It would be a real loss for that to go away.