Posted in: Antarctic Press, Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News | Tagged: diamond, lunar

Antarctic Puts Creator-Owned Comics On Hiatus Over Diamond Bankruptcy

Antarctic Press puts a number of its creator-owned comics on hiatus over Diamond Comic Distributors' bankruptcy declaration.

Joeming Dunn, Publisher and owner of Antarctic Press, has informed their comic book creators about changes happening to the publisher going forward as a direct result of Diamond Comic Distributors' decision to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"To all our creators. I have been asked quite a bit about the bankruptcy of Diamond Comics Distribution. To be frank, I saw the writing on the wall some time ago as they were a very consistent payer on time, and when things became a bit "wonky", I started reading the tea leaves. Personally, regarding Antarctic Press, I am taking a "don't panic", pragmatic, "let us see what happens" approach to this situation. I am assuming many people with financial interests are all coming to bear, and we will see if enough smart people can pull things together to make Diamond stronger and more stable than before.

"Antarctic Press is in a situation like many independent publishers where Diamond was a substantial portion of our income. But over the last 40 years of our existence, we have also seen and have been involved in many things within the industry. We have never had the financial position and power to do or enact change, which we believe would have been beneficial to the industry, which should have been done long ago, but that is an entirely different discussion. In any case, Antarctic Press is fortunate in that I believe we can sustain the market change until "things get figured out at Diamond."

"Our plan is to do business as usual with Diamond in the short term. While the invoices due prior to bankruptcy will need to be reconciled at some point (my guess is pennies on the dollar), as they say, it is what it is. We will most likely have to eat those costs as this probably will not be resolved for some time. We have a stream of books coming through the pipeline, which are arriving over the next weeks. We will ship Diamond their books in hopes they will honor their commitment to them. I am not holding my breath, but the books are already printed and are being shipped to us from overseas, so we will be holding the bag on those. If they do not pay for those books, it will answer quite a few questions from our perspective. And then we will have to decide how to go forward.

"Now, unfortunately this will impact our creator owned projects, we may have prioritized things which can make us immediate funds that we can control their production and rights. In other words, for instance, we can do crowdfunding campaigns that will help stabilize our income, which we are unable to do with most of our creator-owned projects because we do not have those rights. Therefore, we have put a hiatus on some creator-owned books because of that. In other words, we have to prepare for the contingency of Diamond not following through, and because of that, we cannot continue to hold the bag on the debts associated with that. We hope that this will change again…we again must wait and see.

"We have attempted, over the past year, to get Penguin Random House or Lunar to carry our books, but to no avail. The frustration in that process is that we have emailed them multiple times and have gotten maybe one response from them, and when I follow up, I am ghosted. I wish I had an insider who I could talk to with those distributors, but I do not, so I am assuming they do not want to pick publishers like us at this time. That is their prerogative, so I am not upset about it, but we were not given a chance to give them our sales pitch.

"While I personally appreciate all our creator-owned projects, I understand that if you need to move on, we, of course, will not inhibit that in any way. I cannot predict the future. We have taken some steps to try to weather the current storm. If we are successful or not is yet to be seen, but in over 40 years of our existence as a publisher, I can honestly say we have seen it all when it comes to this industry. Again, when we figure it out, we will try to keep everyone up to date. Thanks for being patient with us during this period of time."

There are similar stories affecting many comic book publishers right now. Antarctic Press, however, are one of the few being this open about it.

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