Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Image | Tagged: diamond, Simon & Schuster

Image Comics Pulls Bookstore Sales From Diamond To Simon & Schuster

Image Comics has announces a new exclusive North American distribution deal with Simon & Schuster for bookstores in 2024.

Image Comics has announces a new exclusive North American distribution deal with Simon & Schuster, effective with January 2024 on-sale titles, for Book Market distribution. Previously exclusive to Diamond Book Distributors, Image Comics will join Viz Media, Boom Studios, and many other graphic novel publishers on the Simon & Schuster distribution client list. Image Comics will continue its relationship with Diamond Book Distributors to serve the UK and International Book Market.

Direct Market distribution from Image Comics to comic book stores in the US will continue through Lunar Distribution. Direct Market distribution to the UK will remain through Diamond Comic Distributors by way of Lunar Distributors. The Simon & Schuster deal doesn't affect Image Comics' set up with Lunar and only affects the book market accounts. Book market accounts in the UK, such as those common in Waterstones, Easons, WH Smiths and the like, will continue to be handled by Diamond UK directly from Image. Simon & Schuster is only going to be handling Image Comoics' North American Book Market accounts, such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon US, Canada's Indigo chain of stores, indie bookstores like Powell's and more..

"For the past 20 years we have been able to establish a foothold for our trade paperbacks and graphic novels in the book market thanks in no small part to the support and efforts of Diamond Book Distributors," said Eric Stephenson, Publisher at Image Comics. "Over time, our needs and backlist of titles have grown and our increasing footprint in the marketplace has us excited to take this next step with Simon & Schuster to build a more robust infrastructure for our titles there."

Once upon a time, Image Comics was responsible for Diamond Comic Distributors not going bankrupt, courtesy of the Walking Dead collection sales, which could only be ordered by bookstores through Diamond. Image Comics was committed to staying with Diamond after DC Comics walked after the pandemic shutdowns, with publisher Eric Stephenson calling them "hasty, sociopathic decisions". However, I understand that three years later, Image Comics – far from hasty – has been dissatisfied that Diamond has not made the changes to the system that Image Comics believes were needed, and that informed their recent moves away from Diamond to Lunar and to Simon & Schuster.

"We are delighted to welcome Image Comics to our family of distribution clients," said Michael Perlman, Senior Vice President, General Manager of Simon & Schuster Publisher Services. "We look forward to partnering with them to help share their graphic novels with readers throughout North America."

Simon & Schuster offers a full range of distribution services to independent publishers and client publishers benefit from all advantages of the Simon & Schuster infrastructure, including sales, fulfillment, production, digital support services, and more. Image Comics' Digital/ebook distribution is currently serviced by IPG and is unaffected by this change.

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