Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged: bbc, doctor who

IDW Become Premier Publisher, One Of The New Big Five

Published Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:05:17 -0500

Last updated Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:29:40 -0500

CrossGen were promised it, but never got it. Boom! have been doing their best to achieve it. But IDW Publishing have the prize, the status of a Premier Publisher at Diamond Comics, shared by DC Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image and the late Acclaim Comics.

The premier publishing tag is more than just an honorific, it sees the publisher have greater publicity and prominence withinn the comics marketplace by being at the front of the Previews catalogue. There are many retailers who rarely go beyond the front of the catalogue as it is, IDW can now sell their books into all those stores.

However it appears that unlike the other four publishers, IDW will not become a brokered publisher, which would mean they would employ Diamond to distribute books and Diamond would be much less able to set terms. By maintaining the standard publisher terms of sale, Diamond are much more able to refuse a book based on sales, and not represent IDW's back list as much as they do with Marvel, DC, Image and Dark Horse. IDW will now, however, join the FOC system which allows retailers to increase and decrease orders of a title much closer to the book's publication date.

There has been much resistance in the past from the Big Four to becoming a Big Five again, after the currenbt system at Diamond was instigated after the Great Distributor Wars of the mid nineties. However during recent years, IDW has repeatedly outperformed a number of those publishers in some time periods. With licensed titles from Transformers to GI Joe, from 24 to Doctor Who, with multi-media friendly titles such as 30 Days Of Night, Locke & Key and the upcoming Kill Shakespeare, this publisher, which was initially formed by Wildstorm ex-staffers, has grown to become one of the biggest English language publishers going.

This change can only bring more of the same. I wonder if they fancy killing me off again?

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