Sad news for anyone who buys their graphic fiction at Borders Book Stores.
Diamond Distributors, the company that supplies comic books, graphic novels, manga, and the like to most shops across the country, has elected not to ship any new (or back catalog) merchandise to the chain of book stores due to late payments.
The decline in print media demand has caused most brick and mortar book retailers to see their sales slump, but Borders has been hit especially hard due to an absence of a digital business strategy.
The elimination of a graphic fiction section isn’t going to help matters much either.
That being said, Diamond is just one of many vendors that the company owes money to. However, unlike most of the other book publication categories, there are few (if any) other vendors that offer a similar back catalog of graphic fiction — meaning, once the current stock of books sell through, they might as well remove the “Graphic Novels” sign on the bookshelf because it’ll just be empty space.
Manga libraries on the other hand may have a fighting chance to stick around since several publishers are distributed by larger companies in addition to Diamond, as noted by ICv2.
As if book stores needed another reason for people to not come in.
[Source: ICv2 via Comics Alliance]
Whoa that is bad news. Most of the books I purchase from Borders are manga. I use their handy 30 percent off coupons…or I guess I did. Amazon, here I come.
Comment by ChinkyD — January 21, 2011 @ 6:08 pm
I love Borders, more than Barnes and Noble. I love the people at the two shops near me; the Seattle’s Best coffee and hot chocolate rock; great books, magazines and comics; real good deals; etc. But over the past few years in South Florida, I couldn’t help but notice less and less people there. Even the local B&N is seeing drops in people there, other than college students working at the BN/Starbucks…
heath
Comment by heath — January 23, 2011 @ 10:44 pm