News

Diamond Responds about Purchase Order Benchmark Change (Update 2)

The Newsarama website has posted an interview with Diamond Comic Distributors Vice President of Purchasing Bill Schanes about the recent change in Diamond's purchase order benchmark. With certain exceptions, all publishers must now demonstrate that an item can recoup US$2,500 in Diamond's costs in a month for the item to be included in Diamond's system. This is an increase from the previous benchmark of US$1,500. Many manga publishers rely on Diamond to distribute their titles to comic book stores and other retailers that do not return unsold copies.

Source: Publishers Weekly's The Beat

Update: The ICv2 retail news source has posted another interview with Schanes.

Update 2: Publishers Weekly's The Beat blog reports that Diamond laid off 13 employees on Thursday. The managing editor and designer for the now canceled Diamond Dialogs magazine has been laid off, and "wages for management and other staff were reduced."