Overboard
Found this while poking around Guy Gonzalez' transplanted Comic Book Commentary - Say What?. There's an interesting collection of links to other articles there, but this one jumped out at me.
Comics Shops Turn to Book Distributors for Graphic Novels - 7/18/2006 - Publishers Weekly.
Granted, I'm not seeing say, Dark Horse, jumping off of the Diamond exclusive anytime soon, but there's certainly a market for books like SIN CITY outside the DM. So what if (and please don't turn this into a rumor--I'm a lousy source for rumors) Frank Miller wants to take SIN CITY to a different publisher who can present more traction outside the direct market, due to it being tied to Diamond? This has already happened with creators like Craig Thompson and Dan Clowes jumping over to Pantheon. Granted, that's not going to make a huge ripple in the DM because those aren't huge DM books. We can debate how large these books actually are, but my guess is there's more copies of SIN CITY in circulation than BLANKETS.
But what happens when a big player in the DM makes that jump? And what if they find greater success doing it with another distribution system? It's going to happen sooner or later, with someone who's got their own property that has a wider appeal than the restrictive genre constraints we see at the top of the DM. Will DM retailers move to a multi-distributor system?
Of course, lots of the good shops already have accounts at more than one or two or three book distributors. But how long until this becomes the norm rather than the exception? And will it ever force some publishers to consider expanding beyond Diamond exclusive distribution for their graphic novels (monthlies are right out, as that's strictly a niche presentation?) I can't prognosticate as to how that'll change things, but you can bet that it'll be big.
And whether this happens before electronic distribution becomes a mainstream phenomena is another question altogether.