MUST READ: ComicsMonkey Launch – Print on Demand Comics Distribution for Direct Market Comic Shops

This is an important initiative for the comics community. Ka-Blam – the company that also runs IndyPlanet, the comic book print on demand service, has just launched ComicsMonkey, a "No Benchmarks, No Thresholds, No Minimums and No Fees" digital printing direct market comics distribution system. 

According to its blog, Ka-Blam has been working on and testing this model since 2005, and has now launched Comics Monkey nine months ahead of schedule in response to the recent Diamond Distributors announcement, which we covered in a previous post.

... you'll find a lot of similarities between the way IndyPlanet operates and the way ComicsMonkey will operate. The primary difference of course being that IndyPlanet is a retail site that will accept orders from anyone and ComicsMonkey will accept orders only from registered, verified comics retailers.

The products will be sold to retailers on a firm sale basis and with a beginning 35% discount off the cover price. Publishers should get 10% off retail price for every unit sold, although this figure has not been confirmed yet.

You can check out the Retailer policy here.

You can check out the Supplier (Publisher) policy here.

Best NY Comics Store

A Sydney Morning Herald travel article by Barry Divola recently identified the best specialty bookstores in New York. The vote for Best Comics store went to Rocketship in Brooklyn. 

If you're a comic book geek or graphic novel aficionado, cross the Brooklyn Bridge, my friend. Smith Street is a cool strip in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill area. Rocketship's selection is large and eclectic and you won't have to fight your way through 15-year olds with questionable bathing habits who are looking for Batman figurines. The stores stocks fantasy and superhero titles but a large proportion of the space is given over to more literate titles from the likes of modern masters such as Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine. They also have regular displays of original artwork and appearances by well-known comic artists.

You can bet your patootie that Jozef and I will be heading over there during our new trip to NYC for a quick squiz.