Christopher Butcher on the fading of the direct market
“It’s better to burn out then fade away.” — Neil Young
Christopher Butcher, manager of The Beguiling, offers a reasoned essay on why the direct market will won’t just end but will instead gradually shrink and fade into no longer existing.
With Amazon best-seller lists, and New York Times Graphic Novels Bestseller lists, and the popularity of manga, and graphic novels, and the big movie tie-ins and the rapid-fire collection of superhero stories into graphic novels, and THE INTERNET in all its forms (pirates especially), one day we’re going to look around and realize that no one really cares about the notion of a “Direct Market.” Everyone else will have moved on to the idea of graphic novels as a mass-market medium, available in all kinds of formats, from all kinds of venues.
