Every once in awhile I happen across some free time to read some web comic news. I never have to fear finding any drama though. One of my favorite strips, Devil’s Panties, is having a few issues making the $2500 mark for distribution by Diamond. The story starts confused and gets even more confusing as you look into it. As one of the small guys Jennie is going through Diamond to publish her second book. From Jennie:

It should be clarified that it wasn’t 900 dollars but 900 orders that were made. My publisher clarified that to be 835 pre-orders. I didn’t know what the minimum diamond order was so I was flipping out about getting enough pre-orders. My local comic shop guy (my boss, actually a she) did some math and said I needed to get 600 pre-orders. I didn’t know if diamond counts cash or number of books but my book is going to sell at 4.95$. ALSO turns out that diamond only ordered the 835 books so they’re already sold out and now we get into re-orders and I’m totally lost with that. So the good news is that I’m sold out. The bad news is that Diamond didn’t order that many in the first place.

Apparantly this problem is on the rise giving many indie artists a harder time of breaking into the print industry. What’s the answer to getting a big distribution but still being able to start small and grow?