Diamond Distributions - A Little Clarification

Howdy all. I've been on vacation the past week and didn't spend much time posting here. I recently wrote a series of posts about comic book distributor Diamond distributions:

The Greed of Diamond Distributions
Why Digital Comics should remain cheap
How Diamond is Killing the Comic Book Industry 

Since then I did some further investigation and looked into things a bit more, made a couple of phone calls and turns out I was a little misinformed on Diamond's practices.
Things are actually worse than I had stated.

Diamond Comic Distributors raised its order minimums from $1,500 to $2,500. They charge based on how much money a comic book publisher makes, not on number of books sold. That's an important distinction. It is the amount of money the publisher makes - BUT - that amount is the amount the publisher makes AFTER Diamond takes it's 60% cut for distributing the comic.

So, again, Diamond is encouraging publishers to raise the cost of their books, which decreases the amount of books sold because, hey, this just in - the economy sucks right now!

What Diamond really has done is give a giant middle finger to small press comic publishers. They don't want to fool with them. BUT take heart - there are some alternatives available to small press publishers, and more springing up all the time. I'll be looking at some of those in the next few days, alternatives that are 100% DIAMOND free! Excelsior!