Why Chris Ware Changed Distributors
Heidi MacDonald gets the inside story on why popular graphic novelist Chris Ware (you’ve seen his work in the NYT Magazine Funny Pages) switched distributors for the latest volume of his Acme Novelty Library, moving to FSG’s Drawn & Quarterly after previously being published by Fantagraphics and distributed by Norton. It all started with “a very boneheaded error of my own,” says Ware. “I’d stupidly made the bar code too small to be scanned…”
“…I spent an apologetic few days sending almost entirely unanswered queries to [Norton] trying to come up with some compromise that would save altering the book (like simply stickering over the shrinkwrap that was already extant.) As it turned out, Norton had already gone ahead and stuck it directly with a permanent label anyway, despite their claims that the decal could be easily removed. They then charged me for it. After this, I decided that they probably weren’t a company I would want to deal with again, not only for their lack of communication, but because what I care about most is the quality and presentation of a book, especially one which is not cheap and one of the very few which I’ve ever considered perfectly printed, to say nothing of one which will never be reissued.”
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