On the eve of the BEA, the national trade show for the book business, Diamond Comic Distributors has announced that it has named Avatar's exclusive distributor to the book and comic trades. Although it has a limited line and is probably better known for variant covers than for its book collections, Avatar's output includes a lot of high profile creator names, including Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and Alan Moore, and it recently started including books from Tidal Wave in its output (see 'Turnover at Image').
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this deal is the choice of Diamond for the book trade over LPC (which is in Chapter 11, see 'More on LPC Chapter 11'), PGW, or another distributor that has been in the book trade longer than Diamond, which just entered that business a year ago when it picked up the rights to distribute Marvel to the book trade (see 'Diamond Awarded Marvel Bookstore Distribution').
