Fantastic news broke on Bleeding Cool yesterday with an announcement from Diamond that they are changing their policy on the much publicised, and much maligned, “minimum order threshhold”.

Implemented last year, the order threshold previous basically meant that Diamond had the right to cancel orders for any book that did not reach their minimum order values. Retailers who had ordered the book would not get it, nor would their customers, even if they had pre-ordered, and effectively the book would be dead.

This rule has been a bane for the small press. I commented on this just recently whilst being interviewed for the SidekickCast and Comic Book Outsiders, bemoaning not only my own heartache as a creator as I waited to see if my book was going to make the grade, but also commenting on how thin Previews seemed to have become since this rule had taken effect. I’m not claiming that I ever painstakingly perused the independent press pages, but there absence was apparent.

But, that was yesterday. Under the new rules, if a book is solicited then Diamond will ship whatever orders are placed. No minimums. No cancellations.

The cynic in me wants to comment on how Diamond have made this game changing announcment on the same day that we get the mcuhlauded “iPad”, which many people are proclaiming as the “saviour of the comic industry” by finally providing a portable, comic book sized delivery mechanism for comics. I have resisted the urge to comment on the iPad, but I will simply say this … we already have a portable, comic book sized medium for comics. It’s called comics. Case closed.

Thankfully, the cynic is clearly too busy sniping at the iPad to poke holes in what Diamond are doing, and so it is left to the far more optimistic part of my brain to finish this blog post.

What Diamond are doing here is throwing the doors of the bazaar open again and letting independent publishers, and creators, back in. Create a book, solicit a book, and whatever orders you can drum up will be placed, and your book will ship. You may not make a profit on your print run, but it’s not Diamond’s job to make sure you do. You may not get great reviews, but it was your job to make a great book. You may not get retailers interested in your book at all. And, yes, if selling your book is not profitable for Diamond (and they are a business, not a public institution), they might not carry another book from you that readily again, but at least you don’t have to leave the party now with your trousers around your ankles and your head still wet with water from the toilet flush. If you only sell ten, those ten will ship.

That may not sound like much, but as a creator who has spent a month gnawing his nails down to stumps waiting to find out if Diamond were going to place an order with my publisher or not, with not blowing a hole in the side of our plans that it was going to some astonishing effort to repair, it’s the best news I’ve had this month.

Better than the iPad, anyway.