Green Ronin Crowdfunding Legal Defense Fund In Fight Against Diamond Distrubutors

Green Ronin Publishing has set up a crowdfunding campaign to help cover legal fees fighting to get back their inventory from Diamond Comic Distributors in what it describes as "a dire financial threat to our company, not just today, but well into the future".

Diamond, which filed for Bankruptcy in January, still holds the stock of Green Ronin and over one hundred other companies in its warehouse, and has asked the court for ownership of that inventory so that it can liquidate it and pay its creditors. The distributor, while being mainly comic-book focused, also serves as distributor for some toy and TTRPG companies, including Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, and Roll For Combat.

The GoFundMe had raised $17K at the time of writing, with over 200 donations.

Paizo Publishing, also affected, has announced that its upcoming releases will not be available at major bookstores or at Amazon because the company has stopped shipping products to Diamond. This includes 12 August releases and 10 September releases, such as Starfinder Player Core, Starfinder GM Core, Pathfinder Battlecry, and more.

The court has scheduled a hearing on July 21 to hear objections from the affected vendors.

My name is Nicole Lindroos, co-owner of Green Ronin Publishing. Diamond Comic Distributors' recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy has impacted over 100 independent publishers, including Green Ronin, putting us in a very precarious position. Diamond is attempting to use a legal technicality to claim ownership of millions of dollars worth of consigned inventory, which amounts to several hundreds of thousands of dollars for Green Ronin Publishing alone. This is stock that we still own and have not been paid for.

This is a dire financial threat to our company, not just today, but well into the future. We must secure legal representation immediately before the deadline to do so passes.

While there is no "good" time for someone to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of your property to sell for the benefit of their biggest creditors, it is especially challenging given that Gen Con is weeks away. Gen Con is not just a convention for us, it's our most important annual event for connecting with TTRPG enthusiasts, our business partners, and our community, and this year is no exception. We're launching new products and have already committed significant funds to cover everything from booth space, travel (flights, rooms), and most critically, the production of new books and merchandise specifically for the show floor.

Diamond’s bankruptcy and this legal action also mean that Green Ronin has lost its book trade distributor. We are looking for a new partner, but that will take some time. Book trade sales of literary licenses, currently The Fifth Season and The Expanse, are a key part of our strategies for those games. This is especially bad timing for The Fifth Season RPG because we recently received final approvals from N.K. Jemisin and the game is ready to go to print.

We simply don't have the cash on hand to do all of this, pay for an attorney, or participate in any collective legal actions with other publishers in our same position.

The banks are stopping at nothing to wring every last dollar out of Diamond - including taking several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Green Ronin product to sell in order to pay Diamond’s debts - but they can't do that, and we've got a legal agreement that says as much. Now, we just need to secure a law firm to represent us in the courts.

The funds raised through this campaign will be used directly to cover the escalating legal fees associated with fighting Diamond's claim in bankruptcy court. This includes attorney retainers, court filing fees, and the costs of pursuing every possible avenue to recover our inventory and protect Green Ronin's assets.

 

[dbolack]

Probably true. I looked last night, and they have a Modern AGE book called Powers that was supposed to come out August 5 or so, but I doubt that's going to happen now.

They've got a few things in various stages, but much of the M&M effort in the last few months has been tied up in the Valiant license. There's also a Vigilantes-oriented book in late production and a couple of other goodies I'm forgetting.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

If there's no realistic legal way to recover the consigned goods, it seems like the best option for Green Ronin or other affected publishers is to hire some runners to burn Diamond's warehouses to the ground. At least that way the liquidation won't saturate the market for these products.

 

[R_J_K75]

It's been out in PDF for a little while and they've done a collected edition of the Modern AGE adventures, but resources do seem a little stretched across all of the AGE lines.

I looked on Amazon to see if the hard copy was in stock but it was only available for pre-order. I’d be leery to pre-order it from anywhere in light of the current situation.

 

[R_J_K75]

They've got a few things in various stages, but much of the M&M effort in the last few months has been tied up in the Valiant license. There's also a Vigilantes-oriented book in late production and a couple of other goodies I'm forgetting.

Seems these days most lines from smaller companies like GR’s Modern AGE and Renegade’s GI Joe line only get support for year or two before it trickles down to one product every year or so. Finally after 3 years I think the GI Joe RPG is getting a proper NPC, Joe roster book

 

[dbolack]

I looked on Amazon to see if the hard copy was in stock but it was only available for pre-order. I’d be leery to pre-order it from anywhere in light of the current situation.

I poked Troy to check on this, but I believe the book isn't "in" yet so ordering it direct from GR will get it from their new warehouse.

 

[chuckdee]

There's also that "little side hustle" they have called the Expanse...

 

[JLowder]

Seems these days most lines from smaller companies like GR’s Modern AGE and Renegade’s GI Joe line only get support for year or two before it trickles down to one product every year or so. Finally after 3 years I think the GI Joe RPG is getting a proper NPC, Joe roster book

The problem with the licensed RPGs can be tied to the long approval processes and also the short licenses now being offered by companies such as Hasbro and Disney. When it takes, at the very shortest, eighteen months to get your game written/illustrated/edited, printed, and into distribution and stores (if you go that route), and you only have a license for three total years, that does not leave you a lot of time for follow-up products, especially if you need to see how demand is for the core book before deciding what, if any follow-up books the audience wants.

 

[R_J_K75]

The problem with the licensed RPGs can be tied to the long approval processes and also the short licenses now being offered by companies such as Hasbro and Disney. When it takes, at the very shortest, eighteen months to get your game written/illustrated/edited, printed, and into distribution and stores (if you go that route), and you only have a license for three total years, that does not leave you a lot of time for follow-up products, especially if you need to see how demand is for the core book before deciding what, if any follow-up books the audience wants.

Makes sense, I didnt realize this.

 

[Staffan]

The problem with the licensed RPGs can be tied to the long approval processes and also the short licenses now being offered by companies such as Hasbro and Disney. When it takes, at the very shortest, eighteen months to get your game written/illustrated/edited, printed, and into distribution and stores (if you go that route), and you only have a license for three total years, that does not leave you a lot of time for follow-up products, especially if you need to see how demand is for the core book before deciding what, if any follow-up books the audience wants.

Makes sense. That also explains why the most successful licensed RPGs are those that are tied to an IP with long-term success and lots of source material to draw on (e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings) where both the licensor and licensee are interested in a more long-term relationship and/or the ones where the publisher has a house system they are familiar with and can tweak to fit the license (which I would guess shaves a lot of the game design part of the time-to-market off).

Another thing to consider is that if you can keep up a decent production pace, you can probably pick all the low-hanging fruit for a license in like three years. Core book, monster book, player's option book, gear book, maybe an adventure or two. After that I'm pretty sure the market falls off pretty quickly. For example, I know some people have complained about how there hasn't been anything new for Star Wars in years, but I think it's because the game(s) is (are) complete. You have three semi-separate product lines with each having a core book, a beginner set, six splat books to match the six careers in that game, an adventure or two, and a sourcebook or two. You also have some era books primarily based on the prequels and cartoons, which work with the whole game line, as well as some gear books and NPC books compiling stuff from various splat books. Sure, they could do stuff based on the sequel trilogy and/or the interim Disney+ material (e.g. the Mandalorian), but I feel that would be redundant. The game is done, and Edge is just reprinting books for it every now and then. They're likely not paying much to have that added to Asmodee's overall Star Wars license, so just keep it going for now.

 

[Doctor Depravo]

You are seeing a conspiracy in a commonplace event.

This is real life, not a B movie. Companies go bust every single day.

I’m late to this comment, but you seemingly (clearly? blatantly? intentionally?) don’t know very much about Diamond’s longstanding troublesome business practices.

From the comics angle, Bleeding Cool has been keeping tabs for well over a decade, documenting each and every Diamond misstep, from the teensy / accidental to the egregious.