• In her regular column for PW Comics Week, SLG Publishing Editor-in-Chief Jennifer de Guzman reveals that her hours at the company have been cut by 40 percent "until business picks up."

She strikes an upbeat chord by noting that the lowest economic points of the 20th century also were great times of creativity for the comics industry. (De Guzman has a little more on her personal blog.)

• Blogger Deb Aoki posts the first part of her two-part report from the "Selling Good Graphic Novels in a Bad Economy" panel at New York Comic Con.

It's interesting to note that John Cunningham, DC's vice president for marketing, believes Watchmen will serve as a gateway comic, with new readers moving on to other graphic novels. He discusses efforts that DC and distributor Random House are taking to get the collection into bookstores, but I'd love to hear their plans for shepherding those readers to other works.

Library Journal also has a short report from the panel.

• At Mania, Icarus Publishing's Simon Jones explains how Diamond's new threshold will affect his company: "It’s certainly going to affect our ability to relist titles again in Previews, but a lot of our backlist sales go through non-Diamond sources, so I’m not too worried about that. We may also one day decide to stop Comic AG altogether, and start publishing 2 or 3 trades a month. Some people might actually prefer it, but as I mentioned earlier, it depends on whether the market can absorb all that new material. I would also miss the joy of rubbing our 100+ issue count into other publishers’ faces."

• Amazon's new Kindle e-book reader isn't for comics fans, Gearlog reports. At least not yet. The problem with Kindle 2.0, apparently, is that it doesn't have a color screen; the next update won't, either: "A primary impetus for going color on an e-book reader would be an attempt to corner the comics market. Graphic novels, after all, have been in vogue in the publishing industry for some time now, with nearly every major house devoting bandwidth to the medium. For e-book manufacturers, however, comics are likely a harder sell."

• The Daily Cartoonist rounds up comments from Derf, Max Cannon and Tom Tomorrow on the worsening alternative-weekly market.

• ICv2.com reports that U.S. magazine wholesaler Source Interlink has filed a lawsuit against two of its competitors, four magazine publishing groups and three distributors, alleging collusion to destroy Source and fellow wholesaler Anderson News. (As we pointed out yesterday, Anderson has "suspended normal business activity.")