Scholastic defines a graphic novel in the following manner:
To be considered a graphic novel, rather than a picture book or illustrated novel, the story is told using a combination of words and pictures in a sequence across the page. Graphic novels can be any genre, and tell any kind of story, just like their prose counterparts.
This market can be considered to represent just the first book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or the entire series.
Basically, if you owned a bookstore in which you only had two sections: "graphic novels" and "other" - which section of your store do you place Diary of a Wimpy Kid?
1,000
3.00My reading of the definition says there should generally be several pictures per page which I don't think is true of DOAWK. Other evidence against is that there's an audiobook version. I'm not going to bet against a market creator though.
Watchman by Alan Moore is consistently listed on best graphic novels of all time lists.
As far as audio book versions disqualifying a book as a graphic novel - https://www.audible.com/blog/article-best-audiobooks-for-comic-fans
@33 don't most pages in watchmen look like this?:
Category boundaries are always fuzzy - DOAWK seems to me to fall more under the category of illustrated novel.