You are correct in stating that you are not a comic book nerd. If you were a comic book nerd you would not speak in such absolutes about the term "graphic novel." You would understand the contention surrounding the term within fans and even the authors that write them.
The Watchmen is a great example of this fallacy. The Watchmen was published originally as a 12 issue comic book series. It was then published as a trade paperback (TPB
is a common industry term for publishing the individual issues of a story-arch in a single volume). You seem to be suggesting that comic book and "graphic novel" are mutually exclusive categories. The Watchmen seems to fit your description of a graphic novel when in trade form, but this is an issue of the binding alone.
From Wikipedia:
Writer Alan Moore believes, "It's a marketing term ... that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me. ... The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel comics -- because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel...."
Author Daniel Raeburn wrote "I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension -- the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a 'sanitation engineer' -- and second because a 'graphic novel' is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine."
Writer Neil Gaiman, responding to a claim that he does not write comic books but graphic novels, said the commenter "meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening." Comedian and comic book fan Robin Williams joked, "'Is that a comic book? No! It's a graphic novel! Is that porn? No! It's adult entertainment!'"