CBR: DC & Amazon Deal In Digital And Print

[CBR News]

As DC Comics' offering of digital trades and graphic novels goes live on Kindle Fire, Hank Kanalz explains the benefits of sticking with online giant Amazon from pricing to cross-promotion and what could come next.


Full article here.

[MajorHoy]

As DC Comics' offering of digital trades and graphic novels goes live on Kindle Fire, Hank Kanalz explains the benefits of sticking with online giant Amazon from pricing to cross-promotion and what could come next.

Why is it starting to look more and more as if we're heading for

The DCnU: if you ain't digital and you don't deal with amazon.com, . . . screw you!

[glennsim]

For me, they are going to have to consolidate the monthly and the trades onto one device. There are only like 3 books of the 100 on the Kindle that I might be interested in (because I'm either not interested in the content or I already own the rest). So it would take me a long time to recoup my costs for the Kindle Fire. Granted, I'm probably not their audience.

[I-Ching]

I still think they need to look at different price points for the online comics themselves. $1.99 still seems high to me especially when I can read higher priced magazine articles (Like Entertainment Weekly...same parent company btw) for FREE!

EW is $3.95 on the stands so DC isn't really making sense with their online pricing imho.

[Still Don't Care]

Why is it starting to look more and more as if we're heading for

The DCnU: if you ain't digital and you don't deal with amazon.com, . . . screw you!

Because paranoia towards the reboot never goes out of style, apparently.

[matthew_lane]

Why is it starting to look more and more as if we're heading for

The DCnU: if you ain't digital and you don't deal with amazon.com, . . . screw you!

Except that every single new DC comic is available through comixology, which can run on multiple different devices... all without having to use amazon at all. Ar the internet, you've got to love it: Its where paranoia & ignorance come together to form "popular opinion."

I still think they need to look at different price points for the online comics themselves. $1.99 still seems high to me especially when I can read higher priced magazine articles (Like Entertainment Weekly...same parent company btw) for FREE!

EW is $3.95 on the stands so DC isn't really making sense with their online pricing imho.

Main difference is that magazines are written by freelancers, who are paid by the word, photographers are as cheap as chips to hire, as are up and coming models... On top of that for most magazines there are 5 paid for adverts for every 1 page of actual articles.

Thats why magazines can get away with it & comics cannot... With comics you have to pay the writers, the pencillers, the colourists, the letter & everyone else involved... The printing is actually the cheapest part of comic book production.

EDIT: And just as an FYI, B&N just showed its douchebag colours... After taking 100 books of the shelf because of the exclusive deal between DC & Amazon (the one that was never exclusive at all), B&N have made an exclusive deal with Marvel. Hey look over there, i think i spotted a yellow bellied hypocrit... Oh no, it was just Barnes and Noble.

[2 Up 2 Down]

I just hope they lower the pricing of singles. I feel that all back issues should be 99 cents with the issues being 1.99 and 2.99. Also I hope that Amazon fixes their panel to panel view to be more like comixology's guided, because now it just focuses on the words and not the art.

[glennsim]

I just hope they lower the pricing of singles. I feel that all back issues should be 99 cents with the issues being 1.99 and 2.99. Also I hope that Amazon fixes their panel to panel view to be more like comixology's guided, because now it just focuses on the words and not the art.

I hope they lower the price of pizzas to $.99 but it's not going to happen, because it costs more than that to produce.

[MajorHoy]

Because paranoia towards the reboot never goes out of style, apparently.

I'm not "paranoid towards the reboot" here. DC had tried to make a push for more physical presence of its product in stores like Barnes & Noble, and many locations had larger comic book sections among the magazines as a result. Then, DC decides to only deal with Amazon for digital downloads of some of the company's more popular tpb collections, and that annoyed B&N because that would deprive them of possible digital sales of those books. So B&N retalliated by yanking those graphic novels from store shelves, which decreased the public visibility of those items for people who are casual shoppers. That's less of a presence, not the increased presence DC had been trying for. And are the numbers of local comic book shops increasing or decreasing these days? Fewer physical stores selling the product means more reliance on digital for some people who hadn't necessarily planned to go that route.

EDIT: And just as an FYI, B&N just showed its douchebag colours... After taking 100 books of the shelf because of the exclusive deal between DC & Amazon (the one that was never exclusive at all), B&N have made an exclusive deal with Marvel. Hey look over there, i think i spotted a yellow bellied hypocrit... Oh no, it was just Barnes and Noble.

How is Barnes & Noble hypocritical? From what I understood, they got upset with the exclusive deal with Amazon because DC was only dealing with Amazon for those books to be available digitally with Amazon's new Kindle Fire system, leaving B&N and it's Nook digital reader out in the cold. It was a limited time deal, but it was also right around Christmas, one of the busiest, most profitable times for retailers! If B&N couldn't sell the digital editions through the B&N Nook, they decided not to display those books in their physical stores, which meant buyers couldn't come in and browse the hard copies and then decide to buy the digital version through Amazon only. (If DC had an exclusive deal with B&N to make them available digitally on B&N Nook systems, Barnes & Nobles probably wouldn't have pulled the books from store shelves in the first place.)

[Mat001]

The fact is that Barnes & Noble got their panties in a bunch over nothing. Four months is nothing. And yes, they are hypocrites because they did what Amazon did. The only difference is that Amazon won't pull all the Marvel titles like B&N did with DC. As to why DC did it with Amazon, it was to garner attention to both their catalog and to garner attention for the Kindle Fire. Media buzz is important.

In the end, none of it matters since people can still get what they want. Either in the stores or from the internet.

[mistergoodman]

The fact is that Barnes & Noble got their panties in a bunch over nothing. Four months is nothing. And yes, they are hypocrites because they did what Amazon did.

That's unclear. DC made a deal that would give Amazon exclusive digital distribution of their prime graphic novels. We don't know that Marvel made a similar deal with Barnes and Noble. Their content isn't available on Amazon digitally, but it may simply be that they haven't negotiated a deal yet.

And the exclusive isn't "nothing". If other publishers follow suit and offer those kinds of exclusive offers, it could give Amazon an insurmountable advantage in ebooks over competitors. And since the future of books is digital, what's at stake is whether Amazon becomes the monopoly supplier of books in the not too distant future.

[mistergoodman]

The DCnU: if you ain't digital and you don't deal with amazon.com, . . . screw you!

DCnU books aren't even available digitally on Amazon's new comics platform. They're available digitally through ComiXology on iOS, Android (including the Kindle Fire), their Windows Phone app, on the internet via any Flash-enabled web browser and at thousands of retail stores around the world.

[Jono11]

Why is it starting to look more and more as if we're heading for

The DCnU: if you ain't digital and you don't deal with amazon.com, . . . screw you!

I don't know why it looks that way to you. I'm not a digital reader at all, and I am so far unworried that the DCnU means the end of print comics. At least not right now.

[MajorHoy]

The fact is that Barnes & Noble got their panties in a bunch over nothing. Four months is nothing. And yes, they are hypocrites because they did what Amazon did. The only difference is that Amazon won't pull all the Marvel titles like B&N did with DC. As to why DC did it with Amazon, it was to garner attention to both their catalog and to garner attention for the Kindle Fire. Media buzz is important.

Are Amazon and Barnes and Noble exactly the same?!?

How many brick and mortar stores does Amazon have now?

And I'm not sure if B&N actually stopped selling the 100 books in question on-line or through special orders. For some reason, I thought it was just that they aren't stocking them on the shelves at the stores, avoiding the idea of "check it out at one store, but then actually buy it through another chain". It's annoying, but also a bit understandable to decrease visibilty of the physical DC product, which I'm assuming would be more of a negative for DC (who was working to increase visibility of its products among people who weren't already buying it) than it is to Barnes & Nobles' bottom line.

As to your "four months is nothing", when the four months include the biggest time for retail sales (Hello! Christmas season?!?) during the entire year, that's a big problem!

[2 Up 2 Down]

I hope they lower the price of pizzas to $.99 but it's not going to happen, because it costs more than that to produce.

Why can't older issues be $.99? I saw a few series that were $.99 today. At least have it for books that were produced from the 90's on down be $00.99.