Digital DC Comics Available for Kindle Users Only?

(first published on Technorati on 10/24/11)

If you’ve been paying attention to certain commercials and ads you’ve seen on TV and in the newspapers, you may have noticed that certain department stores and discount stores promoting and selling specific lines of clothing established by celebrities and high-profile names from the fashion industry. Examples of these are Sarah Jessica Parker’s clothing line only sold at the now defunct Steve & Barry’s Clothing Store and Jennifer Lopez’s new clothing line only available at Kohl’s. With clothing lines, I suppose it’s okay for one specific retail store to have solo rights to promoting and selling them to the everyday consumer. Selling a certain series of books, however, published by specific high-profile publishers such as DC Comics to be promoted and sold by only one retail store is a whole different story.

When the huge announcement of Amazon Kindle’s newest model on its successful line, the Kindle Fire, another major announcement also came beside it. It was announced that Amazon will retain the exclusive rights to selling digital versions of a hundred titles from DC Comics’ high-end catalog. In short, if you are looking for the digital versions of your favorite, well-beloved superhero comics such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Watchmen, you can only purchase them at Amazon and nowhere else.

What does this mean for the average comic book fanatic and other enthusiasts? It means that eReading consumers would be out of luck that their favorite DC Comics superhero series would only be compatible with the Kindle readers and devices that support the Kindle app. Readers with Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader tablet series are going to have some problems with this one, being a major competitor of the Kindle and not having support for the competitor’s reading app at the same time. This even includes planning to purchase the actual bound printed versions impossible as well.

Barnes & Noble (B&N), as well as Books-a-Million, the third largest retail bookseller in the nation, responded to the Amazon-DC Comics exclusive deal by pulling off all their DC Comics from their shelves. B&N stated in their policy that they do not carry published works if they don’t have the rights to sell the digital versions of these said works. Books-a-Million’s president Terry Finley stated that the chain will not promote any titles in which publishers chose to pursue these exclusionary deals that would create an unfair, limited marketplace in the readership industry.

If you’ve been paying attention to certain commercials and ads you’ve seen on TV and in the newspapers, you may have noticed that certain department stores and discount stores promoting and selling specific lines of clothing established by celebrities and high-profile names from the fashion industry. Examples of these are Sarah Jessica Parker’s clothing line only sold at the now defunct Steve & Barry’s Clothing Store and Jennifer Lopez’s new clothing line only available at Kohl’s. With clothing lines, I suppose it’s okay for one specific retail store to have solo rights to promoting and selling them to the everyday consumer. Selling a certain series of books, however, published by specific high-profile publishers such as DC Comics to be promoted and sold by only one retail store is a whole different story.

When the huge announcement of Amazon Kindle’s newest model on its successful line, the Kindle Fire, another major announcement also came beside it. It was announced that Amazon will retain the exclusive rights to selling digital versions of a hundred titles from DC Comics’ high-end catalog. In short, if you are looking for the digital versions of your favorite, well-beloved superhero comics such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Watchmen, you can only purchase them at Amazon and nowhere else.

What does this mean for the average comic book fanatic and other enthusiasts? It means that eReading consumers would be out of luck that their favorite DC Comics superhero series would only be compatible with the Kindle readers and devices that support the Kindle app. Readers with Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader tablet series are going to have some problems with this one, being a major competitor of the Kindle and not having support for the competitor’s reading app at the same time. This even includes planning to purchase the actual bound printed versions impossible as well.

Barnes & Noble (B&N), as well as Books-a-Million, the third largest retail bookseller in the nation, responded to the Amazon-DC Comics exclusive deal by pulling off all their DC Comics from their shelves. B&N stated in their policy that they do not carry published works if they don’t have the rights to sell the digital versions of these said works. Books-a-Million’s president Terry Finley stated that the chain will not promote any titles in which publishers chose to pursue these exclusionary deals that would create an unfair, limited marketplace in the readership industry.

If we think about this in this perspective, this would also mean that the only places where we could buy the standard published editions of these comic books would be in specific comic book stores/hobby stores, online stores that sell comic books specifically, or if all else fails, at Amazon. Even if that was the case, if we have storage issues on where we will be storing these bulky editions, we still have to purchase their digital editions on Amazon, making sure that the devices we’ll be using has the Kindle app installed or we have a Kindle in our possession.

It looks like Amazon is mimicking what Apple has been doing when it comes to marketing of certain products. Apple has had a long history of selling certain products and media, such as the types of music sold through iTunes and nowhere else but iTunes. Both companies sought to do more of these types of exclusive arrangements, in which both companies would get at least 30% of the profits while the others go to the publishers, promoters, artists and writers. Though this exclusive sales method can boost up profit for both companies, it does provide some frustration towards the consumers themselves, rather than their competitors like B&N and other standard retail stores.

Products should always be available in all various forms and stores for all consumers, as we are all used to picking stores that would sell certain products at prices lower than the other stores. Today, stores are trying to monopolize certain brands and certain lines of products that are only available to that one particular store at flat prices. How do we know if Amazon is selling these digital DC Comics at a discounted price rather than the suggested retail price? (We’re talking about the digital editions, not the tangible print versions) What if we can’t afford it? If they were discounted prices, would they be at that price forever or would they eventually rise the prices up as time passes? As an avid reader who also uses an eReader, I’m more concerned with textbooks and reference books as I only use my eReader for the reference books alone. Textbooks and reference books, even in digital edition, are still expensive, sometimes even more expensive than their printed book versions, which are already expensive as it is. If Amazon succeeded in sealing the exclusive rights to sell all DC Comics to the masses, what would it be if Amazon starts to woo other publishing companies, especially textbook and reference book publishers like Peachpit and O’Reilly?

Now that I thought about it, this was probably the reason why the new Kindle Fire is being sold at only $199 a pop and is a worthy competitor towards the iPad and B&N’s Nook Color. With all these limitations on certain products, owning a Kindle Fire (and all other models of Kindle) would make sure that you stick with nothing else but with Amazon. In turn, you’ll end up paying more with those Amazon Kindle-available only material for the Kindle Fire to be worth the price.

Remember, as a kid, you used to just walk in to your local store with some spare change with you and just simply buy a volume of your favorite comic book series with cash? If each publishing company is successfully persuaded by (online) retail stores such as Amazon in to making exclusive contracts with each other, those cash-supported purchases of those comic books days will eventually be long gone.

We’ve already read several articles surveying avid readers on their preferences between reading from the printed bound book and reading from an eReader tablet. What Amazon is doing starting with DC Comics is serious bad news for those who don’t own eReaders or those who don’t like reading eBooks. They will have to save a lot of money to buy an eReader to purchase these Amazon-only exclusive DC Comics titles or any other store-specific publications that they want to get their hands on. I’m stating this because in the very near future, graphics-heavy publications such as comic books may no longer be printed on bound paper, but rather released digitally as an eBook and only available on certain stores exclusively, such as Amazon. We have no choice but to go to this route, unless someone out there comes up with a good plan that would benefit both the customers and these retail stores and not limit availability of digitally-published works to specific contracted stores only.