Marvel Expands Free Digital Promotion In Spider-Man Title

That Marvel is apparently expanding a free digital comic book offering through print copies of a $3.99 comic book Avenging Spider-Man to include issues beyond the first one in that series.

This is worth noting for a lot of reasons. One, there's still enough of a Wild West feel with digital comic book strategies from the mainstream publishers that any approach should cause us to at least raise an eyebrow in its direction. Two, if this is supposed to support $3.99 comic books, then that indicates Marvel is very much devoted to having $3.99 comic books. I think the prevalence of $3.99 comic books in the Marvel line has to be a contributing factor to some of the slight exhaustion that line evokes right now with fans -- which is saying something, as I firmly believe the true harm of that price rise is in customer attrition rather than individual choices by customers. Three, such a strategy suggests a focus on digital comics as something that provides throw-in value to the real business of making and selling print comics, whereas I think most publishers are coming around to seeing such comics as their own publishing opportunity. Four, Marvel is providing incentives to comic book stores whose customers identify where they purchased the book, which could be seen as a slight-to-severe overture in the realm of gathering customer information for future initiatives that could cut out the store entirely.

On the other hand, big fan of the Moloids.
 
posted 5:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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