November 7, 2011
Something Something Nook Something Marvel Comics Something
It's probably time I stopped pretending that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the big companies' various digital initiatives, but let's make that day tomorrow instead of today. Barnes & Noble
has announced the latest news on its various Nook readers; including that a bunch of Marvel's books will be involved.
A few things strike me. One, Marvel's involvement seems not a big deal placed in the context of those announcements and tech stories (they seem much more excited about the video capabilities; one story I read seemed more intrigued by Marvel being the only publisher named rather than Marvel being named). This makes me think the publisher and B&N might have been better off delaying the Marvel part of the news until its own day. Two, this seems to me one of those weird moves where the PR is going to do battle with the PR for DC's (for the time being) exclusivity with the Amazon.com kindle device, even if the two publishing arrangements aren't battling in that same way. Third, from where I sit the long-term, eventual strategy that pretty much has to emerge is availability through as many channels as possible, including these kinds of readers. The last time when a company acted in a "counter-intuitive to the general trends" kind of way it was Marvel buying Heroes World, which led to DC's snaky secret deal with Diamond, which gave us an entire San Diego panel built around hissing at Larry Marder, which resulted in a lot of extra
Crow 2 merchandise and then gifted us with a massive market implosion from which in many ways comics has never fully recovered. I'm guessing this won't be as dire, but it'd be nice if these companies could settle in on the future sooner rather than being dragged into it later.
posted 9:00 am PST |
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