Retailers on Northwind’s Twin Release

JK Parkin interviews a few retailers about BOOM! Studios' release of a comic book for free on MySpace the same day as its comic shop arrival. As is increasingly common with such stories, there are one or maybe two nuggets of actual contention between retailers and BOOM! surrounded by wave after wave of heat from general issues and geek consumerist philosophies of the kind that people seem to love to talk about on the Internet until pulled screeching from their keyboards.

I would suggest that the core nugget is that publishers and creators should feel enough of an ethical obligation to anyone ordering their books on a non-returnable basis* to be upfront or at least transparent about how it's going to be sold and distributed elsewhere. (Frankly, I don't know how upfront or transparent BOOM! was here, but I'm guessing it wasn't 100 percent from the retailers' standpoint; if it was, someone please tell me so I can start kidney punching retailers. Part of the confusion may have been BOOM! seeing this as a marketing move and the retailers a publishing one.) I've always thought this should be true of those planning to sell books at conventions, too, before they were available to the Direct Market, or even for those who were working with bookstore distribution. Please note: the notion that people should not sell or distribute in whatever available avenue they decide to pursue out of deference to the Direct Market is insane; what I'm talking about is being upfront about doing so.

If someone doesn't do this, they don't get their hands lopped off in nerd court, but it probably will and arguably should affect how these shops order such books in the future. That seems fair. Of course, that's also where you run into the first wider issue -- very few shops order books like the one being talked about here, so almost anything used to goose sales is going to work out better for an enterprising publisher not Marvel or DC than playing ball with an historically disinterested entity. Then you get to the issue of to what degree retailers are obligated to pay attention to what they're selling to know how they're being sold elsewhere, and then the issue of what constitutes competing product or a PR maneuver in terms of how much material is available for free, and whether this works and for whom and why and so on and so forth, and then you're 28 posts in a thread and hating yourself and someone just walked into the office asking for the monthly QA reports and you're screwed.

All of these things are interesting issues, but there's so little known and so few people participating in such efforts despite the press attention paid them that it would be hard to know what's going on for the sake of one of those trumpeting declarations of widespread industry truth even if all the information were freely traded. It looks like it's worked for BOOM! this specific time; wider applications of "on-line dissemination for free" have worked for other publishers and creators, certainly.

* for those of you who just gasped, this is how the Direct Market works -- on the basis of non-returnability
 
posted 4:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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