If you want to read one of the most startlingly bullshit interviews I have seen in ages, go here and read Marvel publisher Dan Buckley’s comments on their new online initiative and illegal downloading.
It’s almost infuriating. The level at which Buckley flatly refuses to engage perfectly valid questions and concerns about Marvel’s digital model is just insane. A perfectly fair comparison to Rhapsody is mentioned, and Buckley says “no, it’s not like that” without even bothering to explain why. (The answer, incidentally, as to why Marvel’s online comic movement isn’t quite like Rhapsody is that culturally we’re used to paying to listen to music we don’t own, but we’re not used to paying for books we don’t own and want to read. Of course, that particular difference is one that actually makes Marvel’s digital position worse rather than better.)
And, of course, Marvel’s strategy towards illegal downloading is kept deliberately vague. Questions as to how the torrent model that exists – which is blatantly superior to Marvel’s in a large variety of ways for the consumer – will be dealt with are left unanswered, except to say that Marvel is going to be taking its cues from how the music industry has handled illegal downloading, which is like taking tips from a caveman on how to beat Gary Kasparov in a game of chess.
But it gets worse! Explaining the choice of initial selection and how new comics will be added each week, Buckley says: “This will include providing marketing support for our publishing and entertainment initiatives…”
No shit. Here is the list of comics currently available via Marvel’s digital delivery system. The majority of these comics can be summed up as follows:
1.) Failed miniseries and ongoings which didn’t particularly impact the market and which have no serious sales value (Gambit, District X, Jubilee, Doc Samson, et cetera), including whole runs of series that you can now get at remaindered bookstores (Spider-Man’s Tangled Web).
2.) One-shots not easily collected in trade format or elsewhere (Civil War: Choosing Sides, for example).
3.) …and first issues of things Marvel wants you to buy in trade or single issues (Moon Knight, Civil War, Runaways, Captain America, Immortal Iron Fist, Annihilation, et cetera). For longer-running titles, Marvel’s pretty blatant about this, giving you the chance to read the first issue in each trade.
There is a name for small teaser portions. It is called advertising. This is what Marvel’s entire digital initiative amounts to: you are encouraged to pay money to buy the real comics. They’re not even particularly shy about it, because when you read the first issue of any given comic that you’ve paid to read, they remind you to buy the collection.
Granted, Marvel’s strategy is to use the digital model to encourage new readers. That’s fine. I am down with encouraging new readers. But last I checked, not many people were horribly encouraged by the prospect of paying to read the same fucking comic twice.
And of course there’s a model they could have used. Amazon’s putting it out there right now with their Kindle reader: “you buy the book for a very low price, and anytime you need to download it from us, we let you.” It’s a fantastic model for a publisher to adopt, because it essentially lends control of a person’s library to the publisher. (I’m of two minds about it, personally, but there’s no question that it would be good for Marvel.) Use some proprietary software to keep illegal trading of the comics to a minimum and Marvel could be raking in bucketloads.
Sweet Jesus, how is it possible for a company to fuck up this badly?
Related Articles
12 users responded in this post
How is it possible? Anything’s possible — hell, for all we know, DC’s preparing a similar service that could fail even harder than Marvel’s.
I think that the advent of the Digital Age (the Internet, P2P, etc.) caught old-school business off-guard, and now they’re scrambling to try and “fit in” with the rest of us by offering things like Marvel’s not-quite-so-good comic service. While some companies get the Digital Age and make it work (see: iTunes), some companies have never — and will never — get it, and they’ll do anything in their power to try and stop the Digital Age before they believe it gets entrenched just so they can protect their old models of business.
Embracing and accepting the Digital Age is very useful in business today, especially for companies with a huge backlog of content to share with willing customers (like, say, Marvel). However, when you half-ass the attempt at embracing the Digital Age (shitty comic download service) and simultaneously shun the Digital Age userbase (killing sites like Z-Cult), you’re screwing the pooch both ways.
Plus ten points to Marvel for looking at their backlog of comics, saying “Hey, people might not be able to buy all of these, so why don’t we make these available to customers on our website for a reasonable fee?” Minus several million points for the overall choice of comics available and the execution of the service itself.
(Oh, and on the off-chance anyone reading this blog is signed up for the service, I recommend the Great Lakes Avengers mini. SQUIRREL GIRL FOREVER~!)
Feh. I figured I’d finally check it out, and see if anything was changed from months ago when I last checked the free comics section, and the site is still down. I guess those upgrades couldn’t handle the traffic after all.
I can’t think of a poorer model to emulate than the music industry’s re: illegal downloads. The log line came down to “CORPORATE GIANTS SUE SINGLE MOTHER FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND,” and that’s just not a PR battle you can win. Ever. It makes you look like a scumbag, which isn’t so hard, because you are a scumbag.
The non-stupid thing, of course, is to effectively make piracy obsolete — by moving into the market and providing a superior service delivered in a similar fashion. I have many problems with iTunes and never buy anything from there if I can possibly help it, but it is a leg up from what was going on before it showed up.
Alternately, you can put your castoff comics in a shitty delivery and show contempt for large segments of your audience, and see how that works out for you. Good luck on that, Marvel!
The music injury went after a dead person (I forget if it was a man or woman), and then, upon finding said person was dead, went after the family of the deceased for money.
I was sent a generic e-mail talking about how an Alberta school was fined $450,000 because someone used the school’s network for filesharing. I went googling, but I couldn’t turn anything up so maybe it was just a scare tactic on the part of the college.
But we all know about the horror stories about the music industry going after downloaders.
y’know, I’m actually kind of glad zcult has been gutted. I’ve been a member there for years; Every year my comic collection (trades and singles) has tripled. This isn’t to mention the trades I’ve bought twice, as gifts, or single issues I’d downloaded and hadn’t cared for, then bought for friends who would enjoy them. This is the first time I’m dropping my mainstream comic habit somewhat involuntarily; I’ll no doubt return when I get sucked back in by circumstance or boredom. That said, I expect it’s going to take me a while to get bored with all the extra money I’ll suddenly have. I guess I’ll just have to funnel that money into video games, and I’ll likely do it over Steam – they’re at least taking their business seriously.
After the spider-clone fiasco, you have to ask how Marvel could fuck up?
The answer is simple. They’ve had practice.
But how long can they keep finding new and stupider ways to fuck up???
Never underestimate the amount and creativity of human stupidity.
[…] Anyhow, Chris and I got to talking about the current state of the comics industry and his most recent blog post. I don’t want to misrepresent Mr. Bird’s position so I’ll only talk about my own: […]
I considered posting a comment about what I thought Z-Cult could do next, but it looked like they’d folded like a card table and I didn’t want to be looking like I advocated such activity, after all….
And they did it anyway.
(Actually, my first thought was that Z-Cult should point its users/scanners/distributors to an established and thriving torrent site, like TPB, and watch the Marvel/DC lawyers flail against a wall that’s stood up against international frothing and litigation for quite some time. This was close enough in spirit, I think.)
I’m a computer professional, I’ve been using computers for thirty years, was very active in the BBS scene of the pre-public Internet, and have used the Internet since 1990, and I’ll tell you: the Internet took *me* by surprise. It took most people who were into computers by surprise. It changed -everything- and it did it over about 3 or 4 years, and it’s still causing me to change and rethink my business strategies.
And I’m not the only one.
If the internet can take computer professionals by surprise, I can’t even imagine how old media companies are trying to fit it into their lives and the panic they must be in. While they seem to be fumbling around, that’s because they are fumbling around. They know that things are changing, but they can’t fit that into their world view. It’s going to be a very painful transition, and one that will likely take another decade to settle.
When Marvel announced the site, I admit I was pleased. Money concerns have ended my comic-collecting days, excepting the odd trade once in a great while. To have free run through massive swaths of the back catalogue and fairly new stuff for a not-too-bad fee? Hells yeah!
CrossGen did it, and it was good stuff. They put up their entire line of comics on a subscription site, with a lag of a few months behind the comic shops. Even though I wasn’t enamored of their comics, I gladly coughed up for the site, and it did lead to me buying a couple of trades of the books I did like.
So I’m the ideal target for this site: predisposed towards online comic reading, unconcerned about downloadability, a lapsed Marvel fan, and the sort who will buy a trade paperback of a run I enjoyed reading online. I’m very tempted to subscribe, just for the hell of it.
But, as you said, their selection for the library is nuts. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but the “buy the trade” impulse for me only comes up when I’ve read the *whole dang story* and know I want it in permanent form. One issue of “The Immortal Iron Fist” is not going to get me to buy a trade of it. As currently structured, there’s little chance that I’d buy anything due to the Marvel online project.
Whoopsy.