CB Cebulski on the Marvel $.99 sales

[Anduinel]

From The Beat.

CB Cebulski made his debut as Marvel’s front man at a Diamond retailer event, standing before a packed room. The headlines probably came towards the very end of the panel when a retailer addressed the elephant in the room: the 99¢ sales on digital collections the week of release that Amazon and Comixology have been running. This is something many retailers have been privately complaining about.

Cebulski admitted that the matter was something he expected to hear about, but said in response that “I don’t mean to pass the buck, but it isn’t something we did. We sell [Amazon/Comixology] the comics at the same price [we sell them to you]. Just like you offer discounts, they do the same.”

That said, CB admitted these sales were a concern. “It is undercutting all of you. It’s not fair. We are aware of it and are addressing it. It’s not a Marvel issue. It’s an Amazon policy that we are trying to get to the bottom of. I don’t want to pass the buck.”

As a follow up, a retailer stated that no one would want to order the $24.99 Marvel Knights reprints if they were going to appear that week on Amazon as a 99¢ Digital edition.

“The price is not being set by Marvel,” Cebulski reiterated.

I've seen a lot of skepticism about this from readers and retailers, and I can't blame them. If this is all on Amazon, it seems odd that we only see these recurring, line wide, extreme deep-discount sales - even on new material - when it comes to Marvel comics.

[Coin Biter]

Deleted - as realised just repeating a point made in opening post re other publishers. Apologies.

[Iron Maiden]

I understand that business is business but I'm not OK with these huge corporations doing this and undercutting the little guy. The comic book shops in my area are locally owned and operated.

[JKtheMac]

I have been wondering about the wider context of this for some time. Amazon and Comixology pricing policy is clearly not the same beast as we had previously seen when Marvel were holding the line of digital pricing that matched floppy pricing. It has become apparent in the last few months that the rhetoric that Marvel have often used is being undercut.

For example Marvel would often talk about how it was vital to maintain the price of digital as the same as the floppy for a number of weeks so as not to undermine retail, and they would often talk about maintaining the price of trades for the same reason. Super-cheap trades available early in digital is seriously challenging both of these ideas.

In the wider context Disney and Amazon are not exactly playing nicely together, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we eventually see Marvel pull out of their current digital distribution deals if this kind of thing continues. The same kind of issues were being had over DVD and Blu-ray sales, and to this day some Marvel and Disney movies are not possible to buy on Amazon, because exclusives were signed with competitors (on a case by case basis).

This is just one more salvo in the digital distribution wars of which the Fox and Sky deals are the most noticeable.

The problem Marvel have is they didn't initially sign their deals with Amazon, and the Marvel digital app (disguised Comixology) is probably a big revenue source. Marvel Unlimited could potentially be expanded, but more work would need to be done on it to replace their Comixology app.

Just around the corner Disney want to move into a subscription model. How long before Marvel comics jump onto that?

[SneakyLookingSort]

It's the usual digital vs physical discussion, some people including me have gone 100% digital so no money taken from the comic shops, sales or no sales. And some people only value the physical ownership and keep buying from comic shops anyways.

I think it's still bullshit that digital prices are the same as physical since there are no printing and shipping costs.

[JKtheMac]

It's the usual digital vs physical discussion, some people including me have gone 100% digital so no money taken from the comic shops, sales or no sales. And some people only value the physical ownership and keep buying from comic shops anyways.

I think it's still bullshit that digital prices are the same as physical since there are no printing and shipping costs.

Unfortunately it isn't as simple as 'no printing and shipping costs'. A lot of investment has been made in digital distribution infrastructure and in scanning and providing the back-catalogue. The costs are not directly comparable. In the long run the same amount of profit needs to be made if we ever drift towards digital, and right now that isn't the case. Digital distribution is not as profitable as it might seem. It will slowly become cheaper and scale will come into this. Amazon want scale now. They desperately want to move to a profit model on these things.

Amazon in general have not been posting profits for very long. they have been shifting their business model to achieve it.

[Coin Biter]

Maybe Amazon is getting back at Trump by hitting the profits of one of his largest supporters?* After all, Ike Perlmutter provided a lot of financial support to Trump’s election campaign.

*This is a joke (albeit not a very clever/funny one).

Without further information, it’s a bit risky to speculate. As an all digital buyer, personally, I would say that I’ve regularly been paying much more money on Marvel trades through these sales than I would ordinarily do, on trades I would not ordinarily buy.

Hell, I even bought a couple of trades of the widely ridiculed X-Men Gold.

God knows what the ultimate impact on Marvel’s digital/print sales would be, though. I had assumed that Comixology sales were part of a Marvel strategy, given how carefully timed Marvel sales tend to be in relation to relaunches of titles/TV shows/films. I’d be intrigued as to whether the “no involvement” statement just applies to the massive discounts we’ve seen lately and the Amazon sales, or to all sales run by Comixology, because many of the weekly sales do seem to be carefully calibrated to the Marvel calendar.

[JKtheMac]

God knows what the ultimate impact on Marvel’s digital/print sales would be, though. I had assumed that Comixology sales were part of a Marvel strategy, given how carefully timed Marvel sales tend to be in relation to relaunches of titles/TV shows/films. I’d be intrigued as to whether the “no involvement” statement just applies to the massive discounts we’ve seen lately and the Amazon sales, or to all sales run by Comixology, because many of the weekly sales do seem to be carefully calibrated to the Marvel calendar.

There have been less controversial times when the carefully timed Comixology sales have been highlighted as not anything to do with Marvel. When people have asked questions like 'why not highlight X book, instead of Y' Marvel have always answered with a pretty consistent 'That isn't our choice'.

I would be interested to know if Comixology is actually in profit as a division of Amazon. Amazon are very clearly trying to make people think of it as an adjunct of Kindle these days. This may reflect an attempt to leverage their e-book buying market to bring in more readers into comics and provide better economies of scale. Amazon are all about this kind of low cost high sales equation. They are also all about synergy as a driver of scale. They named their company after the idea of small tributaries slowly forming into a single unstoppable river. It was a long term plan that is only now paying off.

[Coin Biter]

Right. Interesting - I’ve just had a gander at the Marvel digital comics app (albeit the UK storefront) and it reflects the current Comixology Iron Man sale/the Legion sale, but it doesn’t reflect the sale on, for example, the Infinity Siblings, currently in the UK at 19.99 pounds on Marvel and 0.69 on Comixology.

Maybe it’s different in the US. I’m not saying that’s necessarily determinative of the issue, but it is interesting.

[JKtheMac]

Right. Interesting - I’ve just had a gander at the Marvel digital comics app (albeit the UK storefront) and it reflects the current Comixology Iron Man sale/the Legion sale, but it doesn’t reflect the sale on, for example, the Infinity Siblings, currently in the UK at 19.99 pounds on Marvel and 0.69 on Comixology.

Maybe it’s different in the US. I’m not saying that’s necessarily determinative of the issue, but it is interesting.

Well also being in the UK I have noted that quite a few of the recent sales have been US focused. It is possible Marvel have some input on certain sales but I am not sure they do. It would be much easier to farm out the responsibility for that to the platform.

Also the way Amazon want their readers to link their Kindle account to their Comixology account has always made me wonder if they are trying to move people away from separate apps towards Kindle in the long run. The Marvel App is afterall still a click to buy app, and so some of the cash goes to Apple (30% I think).

Question: has anyone here ever linked their Kindle/Amazon account to an already linked Comixology/Marvel account and if so do they remain linked in all directions? Can you still read an Amazon bought book in the Marvel app and does a newly purchased Marvel app book appear in your kindle library, or does this new link break the old one? Is this a sly way to separate the original linkage?

[nnelg]

This is how Amazon built their customer base for digital novels. I used to be able to buy bestsellers for super cheap.

[Anduinel]

Question: has anyone here ever linked their Kindle/Amazon account to an already linked Comixology/Marvel account and if so do they remain linked in all directions?

Anything I buy from Marvel's digital store shows up in my linked Comixology account. Any purchased comics or GNs available digitally on Amazon also show up in my linked Comixology account. Stuff that I buy on Comixology or Marvel, however, does not show up in my Kindle app or on my Kindle Fire, even when that same material is available on Amazon. So there is definitely more incentive to buy from Amazon.

[Coin Biter]

It does look, from a quick check (it’s ages since I checked the Marvel App), that everything I bought on Comixology or Amazon shows up on Marvel.

As Anduinel wrote, they won’t show up on Kindle unless you bought them on Amazon as far as I can tell, though.

That said, the Kindle app isn’t as good as Comixology’s app for reading digital comics.

[JKtheMac]

This is how Amazon built their customer base for digital novels. I used to be able to buy bestsellers for super cheap.

Precisely this is their model. They have no skin in the brick and mortar debate. Kill the competition by undercutting everyone, or as they would put it sell at price customers approve of even if you don’t make money. The alterterative name for Amazon could have been relentless. They still own the domain try typing relentless.com and it will still link to Amazon.

[leo619]

Wait i'm confused, is Amazon soon to release floppies for 99 cents the same day it's coming out? Or are they talking about tradebacks? Cause I'm digital only and I haven't seen any differences in terms of prices.