Following DC Comics' announcement that 100 of their most popular graphic novels would be digitally exclusive to the Kindle Fire—books like Watchmen, Sandman, The Dark Knight, Fables, Y the Last Man, and V for Vendetta—Barnes & Noble has yanked the physical copies of those books from their stores. “We pulled those 100 DC Comics graphic novels that we were not offered in digital format," a spokesperson told Publisher's Weekly. "Our policy is that unless we receive all formats of a title to make available to our customers, we will not sell those physical titles in our stores.”
In other words, Barnes & Noble is pissed that DC's offering their titles digitally through the Fire, and not through Barnes & Noble's ereader, the Nook. So they're hitting them back—hard—when it comes to sales of physical copies.
Hurt feelings (and lost potential profits) aside, it's almost impossible to overestimate what a massive role Barnes & Noble plays in comics retailing, especially now that Borders is six feet under. Monstrous chains like Barnes & Noble have the ability to make or break a book—they can, and do, influence everything from what gets published to finished comics' dimensions and cover designs.
Meanwhile, reading the list of Fire-exclusive DC titles is like a rundown of some of the medium's best, most important, and most popular graphic novels. So for those titles to no longer be available at Barnes & Noble unless you want to special order 'em? Kind of a big deal.
There are other issues, too: First, the DC Comics/Fire exclusivity thing is gonna hurt non-Barnes & Noble bookstores and comics shops, too. It's looking like those Fire editions will cost $10, which is significantly lower than what comics shops and independent bookstores can feasibly charge for hard copies. (The current list price for a Watchmen softcover is $20, for example, while the first trade of Y the Last Man goes for $15.) That's gonna mess up brick-and-mortar retailers. Second, I wouldn't be surprised if this thing gets even nastier—remember that whole Amazon vs. Macmillan battle? Keep in mind that DC Comics is hardly the only publisher owned by its parent company, Time Warner. If Time Warner wants to play hardball with Barnes & Noble, they certainly can.
Argh. Clumsy pissing contests between soulless corporate giants are fun to watch from the sidelines and all, but the thing that bums me out about this clumsy pissing contest is that it'll hurt readers, creators, and independent retailers all at once. In entirely too many places in the country, Barnes & Noble is the only accessible brick-and-mortar bookstore—which means Barnes & Noble shoppers who might browse into a copy of We3 or The Unwritten, who might then check out other comics, who might then head to an independent comics shop? Yeah. None of that's gonna happen, at least for the time being.
Nice work, jackasses. By all means, keep making it harder and harder for people to find and legally acquire your product. None of this makes any sense.
Hat tips: ComicsAlliance! Newsarama! And Bleeding Cool, which has photos of the DC books getting pulled off the shelves.
