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About Those New DC Comics Titles in the Nook Store…

Do you recall the news earlier this week about the Nook Tablet? B&N was rolling out an update which added a new type of directed viewing, and  along with the feature came a new selection of digital comics from DC Entertainment. B&N gained the usual Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern titles, bringing them to about the same selection as the Kindle Store.

Actually, the selection in the 2 ebookstores isn’t similar; so far as I can tell they’re identical. I’m sure someone posted this already, but I just noticed that B&N and Amazon stock the exact same 119 graphic novels from DC Entertainment. Curious, isn’t it?

I was looking through my older posts when I came across the one about DC pulling titles from the Kindle Fire (the comixology app, to be exact). That was a rather curious story, and I still don’t have an explanation for DC’s actions. That post inspired me to look at the Kindle and Nook stores to see which one had the better selection.

After a spot check of a half-dozen titles, it seems to me that the selection is identical. Weird. I can’t explain it, but I would guess that there is something going on behind the scenes. DC very carefully put the same titles in both ebookstores – the ones they added to the Kindle Store 8 months ago.

I would hazard a guess that DC doesn’t really want to be in either ebookstore; that’s why they never added any more titles to the Kindle Store. If I’m right then this new content for the Nook Tablet is probably going to be a one time deal; it was a way to make piece with B&N after the fracas last year (when B&N pulled DC titles from store shelves because the digital editions weren’t listed in the Nook Store).

Any ideas why DC is limiting the selection?

One possibility is that they’re avoiding getting in the middle, but I think it more likely that they don’t want to pay to convert a title 3 times (comixology, Kindle, Nook). That cost might be fixed but it’s not cheap.

Kindle Store

Nook Store

P.S. If you noticed the similarity before me and want to count coup, go ahead. My ego could do with some shrinking.

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Comments


fjtorres June 29, 2012 um 12:07 am

Could be that sales aren’t good enough to justify any further conversions for now.
Just because the stuff’s available doesn’t mean people are buying. I wouldn’t; 7in screens aren’t all that hot for comics to start with.


Tim June 29, 2012 um 9:22 am

It could be a combination of possibly mediocre sales and a risk averse of DC. Maybe they have are waiting until certain revenue targets are met before they invest more or they want to be able to better judge sales disregarding a possible launch hype and over the course of different shopping seasons.

After all if not even their bestselling titles (assuming that was part of the selection criteria for the 119 titles) sell well less populor titles might be even more challenging.


Peter July 24, 2012 um 6:26 pm

There are now 141 titles- looks like they added 22 this month.

So either

1) Conversions are simply happening very slowly

-or-

2) DC halted conversions in order to prevent additional titles from being pulled from real shelves.

-or-

3) Both 1 and 2.


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