Thought on DC Digital Distribution Timing

For the last week, I’ve been really bugged about something that DC sent out last week. Here is what they sent to us. And below is the letter I just sent to DC.

DC ENTERTAINMENT UPDATE ON DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION TIMING

DC Entertainment remains committed to the evolution of the comics business, and we will continue to adapt our practices to keep up with new growth opportunities, new consumer behaviors, and new partner protocol.

We understand that some of you were disappointed by our recent digital periodical sales announcement. We want to reaffirm our commitment to partnership with the direct channel, and reiterate that we will give you as much notice as possible while balancing the net impact of announcements and confidentiality agreements.

To better deliver on “Same Day Digital,” we are announcing a revised sales practice going forward – comiXology digital sales will begin at 3:00am Eastern on Wednesdays at the earliest, through our DCE/CX apps and websites, effective next week.

Keep in mind, total parity is proving impossible across all channels. Other eBook partners (Amazon, Apple, B&N) will still begin ingesting our weekly content early Wednesday morning. But these ingestions occur randomly and with less precision than comiXology’s – some weeks certain titles could release with any one of these platforms in certain parts of the country as early as 12:01am Eastern, but on other weeks (as we have learned already) we will be further back in their lengthy queues and our titles will release several hours later into Wednesday.

Digital releasing varies widely – by title, timing, tablet, and town – minimizing any specific effect on your sales opportunities. Moving forward, we will closely track these release patterns, as part of our ongoing consideration of our sales practices. It may be of interest to note that, so far, the majority of sales on the comiXology platform between 12:01am and 9am Eastern have occurred outside of North America. As ever, we encourage you to contact comiXology about your store becoming an Affiliate partner.

Through great content creation at DCE and great partnership with you, we’ve done what is viewed as impossible – grown print and digital at the same time, creating new comic fans along the way.

Thank you for your continued support,

DC Entertainment

And my response:

I’ve been thinking about this for the last week. I didn’t want to go off without thinking things over. But even after a week, I’m still upset. So I figured I’d let it out.

First, let me say that I completely understand the need to try to get the most out of digital. It appears that Warner Brothers has taken a greater interest in DC and you need to show growth. Expanding print is tough, so DC is looking at digital. I also understand how difficult it is to maintain the balance that must be done between print and digital to keep both viable. I get it.

When I heard about the expansion to other platforms beyond Comixology, I thought “Good for them.” When I saw that releases were being done in the early AM hours, I figured it was an error and that DC would address it. Because of this I was not one of the letter writers. For 6 years, you guys have been good to me. Then I received my email on Tuesday. I really couldn’t quite believe it. Not only what was said, but how it was said. Had it been just a press release, maybe I could have lived with it, but since it was an email directly to us from DC Sales, I was insulted.

It starts off “DC Entertainment remains committed to the evolution of the comics business, and we will continue to adapt our practices to keep up with new growth opportunities, new consumer behaviors, and new partner protocol.”

Is this really the way you want to start off a letter to retailers? “We are committed to moving on without you and are more concerned with what our new partners want than what you expect.”

Then “We understand that some of you were disappointed by our recent digital periodical sales announcement. We want to reaffirm our commitment to partnership with the direct channel, and reiterate that we will give you as much notice as possible while balancing the net impact of announcements and confidentiality agreements.”

As I read it – “Sorry we upset you. We still want you to order our books and we will tell you what we are doing to undermine you if and when we feel like it.”

The rest of the email is literally blah blah blah. I don’t care about the difficulty people have ingesting your digital content. Why did the writer of this think we would?  Although it does tell me that someone in the Digital Department wrote this and not you guys in the Sales Department. I doubt you care about digital ingestion either.

Then they throw this out as a total slap in the face – “As ever, we encourage you to contact comiXology about your store becoming an Affiliate partner.”

I read this on Tuesday and was absolutely stunned.  No one has been more supportive of DC than I have been.  The New 52 would not have been the success it was without all of us on the front lines pushing the books to customers. To read this completely dismissive letter was a surprise.

Again, I completely understand the need to push and promote your digital product. I do not feel that, apples to apples, digital is that big a threat to me. But now its being sold 9 hours before I can contractually sell the physical books. And the statement of adapting to our new partner protocols scares the crap out of me. If Amazon asks for new releases on Tuesday, what’s to stop DC from saying yes? If Apple wants to sell digital at $1.99, what hope do we have? DC “will continue to adapt their practices to … new partner protocol.”

That is why that entire letter scares me. At no point does it give any consideration to us, the retailer. It is all about new markets and new partners. And letting us know what’s going on well after the fact after discovering it via through 3rd parties, like we did via the Robot6 blog for this.

I sincerely doubt you will be able to continue growing print after this. I have no choice but to limit my orders now. I will still order to cover customer sales, but I will now order to sell out and reorder as necessary. I will not go heavy on a title, to try to keep issues in stock for the long haul. I find this a very odd position for DC to take when you are coming out with 3 titles in the new Previews that are going to need to have heavy hand-selling for any chance of being successful. There is no way I will take the same chance on Katana, Vibe and the New JLA that I took on any new 52 issue.

A retailer on the CBIA made the comparison that now DC is Marvel in attitude. At least we know where we stand with Marvel. They don’t like us. Period. I thought that we stood better with you guys. Maybe that’s why this was such a big shock. I expect Marvel to do things solely for their own benefit. DC has referred to us as partners. I don’t see that being the case anymore. And I will have to order accordingly from here on out.

By the tone and statements in the message, it seems like DC no longer views us as important for the success of their books. I get 125 – 150 new comics and trades a week. There is only so much that I can focus on promoting. Marvel has a bunch of shiny new #1s out that I will be much better off putting my promotional efforts behind than books from someone who says I’m a partner, but one that, I feel, is being taken for granted.