Last week’s announcement that DC would be offering exclusive digital versions of certain graphic novels and collected editions on Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet may have raised a few eyebrows, but not as many as the price point of Watchmen is going to. ICv2 has noticed that Amazon’s Kindle Fire edition of the collected Watchmen will sell for just $9.99, compared with $19.99 for the print version.
While the decision was presumably Amazon’s – The site lists a “digital list price” of $17.99, and Amazon has a history of offering significant discounts on digital books – this nonetheless marks an interesting departure for DC’s digital pricing, which has generally held something close to parity with print or thereabouts ($2 cheaper for digital sounds like a DC decision, if that makes sense). I’m curious to see how much retailer outcry there will be about this, if any; after all, digital sales are nowhere near print sales at this point, and Watchmen will be a Kindle Fire exclusive title, cutting down its potential audience even further. And yet… 50% cheaper? I can’t see that going by entirely unchallenged, if only for the precedent it establishes…
October 3rd, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Given Kindle Fire’s 7-inch screen, I’m amazed they’re even trying to publish on this platform. Books intended for a larger page just aren’t going to be readable (the same way, if at all) on the screen. Even on my 10-inch tablet, I’d like the page to be a little bigger.
October 3rd, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Pretty sure this will be available to any device that can use the Kindle software (i.e. iPad), not just the Fire.
October 3rd, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Yeah, it’ll probably look just fine on your desktop or laptop. That, and I think expectations are that this 7″ tablet from Amazon is only a starter, and that something bigger like a 10″ will be coming some time next year.
October 3rd, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Watchmen has always been an evergreen book for both LCS and book stores so it will be interesting how the Kindle Fire sales impact that.
But at the same time, it has been a gateway book into other comic books and graphic novels so maybe there will be ripple effect.
October 5th, 2011 at 7:53 am
The Kindle pricing may not be DC’s choice. Amazaon tries to set its own pricing whenever possible.
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