What I’m now calling Marvel’s ongoing new release sale marches on into another week, a new month and a new fiscal quarter.

The new TPB/collected editions are once more being released for 99¢ on both Amazon/Kindle and Comixology.  Among the notable releases being dumped for pennies are the new Jim Starlin/Alan Davis OGN, Thanos: The Infinity Siblings and X-Men: Grand Design.

You might want to take a closer look at the digital listing for X-Men: Grand Design.  (Note: if you’re a retailer, take your blood pressure medication first.)  The print edition of X-Men: Grand Design is a Marvel Treasury format over-sized edition with a suggested retail price of $29.99.  If you look at what the digital list price is, prior to the 99¢ sale, it’s not $29.99.  Or even $9.99.  It’s $5.99.

I will grant you that the print edition is designed for a very specific experience and that experience is not going to be easily replicated on most digital readers, but that’s a pretty hefty digital discount before you get to the sale.

There probably should be a conversation on what a reasonable price for a digital comic is.  It’s possible that Marvel or Amazon is boundary testing on pricing.  I can’t imagine the retailers not bringing this up at C2E2 and it will be interesting to hear what, if any, the response is.

In the meantime, if you want some cheap reads, here’s the new list:

Be sure to have a look at the sale directory pages for Amazon/Kindle and Comixology.  I’m writing this Wednesday evening and the convention has been to release another set of new digital releases – usually of older material – on Thursday and have them part of the new releases sale.

Want to learn more about how comics publishing and digital comics work?  Try Todd’s book, Economics of Digital Comics

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Isn’t this practice basically screwing over the retailers who purchased the actual books, hoping to sell them to customers? How can they reliably count on possible future sales if there’s a chance that Marvel will place the digital editions of these books on sale at the same time as the actual books go on sale? This isn’t similar to single comic books and digital comic books, where the price disparity between the two is minimal; there’s a big difference between paying $20 for a book or $1 for the same book in digital. This is a pretty enticing prospect for a customer as it’s a huge cost savings.

    Would think this will hurt the sale of actual TPBs in the future as comic shops have even a less likely chance of being able to sell them once they are put in the stores.

    Marvel is confusing to me these days and I’ve been a fan since 1977.

  2. I was all ready to buy it when Comixology had it listed for $5 on pre order, it turning to .99 cents is icing on the cake. It’s weird but nice buying collections for about the price of a single issue comic most of the time.

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