I just opened a ComiXology account and tried to order a digital copy of New Avengers #15. I got a note from the site they transfered me to saying it was “out of stock.”
How can they run out of a digital comic?
I just discovered ComiXology, and I’m surprisingly pleased with the experience of reading digital comics on my laptop and even (gasp) on my smartphone. It’s a well-designed app and it really makes digital comics into something I’m willing to spend money on. Not as much as they want to charge me, unfortunately, but they seem to have pretty regular sales that make for some really good deals. A week or two ago they had a sale on key Superman storylines and I was able to get every issue of All-Star Superman, Red Son, Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?, and some others all for less than trade-paperback prices! Woo-hoo!!
All that said, the website is as poorly designed as the app is well-designed. It’s just terrible. The link you clicked was not to buy the digital comic, it was to order a print copy from an online comic book store. To get the digital comics, you have to click on “Digital Comics” at the right-hand side of the menu bar at the top of the page. Bizarrely, I don’t think there is a way to go directly from the page for a specific title on the main website to that item in the digital store. You just have to search for it in the store.
If ComiXology were able to partner with Amazon so that you could buy digital comics from the Amazon site like Kindle books, it would totally kill printed comic books, IMO.
ETA: Here’s New Avengers #15 in the store.
Thanks, Alan. I live in Korea and am running out of ways to feed my Marvel/DC fix over here.
Funnily enough, Krok, if you’d asked this question yesterday, I couldn’t have helped you as easily. Marvel had some sort of deal with a competing website that kept them out of the main ComiXology store. You could buy Marvel digital comics from ComiXology, but you had to use the iPhone app to do it. To read them on-line, you had to use a separate Marvel app.
Today was the first day that Marvel appeared in the regular ComiXology store on-line.
The article in Newsarama is what convinced me to join up. The current issue of New Avengers 15 (with Squirrel Girl on the cover) isn’t available yet. I’m sure Marvel will eventually quit dragging their feet and start acting like they want me to buy some digital comics from them.
Ah, of course!
I’m surprised Marvel hasn’t followed DC’s lead with announcing everything will be released digitally same-day. OTOH, how many non-comics fans will have heard of ComiXology or even know comic books are available digitally at all? That’s why I think they need some sort of partnership with Amazon to give them visibility. Of course, I can also see why they don’t, since killing off print distribution isn’t exactly DC or Marvel’s goal! But it’s inevitable anyway.
It seems to me, maybe the best thing they could do would be a publicity push for digital comics along with some sort of promotion to get digital readers into the stores. Something like, spend ten dollars on digital comics, get a coupon for any one print issue free, redeemable at the local comic book shop of your choice. The problem is, that would make a deal with Amazon more difficult. Hmmm…I’m sure if they just hired me to run their marketing I could figure something out!
Hi there!
It sounds like you maybe pulled that book on our site, and possibly connected to a retailer. Marvel doesn’t have their entire line same-day digital, like DC will be doing in September. We wish, though!
So that “out of stock” message may have been from a retailer, not our digital store.
Sorry for the confusion!
That was it exactly, yes.
I dunno, that sounds like the confusing final days of Tower Records, with a kiosk selling iTunes mp3’s. I think there’s still a place in the culture for really good brick-n-mortar comics shops, and if I lived within a hundred miles of one, I’d probably use it exclusively. I only get to the States a couple times a year, and blow money at the old comics rack like a drunken sailor given the opportunity. But for my week-to-week needs, digital is my only serious option. And no, I don’t want SIEGE and CIVIL WAR tie-ins from five years ago, thank you.