When we did our interview with Marvel publisher Dan Buckley late last year (see “Interview with Marvel’s Dan Buckley”), he mentioned a program that Marvel was working on to provide Web support to comic stores. He said of the program, which was in beta at the time, “We think it’s a time saver and it helps retailers make more intelligent decisions on the Marvel product. At the very least it allows them to present themselves in a different fashion with their consumers.”
After an extended beta-testing period, Marvel went public with the program, the
We recently caught up with Marvel Senior Vice President – Sales and Circulation David Gabriel to get more details about Marvel’s new program,
It sounds like this has been in development for quite some time.
We first met the people from Live Tech maybe two years ago when they started pitching this project to us. Dan and I knew right away that it would be a great benefit to all the retailers. We worked on it for about six months to a year on the back end stuff then went live around June of last year.
You mentioned Live Tech. What’s that?
Live Tech is the company that creates all the software and does all the tech for it [actually "Live Technology"--Ed].
Is this something they do in multiple industries?
Yes. We know that a lot of retailers either don’t have their own sites or spend an inordinate amount of time every single week getting all the images, getting all the covers, loading up everything to their Website. We know that we make constant changes in on-sale dates, cover changes, artist changes, all that stuff. From what we were finding from retailers who have their own sites, updating took a huge amount of time.
Just knowing those two things alone and seeing what the Live Tech guys had to offer we all felt this would be something great that the entire industry should really embrace.
Can you talk about the digital First Looks? We understand that there was a period of time when you weren’t able to do the physical books in advance from some printers?
We used two or three different printers when we were doing the hard copy First Looks. They had to all come from the one printer that shipped to Diamond by a certain day at the end of the week. Once shipping costs sort of went through the roof about a year and a half ago, that was starting to make the whole program way too expensive. Much less than a third of our books could be a part of the program so we just cancelled it altogether knowing that eventually we’d be able to get it into the
So retailers can get First Looks a la carte or as part of a bigger bundle?
The main emphasis on the entire package is the Website creation. Going along with the Website creation we have to include all the FOC information, the on sale list, and all the covers and the collected editions—we have to print all that information into the site because that just gets uploaded onto each Website.
We just figured out a way, and I kind of worked with these guys and a little bit with some Diamond folks to figure out the best way—and with some retail feedback as well—to organize all the information so that it is a very helpful ordering tool to begin with, but has also submitted all links correctly onto the retailers’ Websites. Eventually when we got the First Looks in there as part of the package we thought this might be something that some retailers will want without having to go through the entire package. We’re charging much less than what the First Looks cost in the hard copy form and you’re also getting about three times as many books every month. That alone was a great deal.
We had a lot of retailers saying, “Why should I be paying for FOC information and ordering information? That should just be free.” Yes, it was free. It’s not any different information, it’s not any secret information that isn’t on the Diamond site, that isn’t put in the Marvel mailer or isn’t communicated to retailers through any number of other sources including Marvel Previews, Diamond Daily. We worked this summer to make sure that we could have a free section for retailers. So if they don’t want any of the other stuff, but they just want the benefit of having all of the FOC and on sale information in an up-to-date Website that they can access every day, any hour of the day, we made that completely free for them. So they just need to go and sign up and they’ll always be able to get that information.
The beauty of having it done through Live Tech is that they are connected directly into our production schedule. As an editor either shifts a book or changes an artist or writer, or any number of different changes that could happen, all of that gets uploaded every single morning over to the Live Tech guys. They update the
The only other choice we have to make any changes known is either the Marvel Mailer, or a Diamond Daily article or Diamond Dateline. All those things can take anywhere from two to three days to a week or a month to notify the retailers of any changes. Now the retailers can go in every day and see what’s going on.
Retailers who subscribe also get free stuff?
Yes. The guys who are in the overall package we send a package of new variant covers, new hardcover books, in-stock trade paperbacks to them every single month just to help them defray the costs for the program.
What kind of titles have they been sending?
The top things: Dark Reign: The List variants. We’ve sent brand new Amazing Spider-Man hardcovers that came out. One of the first comments was, “Oh, you’re just going to send us some crap you have sitting in inventory.” When we set the print runs for that month we’ll earmark one of those premier hardcovers to be one of those books. It’s not just an equal retail value [to the subscription price], it’s sometimes up to three times the retail value.
What’s the response been like? You’re just coming out of Beta, right?
We’re just coming out of what seemed like a six month test program. From the guys who are using it to its fullest, they love it. Some of these guys don’t use the Internet, and certainly don’t have Websites. We’ve got around 200, 250 people who have signed up so far and are using the full site. At least one that we’ve heard from has claimed people have found him on the Internet through Google, gone to their Website and now have come to the store looking for products that they’ve had on the Website that they didn’t know about. So to us that’s a good start. We’ve had phenomenal growth just since Monday of this week. The response has been overwhelming. We almost doubled our subscribers since last Monday. Some guys are in it just for the variants and things we send them. We get that too.
Where are you headed with this program?
The more that we look at it the more that we see the potential for even more growth. We think in the very near future that we’re going to figure out a way through the
Gift card-type things?
Yes. It’s certainly much easier to do when you have a small controlled group that we can connect with on a daily basis. Just for that alone there’s huge potential on the way for the resource center and certainly for the sites that get created.
