Booksellers Wage E-Book Battle … With Superheroes No Less !

Green Lantern is part of DC Comics' exclusive content deal with Amazon

More publishing intrigue! 🙂

Amazon, in an effort to beef up its new Kindle Fire Tablet, has pulled a cool coup and scored an exclusive contract with DC Comics for the digital rights to a hundred popular graphic novels (including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Sandman, and Watchmen).

This Amazon action pissed off Barnes and Noble AND Books-a-Million so much so … that they pulled all the superhero physical titles from their store shelves … saying they would not sell any books they did not also have digital rights to. 

And this B&N and B-a-M action pissed off all the comic book fans so much that they have charged the subject frigging booksellers with screwing with the graphic novel community.

You see where this intrigue is going exponential … ‘Intrigue Squared’, you might say.

Details by Steven Musil in CNET News:

Booksellers involve superheroes in e-book battle

Holy e-comic clash, Batman!

Amazon, apparently in an effort to add muscle to its recently unmasked Kindle Fire tablet, sparked a real-world fight over superhero comic books when it inked a deal with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to a hundred popular graphic novels, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Sandman, and Watchmen.

That arrangement apparently did not sit too well with rival bookseller Barnes & Noble, which has an e-book reader it would like to see flourish. In response to DC’s deal, Barnes & Noble removed the physical copies of the titles from its store shelves, saying that it would not sell books it did not also have digital rights to. Books-a-Million, another large bookseller, took the same action for the same reason.

Comic book fans paint all the players in this tale as villains: They accuse Amazon of turning its back on the graphic novel community, label DC Comics as greedy, and characterize Barnes & Noble as similarly uncaring and childish.

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