Tales from the Amazon.com: Stories from an Original Team Member

The Marvelous Bankruptcies of Marvel

When I still worked in the special orders dept at Amazon, I often dealt with a lot of comic publishers and a lot of people in the department knew I published comics as well in my spare time. So when a coworker was having problems with one of the larger publishers, they immediately brought it to me.

“Owen, can I bother you for a second?” It was one of the junior buyers on the team coming up to me with a file.

“Sure whats up?” She was standing in front of my desk looked fraught with anxiety and clinging to the folder like a life preserver.

“I’m having problems with this publisher and someone said you were into comics so I thought you could help.” They handed me the file which I took and started to thumb through.

“Whats the issue?”

“They are refusing to sell to us”

“Ok I can take a look into it”

“Thanks I appreciate it”

A shiver ran through me once I saw who it was. It was Marvel. They were notorious for being difficult.

First off let me just say, I’m a Kirby man. Always will be. Stan Lee screwed his business partner who co-created literally ALL the greatest comic characters (and even alot without Stan); Stan Lee used to be nothing but a ‘coffee boy’ when Kirby was doing alot of this work. But I digress…

I knew Marvel had recently refinanced and they had purchased their own distributor so I figured I would give them a call and see who I could get through to.

I called one person after another all of whom fed me the same line and I just kept asking to speak to someone higher up until I got a VP.

He basically told me that due to the nature of their refinancing and purchasing of their own distributor, they could not sell through any other online company. I did my best to remind him that the more companies they sell through, the more sales they can get and that by limiting the number of retailers they have, they are directly limited their sales.

I also reminded him that we were at the time, the biggest online retailer of books and that he was going to be directly impacting ALL his online sales. I asked if they could look into doing anything about this. He said he would ‘look into it’. He never called back.

I called everyday for over two weeks.

Finally he picks up the phone and tells me there is nothing he can do. I remind him AGAIN that he is directly impacting his sales. He repeats his initial statement and then thanks me for my time and then hung up.

This kind of East Coast rudeness and elitism is what costs companies… and it cost Marvel. They assumed they did not need any other retailer much less the biggest retailer online. So I got off the phone, went into the other room and told the person who handed me the file that we could no longer sell Marvel products and to cancel all orders. I then informed the SNOC of the situation so they could remove all Marvel products.

Six months later Marvel went bankrupt… practically to the day. A month after that I get a call from the exact same VP who blew me off asking if we could do business. I let him know that we removed all his products from the database. He asked if we could start selling their products again. I asked him if he knew how long it took to add all their products to our database and if he understood the burden he was putting us under especially after he told us that we could not sell them 6 months ago. He stated there was nothing he could do and apologized.

I told him it would take some time and I would ‘look into it’.

Business relationships are like that. And honestly, I can’t believe that guy still had a job after bankrupting his employer.

Eventually we did work with them again but I had to hand it off to someone else as I could not deal with them.

Dealing with publishers can mean dealing with people who don’t understand business. And even worse is trying to get publishers to embrace technology when they are so entrenched in the world of ‘dead trees’ (as Jeff Bezos was fond of saying). Those that aren’t outright luddites are scared of anything new and different and are more comfortable with a book than a computer.

Of course that world is changing but that wasn’t always so.