Yesterday, news officially dropped that Scribd was opening up a third vertical in their legal content distribution plan. The company, which up to then had dealt with ebooks and audiobooks, was adding comics to its all you can read plan that costs $8.99 a month. The line-up of publishers to start is impressive and includes Marvel, Dynamite, IDW, Top Cow, Top Shelf, Zenescope, Valiant, Arcana, MediaDo, Kingstone, and Space Goat, and we’re told from sources more is to come. A “Netflix” of comics is nothing new. Marvel Unlimited already offers 1000s of comics in their own service, and Comicsfix is another. I know more are still to come.

The launch was covered by many beyond the usual comic blogs, and news hit the biggest of tech blogs out there like TechCrunch, The Verge, Engadget, and more. It was an impressive press launch, of which I only saw flaws and mistakes.

If you go to the Scribd comics website, you’ll see a fancy splash page with rotating images and beautiful graphics. Visually it looks great, but in reality to draw in new readers, the site is flawed, and whomever felt this was the best route to go, probably should be fired.

The website boasts the ability to “start your free month,” but there’s an ability to do even a basic search to see what catalog they have when it comes to comics. You are forced to hand over your credit card to even get a look at what is offered, let alone try the reader. In the age of data breaches, I’m not handing over my credit card to demo something. The launch’s greatest strength, the publishers, are relegated to a below the fold placement, minimizing their impact, and even leaving out some of the launch partners.

With the coverage and hits they’d drive (we’ll get to that in a bit), you’d also want to at least capture email addresses for those visiting, and follow up with them later (or re-target bounces in a web advertising campaign). There’s no email capture mechanism. And in 24 hours I haven’t seen an ad for Scribd follow me around. They company handed bags of cash over to get publishers, but doesn’t look like they left much of a budget to actually advertise their product.

The final nail in the coffin is the lack of bump in downloads or grossing ranks. According to App Annie, a leader in measuring app data, Scribd saw a minor bump in the hour the news broke for downloads, and a slight increase during the day and into today. The issue is, this is the same sort of increase we see at other times, on other days. February 2 actually had a more impressive increase in downloads. As a marketer or press staff, I would be looking for a sharp increase, something that’s not present. To me, this launch would be a disappointment. A massive hit, for little gain.

The app did reach a high download rank for the last two months of #468, with an average rank of 847 in US Apps. But, the app has done better at other times without press hits. In the United States the app ranked #428 in September. In the “Books” category, the app usually ranks between 4 and 8 with an average ranking of 6.88. Yesterday, it ranked 4, but it’s done that multiple times in the last few weeks. The app in other words, saw average activity. When it comes to the “grossing” stats the app performed almost exactly average, lacking much of a dollar bump, and since I won’t give my credit card to download the app, I can’t see what likely actually attributes to those “grossing”stats, but most likely it’s the trial. Since the first month is free, it’d be a bit before these folks show up, so March 10 will be an interesting date to look at to see how many stayed on.

Scribd does better than the rest of the comic apps out there, with the highest ranking #24 yesterday, the Marvel Comics app, and digital comics juggernaut ComiXology ranking 76. DC Comics ranked #37 for downloads, and #1 for grossing, with Marvel #2. Marvel and DC ranked multiple times lower, but grossed much more money for the companies.

Scribd has hosted comics for quite a long time, just not in a legal sense. The company has, and still does, allow for anyone to upload documents and embed them on sites for free, as well as individuals to sell documents. We use the service for our IDW PDF previews. If you search those documents, you do come across hundreds of pirated comics. Some of those are from companies now available as part of their service, and some not yet. Scribd has attempted to combat this, but the service they use is beyond flawed, and it’s clear they haven’t succeeded. The fact lawsuits haven’t been filed is honestly astonishing. Even more so of companies teaming up with a service that, to this day, allows people to steal their comics. But, when money is thrown at you….

From those I’ve talked to that have signed up for the free trial, universally none plan to continue on, and all have said the experience was lackluster. The most telling was a friend who said “it’s clear the comics reading experience was an afterthought.” As well, many pointed mentioned flawed features that Scribd highlighted, like their search function.

Scribd opens up an opportunity for comics to get in front of of the services existing book and audiobook community. But, it’s clear that the service has a long way to go. With the digital wars heating up again, we’ll be returning to our regular rank reporting starting this Monday.