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Serial Profitability


fishers64

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Many fans would not have read them as books cost money. They might have been introduced to certain people who wouldn't have heard of BIONICLEstory.com, but I think the more likely effect would have been to decrease overall knowledge.

 

Serials were also generally about more fringe/side-story type events, although they did explain things to do with some sets - such as Takanuva in 2008.

Edited by BobaFett2

The Legend Lives...

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It's hard to say. The books and serials were never meant to be big money makers; they were both ways to maintain and appease the audience for the sets, which were Lego's core profit source. I do think that the serials being online probably helped the sales of the books themselves, so if nothing replaced them as a "sample" for the Bionicle story, it would probably be bad business. And adding yet more stories to be posted online would probably overwork Greg, regardless of how successful the stories were, so I think the serials staying online and freely accessible was probably for the best.

Formerly Lyichir: Rachira of Influence

Aanchir's and Meiko's brother

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The serials were an attempt at making the story available to a much wider audience than the books had been, as a consequence of the latter's declining sales and failure to keep fans informed. But as Bionicle came to an end anyway I don't think not bothering with the serials would've had much effect, unless to bring that end about quicker.

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Made a difference to what, exactly? To book sales? To set sales? To the overall success of the franchise? Or just to the quality of the story?

 

I don't think they'd have really improved book sales or story quality. A lot of the stories they told were better when told as periodic installments, rather than all at once. Plus, towards the end the number of books coming out each year was starting to fall anyway due to poor book sales. Convincing publishers to publish those stories, which did not typically focus on the main characters that kids would recognize from commercials and toy store shelves, would not be easy, and chances are they would have had to take the place of other, more important stories. Probably not worth it in the long run.

 

As far as set sales are concerned, as I mentioned, a lot of them didn't focus on the year's most important or familiar characters, instead telling stories of what other characters who were not in the spotlight were up to at the time. So I don't think they would have made a huge difference to sales of the sets or the overall success of the theme.

 

Another advantage of the serials being posted online, besides being more available to everyone, is that they would drive traffic to the websites BIONICLE.com and BIONICLEstory.com, so anybody who wanted to read the serials would be effectively immersing themselves in advertising for the theme. And that probably had an impact on sales itself.

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I'm not too sure, but I think that it would stay better as serials because like Aanchir said, the advertising could make more money than the books. Also, in one of the legends books(I think it was a Karda Nui one) it had a code to a part of the serial with Takanuva's journey one. So it's kind of like advertising. These days, more and more people are using the internet, instead of books, so it's easier for most people if it was online.

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