Digital Comics -- Can They Make The Leap?

[HoodedMan]

Ah. When you said transfer a bunch of your titles, I thought you meant issues that you already have in print. You can see why I'd question why you'd want to do that. If you mean future issues, then I'd absolutely agree digital's an option.

[Ult_Sm86]

I don't see it but I believe it makes sense to mistakenly take that literally. Either way, yeah.

Still...


Why isn't Marel pricing their comics down like DC does... your response (while informative) doesn't answer why the heck they're not doing that. I mean... $3.99 in print, $3.99 in Digital Download, so far as I'm concerned that's a rip off....

[HoodedMan]

Well, different companies have different pricing strategies. One thing to consider, especially when you're not limited to 500 MB as you are with DC (I haven't heard that) is that you could have an entire series from start to finish stored in a Kindle or the like and it would take 1/100th the space it would in print. It's the same thing with textbooks; they're not much cheaper yet than they are in print. So there's a convenience factor. Publishers are still making much more from print than they are from digital and as long as that's true, you're not really going to see a price run.

[Edited on 11/30/11 by HoodedMan]

[Ult_Sm86]

It'd be nice to see a price change, all the same.

I agree with the storing into a Kindle, I unfortunately don't have one. I was just gonna store 'em on my external hard-drive and use my Mac until I got an iPad someday soon.

[Ult_Sm86]

Interesting CBR article!

“When reading a comic with Guided View or a similar technology, we’re losing a number of elements,” Levin explains in his blog post. “We don’t see the construction of the whole page, which would peripherally influence our understanding of the current panel. We also lose the sense of relative size of each panel, which is the most basic way that creators imply pacing. Reading the same comic on and offline would leave markedly different impressions.”

To better understand what Levin is getting at, it’s important to step back and take a look at a comics page. When reading a comic book in its natural form, we’re reading it in two different ways simultaneously.