Downloading Comics

[phillcalle]

First, I don't download comics because I don't really know how, and I wouldn't want to read them on my computer screen anyway. But I do something similar: a couple of times a month I go to my local Borders/Barnes & Noble and sit down and read graphic novels, stacks of them. Most of them I enjoy, but I only buy the very few that are so great that I can't live without them.

I don't see a big difference between myself and the downloader, except that what the downloader does is illegal. But the other part of the argument (the more important part)--that the downloader is a parasite, enjoying the fruits of the artist's labor without payment applies to me too. In fact, one could argue that I'm worse than a downloader: When I take a stack of graphic novels to a chair to read, those graphic novels are, for the time being, near-impossible for others to find.

The truth is, if I couldn't sit and read those graphic novels, I still wouldn't buy them. I would likely still buy a few based on past preferences and reviews, similar to the way in which I buy prose novels or non-fiction (which I also preview at the bookstore, but don't finish because they take too long).

I wonder: Are the downloaders similar? I suspect that they are. In other words, every downloaded comic is not a lost sale; instead it's just a browser who might decide to buy the physical copy or not.

[outlander78]

Steve, Dan or anyone else who works in the industry, do you know why there isn't an iTunes store for comics yet?

I stopped buying comics a year ago - they cost too much in Canada and are too hard to buy locally. I don't download them, though it is extremely tempting. If I could buy Marvel and DC comics (especially back issues) at a reasonable price online I would happily do so. Why won't they set up a store and take my money?

I would greatly appreciate answers, as I have been yearning for years now to be able to buy and legally download comics online, as I do musical tracks, and find the lack of options frustrating. As I read newspapers, blogs and other content online every day I doubt that reading comics in a digital form would be any less satisfying (and they would be a lot easier to store!).

thanks,
Andrew

[Inkthinker]

I don't know if anyone's really put down a method for selling comics iTunes-style

I tell you this, though... when they do, they MUST recognize that people will not pay print prices, or even close to print prices, for the online version. Try to sell me an online version of a comic for $2.99, and you can kiss my hairy white ass all the way to Pirate Bay.

Personally, I'd like to see someone take the approach that comics used to cost 10¢, and they can again.

Okay, maybe not 10¢, but I think 99¢ is the top end of the envelope right now (barring further inflation in the near future). I remember buying Transformers for 75¢, and even 35¢ and 50¢ models could work well, depending on how many pages are provided.

I'd say an additional incentive would be to offer more pages that you get for print. For instance... I'd buy all the X-books in digital format once a month, if I could do it for, say, $5.99 at MOST. That's give that if I wanted the same in print, I'd pay out something like $20 a month (how many X-books are out now?).

HOWEVER, if you can set up a model that, say, downloads a series of pages, in a good format that not only allows the page to fill screen well but to possibly even print to paper (watermark it unobtrusively), and is viewable via mutiple programs (do NOT go with proprietary readers, let people decide for themselves if they want to read their comics with Irfanview or MS Picture or whatever pleases the consumer), then I think there's a very good possiblity for an online digital comics store to be a viable marketing model. And for the love of god, make the files permanent. None of this "you stop buying, then the stuff you bought is useless" bullshit.

There will continue to be bootlegging. People will pay 99¢ for your comic and then the little bastards will turn right around and torrent it. You can't really prevent that at this time, but you CAN do things to cover your ass and make it more difficult, and at the same time recognize that there IS a market for people who WANT to legitimately purchase comics online, just as there is a legitimate model for people to purchase music online. But it's not the same as the print model, and neither should it be.

[MichaelMogg]

First, I don't download comics because I don't really know how, and I wouldn't want to read them on my computer screen anyway. But I do something similar: a couple of times a month I go to my local Borders/Barnes & Noble and sit down and read graphic novels, stacks of them. Most of them I enjoy, but I only buy the very few that are so great that I can't live without them.

I don't see a big difference between myself and the downloader, except that what the downloader does is illegal. But the other part of the argument (the more important part)--that the downloader is a parasite, enjoying the fruits of the artist's labor without payment applies to me too. In fact, one could argue that I'm worse than a downloader: When I take a stack of graphic novels to a chair to read, those graphic novels are, for the time being, near-impossible for others to find.

The truth is, if I couldn't sit and read those graphic novels, I still wouldn't buy them. I would likely still buy a few based on past preferences and reviews, similar to the way in which I buy prose novels or non-fiction (which I also preview at the bookstore, but don't finish because they take too long).

I wonder: Are the downloaders similar? I suspect that they are. In other words, every downloaded comic is not a lost sale; instead it's just a browser who might decide to buy the physical copy or not.

Thank you, thank you, Thank you!

In the Digital Comics thread, this was the point I was consistently trying to make, but the anti-downloaders wouldn't have it.

They will tell you the difference between you and downloading is that downloading is on a much larger scale. Also, some downloaders will never buy a comic.

[NatGertler]

Steve, Dan or anyone else who works in the industry, do you know why there isn't an iTunes store for comics yet?

There certainly are legal pay-for-download sites covering the work of multiple publishers -- drivethrucomics.com for example.

However, they don't have Marvel or DC, although there is reason to believe that both of those companies are considering doing their own sites. However, there are reasons why it hasn't happened instantly. Not only does it cost to put together and run a website, but it also puts the publishers into strong competition with their main customers, the comic book stores, who at the very least would not be happy to be competing with their supplier offering the same content at 1/3 the price. And while comic stores sales have been growing nicely of late, diverting some of those sales to the downloads could endanger some of those shops and thus the financial base of the publishing efforts. (It's not surprising that Top Cow is limiting the downloads they sell to material at least a year old.)

[Steven Grant]

Steve, Dan or anyone else who works in the industry, do you know why there isn't an iTunes store for comics yet?

Apple, if they've even thought of it, probably doubts there's enough money in it to make it worthwhile...

- Grant

[mattx110]

i don't even like to work digitally to make comics...
converting to .Tifs to send to a printer is a sad necessity in my opinion.

and yea, i've got nothing published so i can just work all physical and worry about distribution when i do something i feel is worth selling. i love alex maleev, but i don't think i ever want to use photoshop to anything but scan a file.
so reading comics on a computer is just... yuck.
i like paper, and i think those archive Cd-roms marvel released are a good thing, but whether it's legal or not, i'm not getting involved.

[the goddamn batman]

First, I don't download comics because I don't really know how, and I wouldn't want to read them on my computer screen anyway. But I do something similar: a couple of times a month I go to my local Borders/Barnes & Noble and sit down and read graphic novels, stacks of them. Most of them I enjoy, but I only buy the very few that are so great that I can't live without them.

I don't see a big difference between myself and the downloader, except that what the downloader does is illegal. But the other part of the argument (the more important part)--that the downloader is a parasite, enjoying the fruits of the artist's labor without payment applies to me too. In fact, one could argue that I'm worse than a downloader: When I take a stack of graphic novels to a chair to read, those graphic novels are, for the time being, near-impossible for others to find.

The truth is, if I couldn't sit and read those graphic novels, I still wouldn't buy them. I would likely still buy a few based on past preferences and reviews, similar to the way in which I buy prose novels or non-fiction (which I also preview at the bookstore, but don't finish because they take too long).

I wonder: Are the downloaders similar? I suspect that they are. In other words, every downloaded comic is not a lost sale; instead it's just a browser who might decide to buy the physical copy or not.

I'm a little late to the party but, you sir, are the same as a downloader.

You know what dude, you want to read books and not pay for them? It's called the fucking library!;)

[Percival]

Borders has got it all-over a library. Their chairs are a lot more comfortable, they have a much better selection and they are way more current. You can go in buy yourself a latte or frapaccino grab a stack of the latest comics and read, read, read.... In fact you could probably save more money on an hourly basis by not buying the comics you are reading than the entire staff of the store earns in their minimum wage paychecks.

[bartl]

I'm a little late to the party but, you sir, are the same as a downloader.

You know what dude, you want to read books and not pay for them? It's called the fucking library!;)

Places like Barnes & Noble and Borders WANT people to sit down and read books there. The deals they get from the publishers allow them to have very comfortable profit margins, and they negotiate great buy-back deals (very often, B&N, Borders, and Amazon can buy out the entire run of a new book; they wait 4 weeks, and then send back the unsold copies, which is when the independent bookstores get a crack at them).

Barnes & Nobles and Borders are working hard to drive the independent seller out of business. They can afford to sell books at the independent's cost or less, and still make a profit. So, when they move into a neighborhood, the see what the independents are selling, and give an extra discount on those books. (By the way, these practices are illegal, but very hard to prove in court).

Independent bookstores cannot afford to be libraries. So the big stores, by making themselves open to people using them as libraries, ensure that when they do buy a book, that book comes from them. And it keeps people away from the independent bookstores.

So don't worry about Barnes & Nobles or Borders if someone reads a book as if they are a library; that's their INTENTION.

[bartl]

In fact you could probably save more money on an hourly basis by not buying the comics you are reading than the entire staff of the store earns in their minimum wage paychecks.

Borders and Barnes & Nobles both pay better than minimum wage. However, they do require that their employees know how to read, write, and speak English.

[mikefalcon]

Borders has got it all-over a library. Their chairs are a lot more comfortable, they have a much better selection and they are way more current. You can go in buy yourself a latte or frapaccino grab a stack of the latest comics and read, read, read.... In fact you could probably save more money on an hourly basis by not buying the comics you are reading than the entire staff of the store earns in their minimum wage paychecks.

Of course, with a library, you can sign out the books and take them home and read them on your comfy sofa.

I really don't understand why downloading comics is even a problem. Why does ANYONE want to read comics on a screen??!

[MichaelMogg]

Of course, with a library, you can sign out the books and take them home and read them on your comfy sofa.

I really don't understand why downloading comics is even a problem. Why does ANYONE want to read comics on a screen??!

Just because you cannot understand it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Can you understand why anyone would want to watch a movie on an ipod?! Yet, everyone and their grandmother has one.

Reading comics on my laptop is really an enjoyable experience. I can hold thousands of them on it at any one time, and take it pretty much anywhere. The fact that you are looking at a screen is no different from watching a video, or reading an article (which I actually find harder on the eyes).

[badMike]

Can you understand why anyone would want to watch a movie on an ipod?! Yet, everyone and their grandmother has one.

I don't have an ipod and I don't understand why someone would want to watch movies on one.

[outlander78]

A DVD-R can hold roughly 4813 MB. Any idea how big a scanned comic is? Divide 4813 by that number and that how much content you can put on a DVD-R.

Next, consider that a comic long box can hold approximately 300 comics. If a scanned comic is less than 16 MB in size, that means that a DVD-R can hold more comics than a long box.

So, a notebook with a DVD-R inside can likely hold long box worth of comics.

I have many technical texts on my notebook (they are called Red Books, are quite legal and sourced from IBM) and find that reading them is not quite as nice as a printed text, but for the limited amount of time I use them as a reference printing them out is not a good use of paper.

Also, think about portable music players - the music quality of a standard 128 kb/s song is not quite as good as that of a CD, but it is "good enough" and is immensely popular.

Comics on a notebook screen, if cheaper and easier to store, are the same. I hope that helps you understand the mindset, even if it does not appeal to you (as watching movies on a tiny screen does not appeal to me).

edit: As comics wouldn't fit on an iPod's screen easily, I don't expect Apple to put them in the iTunes Store any time soon - there is no business case. I would like to see a very similar set up however - almost all the pieces are already in place.