CBR: Pipeline - Jan 18, 2011

[CBR News]

Archie's move to day and date digital comics makes a lot of sense for a Direct Market that does little for them, leading to "De Blieck's Digital Divide," Skottie Young's eBook and a rally for digital "Savage Dragon."


Full article here.

[the_speedball]

I'll buy basically anything Skottie Young does. He's the only artist I've bought a sketchbook from.

[Derrick Fish]

I have to say, that if more books were available in the PDF download format, I'd be reading more comics then I am. When the economy tanked, I lost my day job and can pretty much just scrape by with freelance art assignments, so the idea of a cheaper, downloadable product would certainly catch my attention.

[DNAlien]

There have been more pirated copies of the comic downloaded than have sold in the Direct Market. By a lot.

Seriously, save us from industry analysis by people who don't know what they're talking about.

Go back to "Alive Torrents" and search for "Savage Dragon 180". I want to see how surprised you are at how many downloads there have been of a comic which hasn't even been drawn, much less published, yet. In fact, search for "Oggly boogly mosoggly", and see how many people are feverishly downloading something I just made up five seconds ago. Man, that Oggly boogly mosoggly is more popular than Savage Dragon, I should do a comic book about it.

[dancj]

Seriously, save us from industry analysis by people who don't know what they're talking about.

Go back to "Alive Torrents" and search for "Savage Dragon 180". I want to see how surprised you are at how many downloads there have been of a comic which hasn't even been drawn, much less published, yet. In fact, search for "Oggly boogly mosoggly", and see how many people are feverishly downloading something I just made up five seconds ago. Man, that Oggly boogly mosoggly is more popular than Savage Dragon, I should do a comic book about it.

A bit rude, but yeah, sites like Alive Torrents just return whatever search term you're looking for and then stick some standards words on the end to make them sound like different versions.

Not that I'd know or anything

[dfstell]

Hey Augie,

Good piece (as always).

I agree 100% that these smaller publishers should be using same-day-digital more. They're not really stealing from the direct market because the direct market barely ever orders a shelf copies. I'd love it if we could see a breakdown of how many sales of a title like Savage Dragon are shelf-copies versus pre-orders by customers for their pull list.

It is a little disturbing that Comixology can't keep up. The good news is that I saw them tweeting about job openings yesterday. Amazing...an American company that is hiring people. Holy crap!

But, if I had to speculate....I'm sure Comixology is forced to prioritize the Marvel/DC stuff every week. Even if they haven't contractually agreed to some kind of performance standards, when given the choice between letting Savage Dragon sit for a few weeks or letting the Marvel stuff gather dust and risk displeasing their co-largest customer, they'll pick the Marvel/DC stuff.

I guess the good news is that there is lots of interest in digital comics (finally).

[BobBretall]

I have a new rule I'd like to create. I'll selfishly refer to it as "De Blieck's Digital Divide" because I substitute alliteration for creativity. Any comic that sells less than 8,000 copies (I'm amenable to lowering that to 6,000 or even 5,000) through Diamond should automatically be made a day and date digital comic for a dollar less, at least. (I think $1.99 should be the top rate for a digital comic with 22 pages of story.)

I love "De Blieck's Digital Divide", I think I'll quote you on next week's ComicBookPage podcast.......

Personally I'd go with 6,000 but your general thought process is sound. I'd also look for digital comics to be 99 cents if they REALLY want to bust out and get more people buying them.

99 cents is a price that many people, myself include, will spend without even really thinking about it. "It's only a buck".

When you get to $1.99 or $2.99 (which is $1 less than most print comics) then more people start thinking about whether they want to spend that amount. Once that thought process starts a lot of the time the end result is a lost "impulse buy".

That said, great article! I miss the podcast but print remains!

[dancj]

The biggest surprise to me there is that it's Comixology who put the comics into the format and go through and define the frames for the guided reading.

Surely it would make much more sense if publishers/creators handled that side of things. Then there'd be no reason to have to involve anyone from Comixology when a comic is published and it could happen instantly.

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

But, if I had to speculate....I'm sure Comixology is forced to prioritize the Marvel/DC stuff every week.

Financially, it just makes more sense. I'm sure those are the most popular titles and, as I believe BleedingCool.com pointed out last week, the digital distributors are forced to pay a steep licensing fee at the start of their contract in advance of sales. They need to sell $250,000's worth of comics (or whatever the number was) before they start making money. They put all that money up front.

It confirms something I heard from one "industry insider" a few months back about how the Marvel App is licensed by Comixology from Marvel. I assumed when it first started that Marvel was paying Comixology some small fee to carry all their stuff. In reality, it's the opposite. Comixology is effectively saying Marvel for the right to carry Marvel's stuff.

And I'm sure the DC deal is the same.

I love "De Blieck's Digital Divide", I think I'll quote you on next week's ComicBookPage podcast.......

99 cents is a price that many people, myself include, will spend without even really thinking about it. "It's only a buck".

Thanks for the quote, and agreed on the dollar, though I think the realities of micropayments kick in there and make it difficult, if not impossible. People don't want the two step process of buying a bunch of credits in advance, and transferring 99 cents in a single transaction is cost-prohibitive, even with computers these days.

The biggest surprise to me there is that it's Comixology who put the comics into the format and go through and define the frames for the guided reading.

Surely it would make much more sense if publishers/creators handled that side of things. Then there'd be no reason to have to involve anyone from Comixology when a comic is published and it could happen instantly.

Comixology is working on tools for the publishers to do this job themselves. I know it's still in development with some alpha testers, so it'll be a long while before we see it more widespread. When that happens, I'm sure Comixology will start charging publishers to do the work on their end of things. It'll be a new revenue stream.

It's frustrating to me because I don't use the Guided View. I view comics on my monitor at home, but I'm being delayed or, really, charged extra for each comic to have that functionality.

Go back to "Alive Torrents" and search for "Savage Dragon 180". I want to see how surprised you are at how many downloads there have been of a comic which hasn't even been drawn, much less published, yet. In fact, search for "Oggly boogly mosoggly", and see how many people are feverishly downloading something I just made up five seconds ago. Man, that Oggly boogly mosoggly is more popular than Savage Dragon, I should do a comic book about it.

I look forward to purchasing the digital edition of that comic, whether it's 99 cents or 2 dollars. Thanks -- I made the correction in Pipeline this week.

-Augie

[dancj]

Thanks for the quote, and agreed on the dollar, though I think the realities of micropayments kick in there and make it difficult, if not impossible. People don't want the two step process of buying a bunch of credits in advance, and transferring 99 cents in a single transaction is cost-prohibitive, even with computers these days.

The iTunes method seems better - where they take payments once every month for whatever you've bought. Sometimes it'll be 59p (or 99c) and sometimes it'll be more.