Print vs. Digital: What Will The Future Of The Comics Market Look Like?

[MichaelPaytonMZ]

Slave Labor Graphics' has a bunch to, and it definitely makes me more inclined to try them out on the whole.

There's also a lot of wiggle room given by digital. Can't afford to put together a 32 page full color month at .99 cents? Turn it into a 15 page bi-weekly at .99 cents. Get the cash flow going, and not have to sit on your hands for things like printing and solicitation months before hand. You just can't get that flexibility in format/cost in print currently as you can with a digital platform.

Even a short monthly at that price is fine. It'd be perfect for creators that can't manage a full sized comic every month, but they can still keep a regular schedule going. The beauty of digital that there is no limit on page count. esp on indy comics.

[Meta4]

Ive been giving this alot of thought. One of the main costs of printing and selling comics is the high overhead on printing single issues. The market is changing rapidly, but how do you incorporate digital without destroying print. My idea, is to take it back to its roots, with a subscription service for each book. Much like amazon does, you would pre-pay for a hardcover of say, 5-6 collected issues. The creative team keeps to a regular schedule, sending you monthly digital issues via email and one time download codes. Six months later, you would recieve a hardcover of those issues mailed to your local comic book store. (or, in rural area's, direct to you.) This could also be done in house by a shipping department, thus cutting out the huge markup that diamond takes. The publisher would give the comic book store a percentage of the sale, without them having to pay the overhead of actually ordering the book. This would also get you physically into your local store to shop their various other products and collected editions. Win-win.
Single, digital back issues could be sold in lots of 4 for $4, so that the publisher is still getting your $4, just providing you with more content for it. I have the feeling that if most people could buy $1 digital issues on a regular basis, they would still spend the same monthly budget on comics, just read more books.
The only thing I could see going against a buisness plan like this is the collectors who would refuse to give up the single issues they've grown up loving. The answer to this would be publishers releasing monthly print titles in a pre-order fashion. If you have the title on your pull list at your local store, that is. They could print limited runs of single printed issues, based off pre-orders only, thus making them rare and limited. Anyone could read the story digitally, or buy the collectee edition, but if you wanted the single issues, you would have to get them in your pull box from the get go, or pay aftermarket prices on what would actually be limited collectors items.
Win-Win.
Seems simple, but it would take a major change in the way buisness is done with every publisher and retailer nationally. Not the easiest trasition to make, but The one that I see coming.

[Queso6p4]

Ive been giving this alot of thought. One of the main costs of printing and selling comics is the high overhead on printing single issues. The market is changing rapidly, but how do you incorporate digital without destroying print. My idea, is to take it back to its roots, with a subscription service for each book. Much like amazon does, you would pre-pay for a hardcover of say, 5-6 collected issues. The creative team keeps to a regular schedule, sending you monthly digital issues via email and one time download codes. Six months later, you would recieve a hardcover of those issues mailed to your local comic book store. (or, in rural area's, direct to you.) This could also be done in house by a shipping department, thus cutting out the huge markup that diamond takes. The publisher would give the comic book store a percentage of the sale, without them having to pay the overhead of actually ordering the book. This would also get you physically into your local store to shop their various other products and collected editions. Win-win.
Single, digital back issues could be sold in lots of 4 for $4, so that the publisher is still getting your $4, just providing you with more content for it. I have the feeling that if most people could buy $1 digital issues on a regular basis, they would still spend the same monthly budget on comics, just read more books.
The only thing I could see going against a buisness plan like this is the collectors who would refuse to give up the single issues they've grown up loving. The answer to this would be publishers releasing monthly print titles in a pre-order fashion. If you have the title on your pull list at your local store, that is. They could print limited runs of single printed issues, based off pre-orders only, thus making them rare and limited. Anyone could read the story digitally, or buy the collectee edition, but if you wanted the single issues, you would have to get them in your pull box from the get go, or pay aftermarket prices on what would actually be limited collectors items.
Win-Win.
Seems simple, but it would take a major change in the way buisness is done with every publisher and retailer nationally. Not the easiest trasition to make, but The one that I see coming.

I like your ideas here, even though your last one comes off as a little strange as it'd basically involve physical comic readers continuing to do what they do already but on a pre-order basis. That being said the totality of your ideas is pretty awesome!

[The Adventurer]

but how do you incorporate digital without destroying print.

Single installments released digitally, with print graphic novel compilations on completion. Bing bang boom.

[mystmaven]

Originally Posted by Meta4
but how do you incorporate digital without destroying print.

You can't destroy print, not even the Kindle could do that!

[The Adventurer]

You can't destroy print, not even the Kindle could do that!

It hasn't been long enough to definitively say that. ePub sales are growing. Rapidly. And while there will be a print market/industry for a long long time. Its not going to be the predominate form of publications much longer (as in a decade or two)

[mystmaven]

It hasn't been long enough to definitively say that. ePub sales are growing. Rapidly. And while there will be a print market/industry for a long long time. Its not going to be the predominate form of publications much longer (as in a decade or two)

Just a changing of the guard, with new technology coming in, comic books are, in my opinion different though, since they are graphic and collected... just like baseball cards, they won't have much value on your computer, best to have that actual card on hand or the actual comic book if you are a collector of comics that is.

There can be both, of course, I pop those Marvel freebies in so if I ever get a Pad and am stuck on an airplane or bus I can look them over.

[Danish]

I definitely prefer print, especially for lavish print production and quality from publishers like Fantagraphics. I picked up a Marvel floppy months ago, and was shocked at the abysmal paper quality and number of story pages I received. I'm positive the digital market for superhero comics will only grow. Digital single issues seem akin to the disposable, newsprint quality Japanese manga magazines. I for one would rather own collections and OGNs in print and I think that many probably feel the same way.

[The Adventurer]

just like baseball cards,

Yes. The thriving and growing Baseball Card industry. Not that the Sport Stat market hasn't been completely overtaken by ESPN and other stat tracking websites or anything.

'Collecting' modern comics is such a pointless endeavor. Its the contents that matter. And digital preserves the contents of comics perfectly.

[Kid Montana]

Yes. The thriving and growing Baseball Card industry. Not that the Sport Stat market hasn't been completely overtaken by ESPN and other stat tracking websites or anything.

'Collecting' modern comics is such a pointless endeavor. Its the contents that matter. And digital preserves the contents of comics perfectly.

I don't think that is accurate. There are several titles even from the big 2 that have relatively low print runs. It is scarcity/demand that drives up the price. Your more likely to get a collectible out of a smaller independent title though, like a low run Walking Dead #1 that then takes off. I don't see how that scenario is any different than 20-30 years ago.

Plus there are still significant costs to produce/sell/store digital content. Print is still relatively cheap. This facet continues to be ignored as if digital is free.

I think that while your comparison to Baseball Cards is a valid comparison, the way the card industry got oversaturated makes the 90's collector boom of comics look tame in comparison.