There has been some talk in the industry about digital publishing and how to approach it. Some call it an awesome thing to happen. Some decry it has trying to put comic shops out of business. I'm sure this will be one of many posts regarding the subject, but here is what I think about it and how the industry should approach the impending Digital Doom. In the alternate reality where I am in charge of matters and decisions about topics like this, this all makes perfect sense to me. Let's see if I can make sense of it has a casual fan in this reality.
There are a couple of things that comics have to be able to do in order to succeed in the digital market.
1, The comics have to come in an easy, cheap format. People pay a buck for a song. Comics will run for $3 when they are first released and then go down to $2 after about a month. Are most comics worth the 2 or 3 bucks? Let's look at another publishing strategy that is embracing the digital market, the book market. If you think of a comic as a chapter of a book, and most books on Amazon go for 10 bucks digitally, then shouldn't a comic be able to tell a whole story in 4-5 issues, if only just to match what someone can purchase through a book? With ongoing superhero stories, readers are asked to come back month after month after month with no end in sight. Story lines end, but the superhero continues on (even death is something that is a minor hurdle in most superhero's lives). So if you look at superhero comics in that respect, maybe $2-$3 is too much, maybe a buck an issue is right on. Especially for any back catalogue material. Non-superhero books with a set number of issues, like most limited series or six issue series, could easily embrace a $10 price point for the whole package and probably sell pretty well.
2, Comics have a limited way to of showing a story digitally than they do printed. If you are reading a comic on your iPhone or smart phone, a two page spread of the artist showing off their skill won't be in the best detail where the art can be appreciated or read the way it is supposed to be. Word balloons would be scrunched up and the words would be illegible. You would have to create the comic in a way where the placement of word balloons make sense. The art would have to be clearer and adjustable for a smaller size viewing screen than a normal sized comic book page. One or two page splashes would look out of place, but a 9 grid comic like what Watchmen has would be perfect. With most digital comic readers that are out there, the comic is shown to the reader and the word balloons are presented to the reader one by one in a fashion that guides the reader through the story. On the printed page, this doesn't happen. You have to learn how to read a comic book and follow the word balloons at your own choosing. Sometimes, especially with comics that don't have the proper placement of word balloons and pictures in mind, new readers have to read the page a couple of times experimenting with the word balloons until they realize what the proper order of the word balloons are. Digital comics don't offer this kind of experimenting with the reader. I remember when I first read comics and I figured out how the words were supposed to be read and it was something that made me happy and proud while reading. It drew me into the story, albeit in a really weird way.
3, Unity among the distributors. Each comic having their own app is ridiculous. Combine them all into one. The more you pool your resources, the better are the chances that you will succeed in the digital world. You don't see record companies have their own iTunes style of delivery for their own artist, do you? No. Just combine it all into one. And make sure the distributor you pick can have the precious DRM that you will want and can deliver you the goods in as easy a format as what Apple has done. They may be the devil when it comes to their method of delivering music, but they became very successful at it.
4, Be ready to lose money and to give away the comic. Piracy will happen. You can either fight it and risk pissing off your audience, or you can embrace it and find a way to make it work for you. It could be considered marketing. Especially if you are a big name creator. It helps with building your name. For the small time guy, this is where you have to work for the art. Yea, it does suck that you aren't getting the money that you so deserve for your awesome story that shrieks of amateur. But if you are looking to self publish and have print copies of your book, you will find that you will lose even more money than if you scanned the one copy and gave it away for free. After enough time of doing that, or if you happen to catch the right editor for one of the publishers, then you will be able to publish and write that Wolverine story that you want. But when it comes to the independent stuff, be prepared to lose. Most people have to suffer for their art, playing in venues they wouldn't think of playing for bands, or hanging that unknown painting at the local coffee house. It's what you have to do to get name recognition.
5, and the most important, The story has to be good. By and far, one of the most important aspects of any median where you want to tell a story, it has to be good. If you listen to a crappy album, how likely are you to buy a second album? Or a third one? How about independent films? We need good stories and good creators out there doing their best. Showing consistency. This is a median that relies on words and pictures and telling a story in a two dimensional world. It's hard enough to master one of those arts, but both? That's tricky. But if we want to continue to rely on the latest Superman, Batman, or X-men to bring a wider audience into comics, then this industry won't be in it for the long haul. Not if it wants to reach a wider audience in a digital world. It has to prove that this format matters and it needs to show that it can tell a story in a very unique way. But if it continues to throw out stories involving heroes and villains and death and rebirth and recycled concepts and events and blah blah blah... Well, then it deserves to die the death that it deserves.
Teen Titans #4
