

How To Sell A Digital Comic - locopati
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14383

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ZanderEarth32
I used to read comics as a kid on and off, but stopped at some point. I then
got an iPad and learned about Comixology and figured I'd pick up an issue or
two from my childhood. Well, a couple of hundred digital comics later I am
fully committed to reading comics again, almost 100% digital.

Comixology's app makes the buying and reading process so easy and enjoyable,
that I thoroughly look forward to Wednesday's new releases. Their "Pull List"
companion app and website are great too. I can create my pull list for the
week and have it emailed to myself.

One thing I really like about Comixology's ethics is they aren't trying to
kill the traditional comic book store. Their app has a feature to locate the
nearest comic book store to your location, and has helped me find a bunch of
stores I didn't know existed, which have earned my money. They even have a
program where your comic book store can set up a Comixology store front and
sell comics through that platform and make some money.

On a side note, Dark Horse opted (from what I understand) to use their
proprietary app for their comics and my experience there has been completely
different. The app runs extremely slow, and crashes often. I bought a couple
of Usagi Yojimbo book, read them and deleted the app. The experience was too
clunky to deal with.

~~~
kmfrk
The same happened with me.

I think there's another important thing to note, and that is that many comics
go out of print, and if we don't digitize them, we lose some true treasure of
comicbooks as a result.

I think a lot of people pirated comics for this reason. Especially outside the
U.S.

That said, having all my comics on a digital device or in the cloud instead of
a row on my shelf just feels _weird_. But the upside is that owning content
digitally means that the publishers can update it constantly, as some did with
retina-resolution comics.

~~~
ZanderEarth32
Your point of out of print books is very true, and for another reason. Unless
I can hunt down a 50th printing of the first appearance of Spider Man or the
first Captain America, odds are I would never get to read them. Having a
digital copy for $1.99 and seconds away is a very comforting thought.

The other upside of having all you comics in the cloud and accessible by one
device is that you don't end up with 50 long boxes of comics that you have to
store.

I do still buy some comics in print, those that I find truly beautiful, or
when I find one in a comic book store that I want to support. And it is
important to note that Comixology doesn't have every comic book ever, there is
still a huge percentage of books that haven't made there way to the digital
space.

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DannoHung
How to sell a Digital Comic (to me): Don't use DRM.

I'll buy the fuck out of Digital Comics if I have some reasonable assurance
that I'll get to keep those files forever. I feel super, super hesitant on
buying any digital media with DRM these days, even from major players. I do
buy a few TV shows, but I internally rationalize that it's roughly equivalent
to a cable subscription (which I don't have) and in the meantime, those
particular digital purchases act sort of like a DVR.

I bought one movie and its sitting in the menu list, taunting me, telling me
that I'll never have access to it in a few years time. Not doing _that_ again.

~~~
ZanderEarth32
That is something that concerns me as well. I don't know what Comixology's DRM
technologies are, or if they even have any. I haven't looked, but it would be
nice to know that I can export those books that I have paid for to another DRM
free format, like PDF.

~~~
flatline3
The storage format is proprietary and some kind of obfuscation of the image
data is done.

According to the ToS, you don't own a license to the comics, so you can't
export them, or even hold onto the comics if comiXology disappears.

~~~
ZanderEarth32
Damn, didn't realize that. But to be honest, it won't change my habits. I
enjoy reading comics, not the actual comics themselves. I don't "collect"
them, I just buy and read them, and will probably never reread a book.

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cstross
It's not just comics; at least one major US publisher of trade fiction isn't
bothering to optimize their book covers for legibility at Amazon thumbnail
size (120x80 pixels). Even with authors biting their ankles on the subject and
ebook sales heading towards 60% of the total.

~~~
edj
So true.

The dilemma is similar in the iBookstore, but over there iBooks Author is at
least partly to blame. What appears to be a book cover (called a "title page"
in iBA) actually appears full-size on an iPad only for a few seconds when a
book is opened. The title page mostly appears as a thumbnail either in the
store or in a reader's library. However, it's not actually a different image;
the same image is scaled down to thumbnail-size. And yet there's no indication
that the title page will ever appear thumbnail-size during the design process.
You have to preview the book on an iPad to see it that way.

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inkaudio
The author makes the assumption that people use Comixology for discovery of
new titles, but the vast majority do not. There are many blogs and magazines
for that type of discovery. Comixology is used primaryly to buy and read what
you've discovered elsewhere. Comixology works, which is why Comixology and a
few other comic apps usually rank in the top 25 grossing apps for the iPad.

~~~
dmorgan
> _The author makes the assumption that people use Comixology for discovery of
> new titles, but the vast majority do not. There are many blogs and magazines
> for that type of discovery._

I don't use any blogs or magazines for "that type of discovery". And not many
people do, because of lack of time, except if they are scene-obsessed
teenagers.

I _do_ however check new titles and stuff in Comixology, and ocassionaly buy
some I haven't read.

~~~
inkaudio
Not many people like you do, but reading a blog or magazine is not regulated
to scene-obsessed teenagers. Moreover these so called scene obsessed readers
contribute to the majority of sales. Comic book fans represent the majority
that count in this case not the occasional reader with not time for your so
called comic book scene. To illustrate outsiders may think HN readers are tech
obsessed minority, when compared to general population they are, but the
traffic HN readers can provide is significant to a tech based startup.

~~~
shardling
>Not many people like you do

How do you know this? Any hard data you'd care to share?

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shawnc
You know, I totally love Warren Ellis and his writing (for the most part,
there are some duds) - and he makes an excellent point here.

But it would been great if he took those five minutes to create a visual
example of how he thought it could be better. Because even as he explai a it I
can't quite picture how a cropping of the cover would actually be better.

As a comic lover and buyer - a thumbnail version of a full cover seems more
enticing to me than a cropped one. It's what I'm used to (moving from print)
and I can tap it to view info and a larger cover. I can't picture how a
cropped version would be better. Possibly a shot from inside the comic but
sometimes covers are part of the fun.

~~~
dmorgan
He's not talking about adding cropping.

He is talking about optimizing the cover image for Comixology cover display.

What he said, is that even with (i.e _despite_) cropping, the iD cover images
still look better than the comic covers ("It’s not a great way to display
their covers. And it’s obviously a little bit reduced here. They cropped the
damn covers into squares themselves, so the logo is truncated in almost all
images.").

So, what he asks for is larger legible titles, the heroes showing better in
the small thumbnail display, etc, instead of a plain shrank version of the
actual cover.

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flipstewart
I'm a bit confused. At least compared to the given magazine covers, they comic
covers look amazing and present a ton of information.

What is he suggesting would work better and where can I see an example of it?

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xsmasher
He's suggestion creating better thumbnails for the issue, instead of just
shrinking the cover. The icon for MS Word is not a scaled-down picture of the
box; you don't create a banner ad for your website by taking a screenshot of
the site.

There's no reason the thumbnail for a comic has to be a scaled-down version of
the optimized-for-print-and-shelf-space cover.

I'm thinking something like the right-hand thumbs on this page:
[http://www.comixology.com/DC-Comics-Digital-Sneak-
Peeks-10-3...](http://www.comixology.com/DC-Comics-Digital-Sneak-
Peeks-10-3-12/digital-comic/DIG002161)

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GFischer
I only knew of Warren Ellis because of his webcomic FreakAngels:

<http://www.freakangels.com>

which, ironically considering the title, is free (though it does have a print
version and associated merchandise)

Now that I read his bio on Wikipedia I realize he's a big name:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Ellis>

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Karunamon
It's questionable whether you need to sell the comic itself. Look at MS Paint
Adventures, ala Homestuck. The comic itself is done for free, the author,
Andrew Hussie, lives comfortably off the side sales (merchandise and the like)

And that's not even counting the 2 million dollar Kickstarter for the game...
that's one hell of a dedicated fandom. The average marketer would kill for
something like that.

~~~
shardling
Did you even read the article?

This isn't some generic advice on how to sell a comic -- it's about a very
specific aspect of the process. Your comment is _completely irrelevant_ to
anything Ellis had to say here.

~~~
Karunamon
Admittedly no, I was going off the title.

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droithomme
The UI of the fashion magazine isn't very useful.

The comic one is more useful and looks just as good.

The main flaw in the comic one is that the title text below is truncated with
a ellipsis "…". Apple has been doing this a lot, but it is still as terrible a
practice as when we had 8.3 file names in MS-DOS.

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mikeash
On the example that's supposedly good, I can read, without putting in
excessive effort (but trying some!) seven covers, or 1/5th of the total.

Of the comics, I can read every single one, and they all look pretty good to
me.

I had to re-read this article several times to make sure he was actually
praising the top image and criticizing the bottom image rather than the other
way around.

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mgk1
How about titling the link NSFW, some of us have jobs....

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pixelbath
Setting aside for a second I couldn't find much that would be too risky for
most workplaces, you clicked on a link was about comics _while you were at
work_. What, honestly, did you expect to see?

Also, I'd find it hard to be sympathetic were you sacked for browsing a social
media site and reading about how to sell comics _while you were at work_.

