By Aaron Ting
It was the hope of many tech enthusiasts that touchscreen tablets like the iPad would bring salvation for American comic books. Marvel Comics raced to have a Comixology-created digital comics app available for the iPad at launch, and DC Comics followed with their own app soon after. While neither publisher has discussed specific sales numbers, it is the
lack of information and hype for digital comics that tells a very unfortunate story about the vitality of these comics apps. While I initially greeted these apps with
reserved hopefulness, I was immediately presented with a number of
fundamental errors concerning the way DC and Marvel were approaching digital books. After months of following the progressive development of their app stores, I'm sincerely sorry to report that the dream of a digitally-rejuvenated comics industry is no closer to reality.
 |
| Not even the world's finest heroes could sell these comics... |
Misguided Pricing
This was the initial complaint by many who tried out Marvel and DC's apps. The price of a single digital comic book
simply
cannot be $2. It makes no sense to have to pay $2 for a nearly 50-year-old issue of
Fantastic Four with a big 12-cent price marker on the cover. The unfortunate reality is that a number of the collections available in these apps are actually
cheaper to obtain in print form - how can this be? How is it possible that Marvel and DC could set such misguided price points for content which literally costs them nothing to produce? Moreover, in a digital economy where $2 can get you Angry Birds and a
Talking Baby Hippo, what rational person would instead choose to spend that money on a retconned Superman comic that, at best, could provide maybe twenty minutes of reading entertainment?
To be fair, I applaud DC's frequent efforts to spotlight certain comics at temporary 99-cent price points, and I think both companies have been smart in providing the beginnings of certain story arcs for free. However, if they're not willing to accept sub-$1 dollar price points, then they need to seriously consider
content subscriptions. If consumers can't justify the cost of
owning a digital comic, then
rent the comics to them in unlimited subscriptions, like Netflix does with our old TV shows. With an all-you-can-eat rental model, digital comics can be just as horrendously addictive as Netflix Instant Play.
 |
| Instant Play makes it impossible to get anything done. |
Don't Sell Them In Custom Apps
Good pricing isn't enough if people don't know
where to buy your digital comics. This is the problem with having custom Marvel and DC 'apps' - you have to be a pre-evangelized Marvel or DC fan to seek out and download these apps in order to purchase the comics. If the goal of digital comics is to reach
new readers, this has to change. Since Apple's iBooks store, Amazon's Kindle store, and Barnes & Noble's Nook store all sell full-color e-books, why aren't Marvel and DC just selling their digital comics in these well-established book stores? Reading-minded consumers already know to check out the iBooks or Kindle store to buy reading material, so doesn't it make more sense to sell comics in those stores, instead of expecting them to find and download the Marvel and DC Comics apps? If you look around on iBooks right now, you can find that there are a number of comic books available for purchase from other companies - including an excellent reprinting of some old Captain Marvel comics. This is where
Batman: Hush and
Ultimate Spider-Man should be located.
No Incentive Against Print Comics
I've spoken with a number of comic fans who think the solution to all of this is for Marvel and DC to include a digital copy of the comic with a purchase of the printed copy. I actually don't agree with this idea; sure, that's what we see happening in DVD and Blu-ray sales, but I don't actually know many people who are
redeeming their digital copies. More often than not, they buy the Blu-ray
telling themselves that they're willing to pay extra to get the included digital copy, but never actually transfer it to their computers.
If DC and Marvel want digital comics to work, they have to be willing to let their digital books compete against their printed books. By that, I mean that they have to politely ignore the grumblings of comic book retailers and price digital comics far below their paper equivalents - and brand new issues have to be available digitally on the
same day that they're available in comic book shops. This is going to upset a lot of retailers, but spoiler alert - comics are going to continue in a death-spiral if we don't remove these comic book stores from the equation. Buying music digitally did not become popular until it made sense for consumers to go digital; it took the arrival of an MP3 player far superior to a Discman and consumer-friendly digital album pricing that trumped most retail CD prices. Comics can make the same successful leap to digital distribution, but it will continue to be a
failed experiment until Marvel and DC are willing to change their business models for digital content.
Posts
16 comments:
Amen, my brother. A-effing-men.
January 26, 2011 at 8:33 AMWhat he said.
January 26, 2011 at 11:48 AMAgree, an unlimited subscription plan like Netflix would make a lot more sense. It would have to be cheap tho!
January 26, 2011 at 12:50 PMYou logic is flawed. Pricing - yeah, I agree that the pricing is too high. But publishers have to be careful that they don't kill their existing business by throwing up a cheaper alternative right out of the gate. They need the direct market. They NEED to move slowly, test the waters, and PROVE that this digital stuff is going to work without hurting existing sales. The last thing they want to happen is to have butchered the already anemic direct market sales by moving into digital too quickly.
January 27, 2011 at 6:29 AMNo incentive against printed comics? Why in the world would they want that? They want to open a NEW distribution channel, not replace the one they've got. Ideally, they'd want digital customers to then go out and buy printed comics as well.
Don't sell in custom apps? I agree that they should be sold in applications or sites that have a wider selection, but saying DON"T sell in your own app is like saying don't offer direct subscriptions. They should sell the digital comics in as many outlets as they possibly can. Heck, they should offer up web apps for bloggers to sell copies on their websites too. Don't limit your exposure.
For me as a consumer, I agree that they comics need to be cheaper and available outside of the apps. But to call the whole enterprise a failure this early in the game is just silly.
And another thing - Ipad and tablets are very much "cutting edge" or fringe devices at the moment. People who have them have shown they are willing to pay a premium for electronics... so this isn't really the overall market yet. These are people who are willing to pay $700 for the latest gadget/toy. Why not test the market and price points a bit? I fully believe that the prices will lower as the digital marketplace grows - as more people have devices that allow them to get the content, the potential audience grows and they can then play around with pricing.
January 27, 2011 at 6:35 AMIf nothing else, these digital apps are exposing comics to an audience that may not have entered a comic shop in a long, long time if ever. And that is the TRUE importance of digital comics, not selling cheaper alternatives to people already buying comics (that will hopefully be a side benefit) but to get comics out of the direct market ghetto and expose the artform to a much wider audience.
Really?? Your ringing the death bell of digital comics after less than a year of them being a viable option? Any industry, when presented with a new medium, first tries to fit it within their current business model. But that never sticks. Instead, they learn the nuances of the new medium and begin to make innovations around it. This first pass at the mobile/digital comics marketplace hasn't been a failure... it's been the uphill portion of the learning curve. So while I think it's fair (and necessary) to grade the industry on how it's doing out of the gate, I DON'T agree with pronouncing it dead already.
January 27, 2011 at 6:45 AM"comics are going to continue in a death-spiral if we don't remove these comic book stores from the equation"
January 27, 2011 at 7:01 AMThat is one hell of a statement!
I wrote something similar to this on my deviantart journal
January 27, 2011 at 9:59 AMhttp://t5fx.deviantart.com/journal/37855599/#comments
Shameless promo
But besides that, I do agree that if the companies don’t market correctly then this new era of comics will fail. Although, to say it has already failed is incorrect. They do have to test the waters and adjust to the consumer’s wants and needs. So to say that it’s over is like saying the iphone failed with a price point of $600.00.
Comics are a tricky thing to deal with, just like online advertising. Go too far and one direction and you’re liable to piss people off.
It is my belief that the companies do need an incentive. Basically because comic book consumers are a dedicated buch who enjoy holding the physical product in their palm. Or some enjoy collecting not just reading.
I suggest, doing the netflix thing. Read many if not all past issues of comics for a particular price. And for a bit more (but less than newsstand) have the physical issue mailed to your home.
I think the one thing the companies are failing to see is that with the right price they will have more people buying just out of convenience, than they realize.
And lastly, a few of those incentives can be behind the scenes video of the making of you favorite book before it hits shelves and discounts to comic conventions all over
Are you naysayers forgetting that comic prices pretty much never get adjusted downward? I would love to know the kind, benevolent, consumer regarding comics publishers in YOUR world.
January 27, 2011 at 1:24 PMThough I suppose that it would be more accurate to address you as "yeasayers"...
January 27, 2011 at 1:24 PMComicbook prices have always had a good reason for their upwards "price adjustments". Generally they've been justified by the publishers (since the 1970's) as having to do with the rising cost of paper, something that isn't an issue with digital distribution.
January 27, 2011 at 5:41 PMAs for their benevolence, that's not a trait necessary to notice that sales of some of their bestselling comics, print or otherwise are at levels that would've gotten a publication cancelled about twenty years ago.
Welcome to a post-Wizard magazine world. Time to get real. And competitive.
Prior to the iPad's release, I had never downloaded a comic. Each week I'd trudge offs to one of the two comic book stores in my Australian city and buy a bundle of DC releases at a ridiculously inflated price. We're at parity with the US dollar... but don't tell that to retainers, who without fail double the US price. You don't like paying $2 for an issue with 12c on the front? Imagine consistenly paying more than $6 for an issue with $2.99 on the front. In one year I spent at least $1500 on issues and TPBs.
January 27, 2011 at 8:59 PMAnyway, the iPad came out and I was DESPERATE to read my beloved DC comics on that beautiful screen. Imagine not hauling around all those comics with me. After months of patiently waiting for a DC app, I broke down and downloaded ComicZeal, an amazing app that reads PDF and .cbr files. As I said, I'd never downloaded a comic, illegally or otherwise, so I had to try and learn about it. Turns out, it's easy, and, with a bit of common sense, you can get ridiculously high quality copies of every issue you want. You can open these files in the ComicZeal app, which offers a multitude of features for browsing and reading your collection, to the extent that reading a comic on the iPad looks much better than reading a print copy. Meanwhile, I continued to buy all the issues I downloaded, not wanting to be one of those assholes.
So... after a while, DC drops their comixology app. "Awesome" I say. "I can finally cut out this shifty behaviour and switch to paying directly for digital comics." Yeah? No. God no. Not only is there staggeringly minimal content, but the app itself is laggy, overly flashy and has an awful way of letting you browse your collection. It was as if it were designed by someone who has never read a comic in their life (ComicZeal, for example, 'bags' a comic after you finish it). Not only that, but the digital comics that are available are at a much lower quality than the best pirated ones. I hate having to squint at the smaller text (iPads have a smaller area than a normal comic, so you need to be able to lock the comic to the full width of the screen). It's maddening.
Now what? I have a few digital DC comics (like the horrible Justice League Generation Lost, one of the only 'release day' digital comics available), but do the majority of my reading on ComicZeal. As was to be expected, I slowly stopped buying single issues, and now wait for TPBs to pay my dues to DC (let's not even start on how stupidly long those take to come out). The moral of this story is that I was never interested in pirating comics, and was 100% willing to pay for proper digital releases. But they just never came. As someoe who wanted to utilize the iPad, DC basically forced my hand, and it sucks. But I'm not going to stop.
The fact that DC and Marvel are transitioning back down to $2.99 books shows that publishers are willing to lower their prices if they're selling far fewer books at more expensive price points.
January 28, 2011 at 11:24 AMI'm not ringing the "death bell," I'm just calling the game early - they will continue to fail at digital comics unless these things can get fixed.
The commenter immediately above me shows the problem with the way so much of our digital content is being sold right now: it often PUNISHES good people who are willing to pay for their digital content and incidentally provides incentives for piracy.
As a comic book retailer and avid digital book reader (regular books not comics), I have some reservations about the viability of digital comics on their own. I agree, I am looking at it from a biased veiwpoint, but comics are very different than digital books, digital music, digital magazines, etc. As much as comics are enjoyable to read, part of being a comic book fan is being a collector. Obviously digital comics don't allow comic fans to read AND collect their books. So from my perspective, it's not a one or the other type of thing. Digital comics can't survive without print comics, and I think going forward it's going to be increasingly difficult for print comics to survive without digital. I think publishers need to market digital comics in conjunction with print. For example, I can invision a scenario where a retailer could offer digital comics on their website for $2.99 a piece, and with that you also get a print copy to go along with it. That would give consumers the chance to read their book the day it comes out without having to wait at their comic shop's door on Wed afternoon. They also can read their digital comic and save their print version for collecting purposes. Additionally, for those people that are nowhere near a comic shop, they can read their book digitally while patiently waiting for their print version to be mailed to them. It's a win win, and I think retailers are going to have to come up with similar types of models to succeed in this industry. I certainly think that digital comics can be sold on their own without a print version for those who want it and visa versa, but there also needs to be some sort of option for them to be sold together, that is easy and cost effective for the consumer.
January 29, 2011 at 1:35 PMWow, this would be awesome. Next thing you know there would be an itunes for comics! Only problem is,knowing macs, they'll probably only make it available for mac users.
February 3, 2011 at 11:04 AMUmmm....
April 9, 2011 at 4:13 PMFYI, Marvel already offers a NetFlix-like, all-you-can-read digital subscription service called... wait for it... Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited for $60 annually. It has been available for a while now.
To the author, next time you mention something like a Netflix-style digital comics service, maybe you should do some research.
Post a Comment