One major issue that is not brought up in this report is that digital comic books have a major issue ahead of it, piracy. Once the music industry flooded the internet as a digital product it was just as quickly pirated. When music fans felt as though the music industry was charging too much for the product, consumers let their moral shield fade away. Well the very same thing could happen to the comic book industry.
Of course the industry has not been immune to comic book piracy in the past, but just a few years ago most people were limited to accessing the material from just their home or office. But, with the popularity of the iPad, and other portable media players, piracy in the industry is expected to grow. With prices of most digital copies selling at a dollar discount of the paperback issue you would think that consumers would be happy but they're not.
Michael Grothaus wrote a wonderful article that made me more aware of this issue, that you can read
here. He has a four step plan to help the digital comic book industry.
1. Release issues at a reasonable price of $0.99 to $1.99 each.
2. Release issues the same day that print copies ship to comic book stores.
3. Publish all current titles on the iPad.
4. Begin publishing back issues and series in groups (ie: X-Men #1-100) and sell them in groups of 25 or 50 at a reasonable price.
Excerpt from Mark Miller interview with comicbookresources.com
"I really think day and date release is a disastrous idea and makes no economic sense at all to comics as a business. It's potentially ruinous for comic stores, and in the long term it's not going to do publishers any favors either. I see the attraction on a very superficial level. They think they're cutting out the middle men and all the guys taking a piece of their gross, but there's an equivalent number of hidden costs in digital too, and it's short term thinking to obliterate the life-blood of the medium.
Retailers are as big a part of comics now as the characters or the creators. They're not just an outlet. These are carefully crafted communities and owned and staffed by people with a genuine passion for what they're doing in a way that the 'Amazon Also Recommends' box isn't quite going to match. I've got an awful lot of friends on the retail side and so many of them are hanging on by their finger-nails right now. Even a five or ten percent dip could be enough to put huge numbers of comic stores out of business. I know two huge American retailers, like really famous stores, in this position, and once they're gone these guys are gone forever. Retailers stuck with us through the '70s collapse and the '90s post-speculator boom. Shouldn't we be showing them a little loyalty now? Everything from the chair I'm sitting in to the keyboard I'm typing on has been paid for by royalties that retailers have made me, so I feel quite passionately about this."
"I'm not against digital as a concept. It's not really worth a lot of money yet, but it has the potential to be at some point and as a creator it's obviously in my interests to have my work reach as many people as possible. We just have to be sensible about it. I don't think the casual readers that digital comics are hoping to reach will mind getting the stuff a little later. I think releasing our comics, releasing the collected editions and then finally releasing digital editions seems like the most sensible approach.
Click
here to read the interview in it's full entirety.
About The Author:
I am Jay Jayson, one of the greatest writers and researchers to ever grace the comicbookmovie.com community. If there is a story or a picture hiding on the internet I will find it.