electronic comic book

laura911

Hi, I'm a Business student in Sligo I.T, for an enterprise project myself and three others have come together with a design student to draft up a business plan for an electronic comic book similar to the sony E book reader.

The design student is in charge of design and creating the prototype and the business students must conduct market research and feasibility study on the product.

I was hoping to hear feed back and suggestions on the device, for instance does anyone think it is a good idea? would it be successful? is there a product like it already on the market?

ztoical

laura911 wrote: »

Hi, I'm a Business student in Sligo I.T, for an enterprise project myself and three others have come together with a design student to draft up a business plan for an electronic comic book similar to the sony E book reader.

The design student is in charge of design and creating the prototype and the business students must conduct market research and feasibility study on the product.

I was hoping to hear feed back and suggestions on the device, for instance does anyone think it is a good idea? would it be successful? is there a product like it already on the market?

You should read the recent blog post by cartoonists Dave Roman which talks about print vs digital comics, the current state of digital comics and possible future directions for them.

Fysh

Hi laura911,

That sounds like an interesting project alright. Personally, I think it has a lot of potential, but your biggest issue is going to be winning over an audience.

The big debate that this taps into is digital comics vs physical comics. Amongst the audience for American comics in particular there is a lot of support for the idea of comics as tangible objects, comics as artifacts. In no small part this is down to the history of comics as artifacts, coupled with the collector mentality that has until relatively recently been encouraged in comics readers. Those people will never buy an electronic comic book, because the entire experience is inextricably linked to the physical object.

However, in the same way as the Kindle is hoping to do with prose books, I think there is potential to create and expand a market for casual readers who just want comic stories to read, without caring for the artifact aspects. Comics piracy is at a high enough level that new comics appear in scanned digital format within approximately 24 hours of being released at various locations; if nothing else this proves that significant numbers of people can put up with reading digital comics. Whether that translates into an audience that will buy digital comics is another story, however.

In terms of similar products, the Kindle is the only one that directly comes to mind. I know that version 2 is supposed to have sixteen shades on a grayscale, which doesn't sound particularly good for comics. I've heard mention of a CBR Reader application for the Nintendo DS which could theoretically work well, and something similar for the iPhone. In Japan there have been efforts to port comics onto the Wii (see here) and comics on mobile phones have already started to take off (see here and here for details).

(In fact, you might want to look up CDisplay while you're at it, it's a pretty good application for reading digital comics as well as being pretty simple to prepare for, you essentially put a series of JPEG files into a compressed archive like a zip or rar file and then rename it. CDisplay is about as close to a standard as we've gotten for a computer-based digital comics application).

In terms of function, you're going to need to consider the following:

• battery life - How will it be powered? How long will the battery last? How much weight will this add to the device? Will it be easily removable/replaceable?
• screen/device size - wWhat device size will you go for? Smaller makes for better portability, but means more existing comics will need to be either scaled down or require scrolling to read. Also, do you want touch-activated screens? If not, what control system will you use? Will the image size be static or allow zooming/panning?
• on-board storage - How will the comics be stored? How much space will you allocate for the storage of comics, and what would be your expected average size for the files to be of a good resolution?
• connectivity - How will files be moved to and from the device? Will it use wireless connections or wired connections? Wireless will make it more versatile but add to the load on the battery.
• reading material - How will you entice readers to purchase this product? Neither Marvel nor DC appear to have a serious plan for releasing digital editions of their comics on par with the physical releases, but that doesn't mean other publishers will be reluctant to consider a new medium

Hope the above has been helpful; keep us posted with your progress, it would be great if you manage to get something into production as a result of this.

spooydermot

That's a bit of a coincidence, I was just elsewhere on the web looking at some Amazon Kindle stuff and the though crossed my mind that it would be a great storage device for comics, as Fysh pointed out though the Kindle has a b&w screen - but a lot of independent comics do seem to be published in b&w.
I don't know how much a colour screen would up the cost of such a product, but I don't think b&w would kill an electronic comic book reader for me.


I think Fysh makes a very important point about the "value" of comics as artifacts - and I think if you can get people away from the need to have that physical artifact then you are onto a winner - because I really (now) believe that the perceived value of a comic really is that - perceived - and once you get over that hang-up of not holding the thing in your hands then you're on the right track.

To draw an analogy, I used to have (maybe still do) a hang up about the shift away from CDs to MP3s, my problem was the loss of the album art and the liner notes - if you look at many of Pearl Jam's album covers over the years (especially Vitology and No Code) the covers themselves are really cool artifacts - but that's an illusion - what I really want is the music on the disc, years later I'm listening to those albums and not caring much about the cool covers or booklets that accompanied them, in fact I've donated pretty much all the CD boxes to the local library and put the CDs in those big wallet things to save space.

I have a couple of boxes of comics and they are just never opened these days, there's some good stories in there that I want to read - but it means clearing the stuff that's balanced on top of the boxes, finding the actual comics in there amongst all the others, stuffing them back in etc.
So those comics are now essentially worthless to me - the value of a comic should be the quality of the artwork and the quality of the writing and the amount of times you want to go back and re-read it.

The comics I re-read are the ones I have in collected editions that can sit on my book shelf - the entire story is in one volume and these can be tossed around etc and won't get damage easily - if it were made even easier by having all these on one electronic device then happy days.....

IDW comics have started offering some of their titles on the iPhone through the Apple AppStore - but bear in mind that the iphone has a fairly small screen compared to the Kindle and the Kindle manages to give the illusion of the printed page.

A great app on a device like this would be a subscription service, so that I get the new 'issue' of Fables or whatever through an automatic download.

The issue of marvel & DC having no real plan for digital retailing is down to the fact that in any industry the big guns generally don't innovate once they have cornered a good share of the market - let them stagnate , just like the online stores who clung to DRM on MP3s before finally following the demand and going with DRM-Free files.

Thats not to say that DRM for electronic comics and DRM for MP3 are necessarily the same thing - I'd be interested to hear peoples opinions on that - especially from comic creators.

As someone who writes music (and occasionally tried to make money from it) I think that DRM for MP3 inconvenienced the people who paid money for the MP3s just as the 'anti-piracy' warnings on DVDs that I have bought (mildly) inconvenience me - but here's not the place for an MP3 discussion.

But to give you a straighter answer: Yes, I would consider buying a device like this if there was access to new, interesting and independent content - I actually wouldn't be too worried by the lack of Marvel titles or DC titles on this device.

In fact creator owned titles like Transmetropoliton or Preacher or Fables on DC's Vertigo imprint would probably have less legal issues converting to digital format than the myriad of strings attached to the likes of Batman and Superman.

There's also the option of subscriptions to free web comics such as XKCD or Questionable Content.

laura911

thank you all, its great to hear all your advice! i'll let ye know how we are gettin on soon

laura911

hey i have a thread already on this subject, the feedback had been brill! just wondering if you could take a few mins to fill in my survey at the following link, thank you

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=98qvpqs88qdzpbs550915

Fysh

Hi laura911, I've merged your thread about the questionnaire with your earlier discussion thread. I've answered it myself, hopefully you'll get a good few responses.

laura911

can anyone tell me sales figures for 2008 or any recent year on comics have been trailing the web for some statistics but can't get what i need!!

ztoical

laura911 wrote: »

can anyone tell me sales figures for 2008 or any recent year on comics have been trailing the web for some statistics but can't get what i need!!

which comics sales? Comics covers a wide area and there wouldn't one set of sales figures. Wizard has sales figures for the top selling american direct market comics each month, pretty sure you should be able to track them down a selection of those figures online. But those figures are a little off as they are what has shipped from Diamond but with their minimum order most stores get more copies of some titles then they actually want or need and they don't sell but are counted as "sales". You also have the sales figures for Graphic Novels via Bookstores now making an impact which wouldn't be ordered through Diamond. Most smaller American publishers have sales figures on their sites but you normally have to dig for them. BD's and Manga would be harder to get. For translated Manga you can check for Tokyopops figures but I wouldn't trust any figures I'd get from them.

Fysh

Hi laura911, have a look at this column for some info on bookshop sales in the US. As ztoical has explained it's an unfortunately messy subject for which to try and get hard data, but hopefully this will help a bit.

laura911

hey everybody, thank you for all your help, our project is completed (with two hours to spare)
The business plan actually turned out pretty well will let ye know if we make millions off it

jvposter

ztoical wrote: »

You should read the recent blog post by cartoonists Dave Roman which talks about print vs digital comics, the current state of digital comics and possible future directions for them.

thanks it looks to have very good articles

spooydermot

I know that this thread has served it's purpose - but I just thought I'd add this link, seems like the PSP might actually get some content after all

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/03/will-psp-get-more-comics-content/

Arcaders Comic

laura911 wrote: »

Hi, I'm a Business student in Sligo I.T, for an enterprise project myself and three others have come together with a design student to draft up a business plan for an electronic comic book similar to the sony E book reader.

The design student is in charge of design and creating the prototype and the business students must conduct market research and feasibility study on the product.

I was hoping to hear feed back and suggestions on the device, for instance does anyone think it is a good idea? would it be successful? is there a product like it already on the market?

Isn't this the idea Tom Hank's character came up with in the film 'BIG'?