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Attention all:
This month in your
favorite Previews catalogue,
they resollicited
Ultimates Origin #1 again.
You can recognize resollicitations by the code (RES).
It means all previous orders are cancelled.
Please order this title again
and let us know !!
We'll make sure you won't pay double!!
Deadline:
25-04-2008
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Reviews
Digital Back Issues For Sale
Column by Tyler Chin-Tanner, 2008.
Weve established that the Internet is a good resource for
promoting a new comic, and a webcomic can be great way to
get readers interested enough in the story that they go out
and buy it. Its difficult to make much money on the actual
digital distribution of a webcomic, but the strategy of the
publisher should be to sell the print version and consider
any web presence to be for promotional purposes.
There is, however, a growing market of publishers selling
digital versions of their back issues, comics that have already
been published and sold in print. The sales numbers on these
digital comics are hardly those of a booming industry, but
if the materials already been paid for and assembled for
the print version, then any additional income from selling
a digital file is simply a bonus.
The million dollar question is how much to charge for these
digital comic books. At one point, Top Cow announced that
they would make the cost to download one of their comics the
same as the cover price of the print comic so that retailers
wouldnt be upset that they were underselling them. I thought
this was odd since its a different final product. Publishers
have adjusted their prices depending on paper quality and
cover thickness. Hardcover graphic novels cost more than softcovers.
Certainly it couldnt cause too much of a problem to lower
the price when theres no paper at all.
Furthermore, retailers have never felt the need to stick
to the cover price. Discounts are often available on comics
even on the day them come out, not to mention left over back-issues
which can often be found for a fraction of the cover price
in discount bins.
Today its more common to find digital comics priced lower
than the print version. Top Cow comics are still some of the
higher priced comics, going for $1.99 a single issue on their
affiliated webstore Direct2Drive. Other publishers go slightly
cheaper with Archaia selling most issues for 99 cents at DriveThru
Comics and Devils Due and IDW matching that price at Pull
Box Online. Slave Labor makes a small attempt to undercut
them all by offering their downloadable comics for 89 cents.
Of course I bought print copies of their Street Angel series
from a 50 cent bin. They werent in great condition, but collectibility
is hardly an issue when comparing digital files. I did end
up buying the Street Angel graphic novel when it came out
though, it was a good series and I wanted to replace those
ratty issues, so theres a case where making material available
for cheap can end up bringing in cash later.
My favorite method of offering downloadable
comics is what the website Wowio.com is doing. They offer
free downloads on all their comics, choosing instead to bring
in revenue through selling ad space to companies by placing
ad pages at the beginning and end of the digital pdf file.
This allows them to pay the publishers and creators each time
the comic is downloaded without charging the customer.
For me this is a good value for a digital comic because I
dont really enjoy reading comics on a computer. I use it
as a resource to test new comics or to find titles I wouldnt
normally know about. Even at 99 cents or 89 cents each, this
can get pricey for comics I may not even want to read ever
again.
And yes, this is the website I use to for making the issues
of my series Adrenaline available for free download. As a
matter of fact, I just uploaded #6 if anyone is interested.
My one criticism of Wowio, and I find this same problem with
the other sites Ive mentioned, is that theres not a lot
to see of the comic before downloading it. Theres just the
cover image and a short blurb. Even if the comic is free,
I dont want to have to download a comic just to get the slightest
idea if its something I might be interested in.
If I were to offer a piece of advice to a publisher putting
their material online, it would be to make more information
and material easily accessible to the most amount of people
rather than worry about how many cents more you can get from
a few people.
Well, I could talk for weeks on end about webcomics, and
I plan to do more later in the year. But next week I want
to start discussing strategies for small publishers at comic
conventions. The convention season is starting up and the
big New York Comic-Con is in a week. Ill be there at a small
publishers table. Time to start writing on the topic and
gearing up for the summer.
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Tyler Chin-Tanner started his own publishing
company, A Wave Blue World, and writes and draws layouts for
Adrenaline, its flagship series.
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More Comic Reviews at
Broken Frontier.
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