The iPad has gotten everyone excited in the comic publishing industry. This is based on predictions that 20% of households in the U.S. will have one in the next two years. These aren’t being purchased as productivity devices, they are for fun. They aren’t just fun for the person who buys them either, they are becoming pass-around devices that get into the hands of everyone in their family. The idea that 62M people in the U.S. will have one of these devices in their home should make anyone producing creative content very excited. Considering that there are going to be a whole pile of other tablets and e-readers adding to those numbers and you’ve got a huge potential market for anything that can be consumed on a tablet.
These devices aren’t going to just be for watching movies and playing games. Any initial speculation about whether or not people will actually read on these devices is now gone. Currently about 25% of adult fiction is being purchased in the form of digital e-books. People are getting to like the idea of a digital library, more than that, they are starting to see digital as a great way to read for enjoyment.
Several comic publishers are thinking that the iPad will cause the same kind of shift in comic reading. Mike Richardson, the CEO of Dark Horse Entertainment thought the iPad signaled the right time to get into the digital market for his company. They began conservatively with a few titles and Mass Effect, a video game title, became so popular that it crashed their servers. They have now going to begin offering every comic in digital format, on every device and in seven languages. Dark Horse will also be releasing motion comics soon. The interesting thing about Dark Horse is that they initially worked with Apple and Kindle to get their content into those markets (iTunes & Amazon). They learned quickly and realized that they didn’t like the deals they were being offered by either of those content aggregators. They decided to build their own store and will be driving traffic to that store with regular announcements and free comics. Dark Horse won’t have much trouble with this as they have a large collection of highly regarded IP. Having titles such as Star Wars, Hellboy and all of Joss Whedon’s properties means that they already have huge audiences.
Dark Horse is one of the most interesting examples as they began thinking that they were going to have work with content aggregators, such as iTunes, to get their content out there but quickly shifted to building their own content distribution strategy. All of the other publishers are trying to figure out which strategy will work best for them. Regardless, it has forced everyone, including DC/ Warner to adopt a transmedia strategy as there is no clear marketplace for their creative properties. The general consensus is that the next 18-24 months will help all of the publishers identify the most successful model. Consumers will drive the industry towards a tipping point, it remains to be seen if the publishers made the right decision about their own strategy. The ones I talked to were fairly open about it, they would typically tell me to talk to them in 2013 to see if they got it right because they wouldn’t know until then.
There are a number of interesting consequences to the move towards digital. As I’ve mentioned before, the bricks and mortar retailers are worried that the digital purchases will cannibalize their current customer base. After all, why go to the comic store when you can download everything on your iPad while drinking your latte at Starbucks? A lot of people are thinking about the same thing so what is interesting is that Comixology, Dark Horse and especially Diamond distributors are creating digital strategies that are designed to support bricks and mortar stores. Mike Richardson owns a chain of comic stores and he wants them to survive. Diamond is the monopoly distributor of comics in North America and they want their customer base, the comic store, to survive the move to digital. So what seems to be happening is a “paper-under-glass” strategy that is attempting to take the existing business models and bolt on a digital component.
This means that rather than creating new business models around digital they are trying to maintain the status quo in comics. This is good news for all the major players in the industry but not so much for the smaller publishers and independents. The move towards digital comics has the opportunity of creating a direct connection between the creator and their audience. This barrier that has always been the biggest problem for creators, they have been able to typeset their own books and self-publish since the 90s but they still need to find an audience for the hundreds of comics in boxes in the spare bedroom. Traditionally they need to find their audience through sales tables at comic conventions and such. This meant that the barriers to audience building for independent creators was real and significant. It is only going to get worse as print costs rise and distributors like Diamond take fewer risks. Technology and social networks have done a fantastic job of eliminating those barriers for creators and digital distribution is providing them with a real opportunity to exploit new models. Unfortunately most of the time, effort and money being spent on digital comics is about keeping the big publishers, and their bricks and mortar retailers, around for the next few decades.
I’m really hoping that the next 18-24 months will see them successfully achieve this but I’m also hoping that we’ll start seeing some new opportunities arise for creators to step out of traditional publishing models. After all, “paper-under-glass” might be one successful model but I think some entrepreneurial thinking might create a whole bunch of news ones.
