Barnes & Noble just announced that the NOOKColor, an Andoid tablet fronted with a 7-inch touch screen, as part of their overall Nook eReading device line, has become their biggest selling product of all time. They sold their entire inventory of devices over the holiday season.
I don’t think there is any doubt that the market will have a ton of options available for tablet-based computing for reading digital texts. The major limit to them opening up the market for comics and graphic novels has been the lack of colour. With the exception of some Manga titles, most comics and graphic novels ship with colour panels. The end result is that most people aren’t going to be interested in downloading a heavily visual digital product that is going to look terrible on a grayscale screen. The growth of colour tablets and their steadily decreasing cost is nothing but good news for the digital comic marketplace. Keep an eye on the Fabler as we start building up the relationships that are going to let independents tap into that market.
