Saw this over at MajorSpoilers today, and thought it might be a good discussion to carry on about here. Here’s a snippit:
We’re roughly thirty days away from the launch of Apple’s much-talked-about iPad. While the device looks like a flattened iPod, its potential to revolutionize the way we consume media is staggering. One of the more interesting aspects of the iPad is the ability to read comic books at nearly the same size as the printed version. While other e-books only have black-and-white displays, the iPad’s color screen could radically change the way we read and access comics.
The iPad, like it or not, holds a GREAT deal of interest in the web comics community, and I am stoked to see how it plays out. Need to get working on a new App for it I think…
Here is the rest of that article at Majorspoilers.
I think reading comic books on the IPad would be a great experience…for those that have IPads. I don’t believe enough people, especially enough of the total population of comic book readers, will get the IPad to make it economically worthwhile for big name Comic publishers to go there.
If a comics publisher wants to lock himself out of 93% of the population, he’ll switch to publishing for the iPad.
Economic suicide? Sure it is. But we have the right to do that in America.
On the other hand there are Android-based touchscreen tablets coming out of the woodwork everywhere now, and with price points ranging from $100 to $200, they’ll beat the pants off the iPad for widespread sales. ePublishing in a standard format (PDF, perhaps) will be a sure winner.
Why this is interesting i don’t thin it would make much of a difference when there is a whole underground of illegal comics scanned over the net… why buy this device.. then the charge for a comic book or even pay the outragous price of a real one when you can simply do a couple clicks and bam… you have the comic or an entire comic series on your hard drive in a matter of moments and you didn’t pay a dime….
Yeah, it looks like a great reading tool, but I would have to save _a lot_ of money in subscriptions and storage to justify it. And I’ve always enjoyed the tactile feel of the book in my hands.
One of the first things I said when I saw the announcement was that if Marvel and DC weren’t wringing their hands while watching that iPad launch presentation, they sure ought to be. Admittedly, though, I’m in a very small camp of comics lovers who don’t need to hold the paper and could be extremely happy storing their comic collection digitally instead of physically. I’ve picked up a few off of the Playstation Store as well for the PSP’s comic reader. And since the iPad announcement, I’ve handily forgotten all about that little thing.
Marvel seems to be well prepared for this at first with a very decent collection of issues already available digitally. But one problem they’re going to have is that I believe their digital comic reader is Flash… But hopefully that won’t be too big a thing to work around.
I don’t think pirates or leechers are Apple’s core market target…
if the comic industry was smart. They would all get together and make a Kindle like device for comics. THAT would change things.
The iPad itself won’t, because it’s too expensive and too limited (it was already pointed out that it won’t do flash) to be a game changer. But within the next year, every manufacturer and their mom will be putting out fully capable touchscreen/tablet devices, that will be priced more like netbooks. At that point tablets will start to become ubiquitous and it will definitely add a new outlet for comics to publish.
It’ll never change their business model entirely, though. Comic fans tend to be collectors, and you can’t take their physical copies away from them.
I have to disagree with Jason a little bit. I would argue that the iPad (and similar devices) have a potential to change comic consumption in two major ways; access and cost. As Jason said comic book fans tend to be collectors and he is right. Typically, to get comic books you have to go into a comic store, a physical space that a casual reader may not have (or want) access to. For casual media users, we have been moving away physical media ownership at a nominal pace these past few years. The iTunes, Netflix, and Steam services are prime examples of the trend. For the non-collector, having personal libraries that are becoming virtual, cloud based collections is slowly becoming the norm.
And on the international front getting access to comics can be next to impossible outside of expensive mail order. This brings in the second point, cost. As with books, a cheaper, instant access option would not only open potential markets abroad, it would also interest casual readers who did not care about the ‘collecting’ aspect and just wanted to read the narratives and could do so for cheaper than the ‘cover’ price of the physical version.
I don’t think creating a separate device would be a necessarily good idea since everything these days is about convergence. A separate device was created for Twitter use which cost around US$100 and was kind of laughed off in multiple reviews for being both expensive and narrow in functionality. Personally, I was planning to buy a Kindle this past January until the Apple Keynote presentation. When I saw the iPad I felt, why buy a singular book reader when I can get the iPad for a bit more with potentially lots of more functionality.
Encumbrance (if I can throw an old D&D term around
) is another issue. For massive collections (for example I am reading Invicible) that are huge and heavy to carry around, I would much prefer to have a digital version(s) stored on my device. And for some collections I wouldn’t mind to have both a physical copy (as a collector) and a digital copy to carry around reading…so I am sure some things might get a double sale.
Give me an ebook reader with color and a comic format, and I’m in.
The coming wave of Ipad/tablets could be usefull for comic book readers in Europe.
Here in Europe it is pretty difficult to find a decent comic bookstore unless you live in a big city or are just plain lucky. This looks like an easy way to really open up the market.
It could certainly not hurt to make the comics available via itunes. What do they have to lose ?
Reading comics on the iPad is possibly at the top of my list for getting one. That being said, I have no idea on what the subscription model for the comics are like. I expect them cheaper than the printed versions as there is no production costs for electronic versions so the savings should be passed along to the consumer. On the other hand if they want to charge the same cover price I’ll stick to the paper copies and the iPad can rust.
That would be awesome. Then my wife couldn’t hide her comic’s so I can’t find them..
The answer to this and many questions like it is “yes, if you are willing to forsake god and bow down to the almighty apple.” You know there is a line somewhere that some comic artist will want to cross, but apple will be less enthusiastic. They’ll reach some compromise sorta like france and germany did in ’39