The Digital Movement - Part 5

In the first 4 parts of this series, I declared my acceptance, if not all out love, for comic books in the digital scanned format of PDFs.  I raised several points in favor of digital comics.  Now, in this final part, I will slap the faces of those who oppose me.

So, where do we go from here?  How do we advance digital comics for the future?

Remember, its not a question of 'should we', but a question of 'how can we'.  Before I explore any ideas or agendas, let's be very clear on one thing.  Selling comic books is a business.  Its all about making money.  I won't deny that many creators love what they are doing, but they are getting paid to what they want. 

So, any movement to a digital format must be based on a solid business model.  The creators and end customers must both get what they want.  Both sides must make sacrifices to meet the end goal.  This has been a very rough road for the music industry to learn.  But, they did learn.  Now, its time for the comic industry to learn this.

The most universally accepted business model is the iTunes player connected to the Apple store.  Like it or not, like eBay, iTunes has earned its right as part of the American lexicon.  People understand what it means to purchase music or videos online, and download the content to your computer and sync it with your potable music and video device.  The next evolutionary step is to include printed media.  I won't argue including magazines and newspapers, but if comic books can be incorporated into a iTunes model, it certainly opens the possibilities for thousands of publications to enjoyed again.

While the download / iTunes model seems practical, its not realistic for two reasons; greed and payment for intellectual properties.  

Greed:

Let's take a look a greed.  Back in 2008 Marvel [1] released the rights to several comic book titles, allowing the company GIT Corp to scan them and sell DVDs containing all the scanned issues.  Many titles were released, bringing the total number of issues release well over 5,000.  The GIT Corp forums [2] were buzzing with activity.  There was a surprise fan base calling for more titles to be released.  The louder were yelled, the more titles GIT Corp included into "to be released" list.

Just when we felt the world of comic books was changing, it stopped.  Just one month before the Daredevil title was to be released, all contracted between Marvel and GIT Corp were stopped.  No more titles were be converted to PDFs, and the existing titles that were converted to PDFs could no longer be sold.  Well, the some of the existing inventories could be sold, but some were confiscated by Marvel and no additional copies could be produced and sold.  The growing digital fan base was outraged.  

But, Marvel didn't care.  In their mind, they were loosing money.  Why sell 500 issues of Spider-Man when they could offer a rental price for their vast comic book library?  Their business model is to offer a per month subscription service where you can view comics online.  No purchasing, and viewing required the internet.  Additionally, their library for viewing was incomplete.  Fan wanted to why all the Spider-Man issues were available for purchase by another company, but Marvel, the publisher of Spider-Man could not even offer all the Spider-Man issues for rent.

Months later, Marvel announced plans to distribute their own DVDs of comics books, much like GIT Corp had done.  But, the initial offered where vague and seriously over priced.  Where GIT Corp offer 500 issues for $49, Marvel was offering 50 issues for $29.  Plus, it was expected that Marvel was going to associated a proprietary reader to a proprietary format.  

Since the initial advertisement of Marvel offering their collections on DVD, we seen nothing.  Nothing.  I suppose we'll never truly know why these DVDs were delayed, if not cancelled.  Based on comments by those in power at Marvel, its very clear they don't see the value of offering their comic books in PDF format.

It sad to see a great and entertaining medium suppressed and denied to millions because of greed.  GT Corp, various other independent publishers (such as Eagle One Media [3]), and to some degree Marvel have shown there is a fan base for digital comics.  The comics cannot be distributed for a variety of reason, but they get back to one thing; money.  

Intellectual Properties - Owner Rights and Compensation:

The comic book publisher DC [4] is another giant in the comic book industry struggling with the idea of digital comic books.  Most publishers will hide behind a mask and rhetoric that they see now value in digital comics.  They do this because they have to.  Secretly, they want to release the many thousands of comic books to the public, but there's this thing called Intellectual property rights, owner right and compensation.  

For example, let's look at Superman.  One might assume that DC comics owns Superman.  But they don't.  They own the rights to publish Superman.  When GIT Corp approached DC Comics for the rights to offer all the Superman comics on a DVD in PDF format, the owners of Superman demanded $1,000 per page.  GIT Corp had to step away as the cost far outweighed and return on investment.  In other titles, some creators of the original comics still held reprint rights.  Some of these creators didn't see value in digital comics, or were afraid their comics would be freely traded and stolen in a digital format, and they wouldn't see a penny in return.

There are other reasons why GIT Corp couldn't work with DC Comics.  One of the biggest was compensation.  For each issue, all the creators had to be contacted and approached about the compensation, how much it was and who received (in some cases the creators are dead) the compensation.  DC Comics admitted that even if reprint right were given, their cost in effort to track own all the creators and obtain this information was too costly.  

Summary:

In closing, I believe a market for digital scanned comic books exists.  With the right balance of costs and digital rights management, the publishers, creators and customers can all get what they want.  But, I understand that even with hyper prices, some publishers, creators and fans do not find value in digital comics.  They feel that it takes away from the magic of the medium.  I don't have any respect for that opinion.  Its hypocritical to denounce digital comics when you have an MP3 player in your hand.  I don't hear any complaints about the transition from vinyl records to compact discs to digital music as MP3's.

In this digital world, the fear has been, and will always be about theft.  The term "piracy" has been applied to it, but theft by any other word is still theft.  The problem with this digital world is that were spawning and training an entire generation to think that internet = free.  All content on the internet should be free.  If the content is not free, then someone will steal it, and post somewhere as a free download, until it is stopped.  

I don't agree with the internet = free mindset.  But, I'm a realist.  I recognize that it exists.  I recognize that people will steal.  A digital environment makes it easy to steal.  But, I also recognize this percentage of thieves are small.  Security cameras and guards haven't stopped shop lifting, so don't expect encryption schemes to stop the copying of digital material.  And, just because a publisher or creator doesn't officially release the rights for reprinting, doesn't mean they've stopped the transition to a digital format.  If you look hard enough, you will find download sites offering just about any comic books ever produced in a digital format.  

In the face of old values, fear and greed, I still believe there is a massive untapped market for reprinting comics books in a PDF format, just as GIT Corp does.  That market is waiting for an entrepreneur to take the risk to establish a single format in a centralized location where comic books can be purchased as a digital download, or in sets on DVDs, in all PDF format.  Establish this business and make it profitable.  So profitable that the largest to the smallest publishers will be begging to be part of it.  

I am not without heart for the many retail comic book shops.  I firmly believe there is and will always be a strong fan base for printed comic books.  With that in mind, all new comic books must wait 3 months before they can be offered as a digital download.  But, don't expect too much mercy for the retail comic book stores.  Did the evolution of music to digital have mercy for record stores?  While not extinct, record stores are not a popular as they used to be.   So, as the comic industry fully embraced the digital world, be prepared to respond to that change.   If you want to your retail store to stay open for business, you'll have to follow the one true rule of business.

Adapt of die.

If you share my feelings towards a digital world that includes the comic book industry, then take action to see this dream become a reality.  Contact these companies and tell them what you want.  Debate this in forums.  Raise awareness.  Let's make this a reality.

References:

[1] - http://www.marvel.com/

[2] - http://www.gitcorp.com/forum/login.asp?target=default.asp

[3] - http://www.eagleonemedia.com/

[4] - http://www.dccomics.com/dccomics/

The Digital Movement - Part 4

Here's my final point to a digital comics movement.

Point 6 -

Death to the investors.

I got into comics just before it began its horrid transformation into a collectible and an investment.  I watched in bitter disgust as those with expendable income turned to buying comic books with the sole intent of storing them away as items of investment.  This must have been the same swarm of flies that raped and pillaged the sports card hobby.

To everyone who every invested money into comic books with the sole intent of selling them later for a massive profit, I, and I say this with all the sincerely I can muster - I hope you lost money!!!!  I hope you lost lots of money for giving the comic book publishers a false sense of value.  Because of the obnoxious investing of comic books, the publishers looked for any reason to start new titles and offer that ever so valuable issue number 1.  

Sadly, the comic collector and hobbyist were wise to the Investors.  Everyone was buying the first issue of every new title.  And not just one copy, but many copies.  All with the expectation that each comic book was going to be $100 or more in the future.  The result of over-buying, over-selling and hoarding for investments caused these issues to be worthless.

In the end, I witnessed greedy and bloated publishers, barely able to support their own gorged weight, collapse to the ground and the investors dumped their now worthless books on the market, leaving the entire comic book industry a broken and tattered mess.

Before the comic industry dumped in its own shorts, I stopped collecting.  The quality of comics had dropped so low that grade school kids couple produce better stories and better art.  I'd come back every couple months and look at the new books, and honestly, it wasn't getting better.  Months turned into years, and the comic industry had recovered and was actually producing decent material.  The art, for many books, was excellent, and in some cases, much better than when I actively collected.  But, the cover price had increased, yet again.  The chain reaction of investors to publishers to the end customer (me) was too much.  The memories of the greed were so still engraved in my brain.  

But, by this time, I had discovered GIT Corp, and digitally scanned PDF versions of comic books.  There is no comic that could seduce me back to the printed realm of comic books.  I am pure digital now.  I'm sure hard-core vinyl record lovers fought against Compact Discs, but look how that ended.  From CD's we evolved to MP3's.  Digital music.

Its a digital world.  It will bring comic books into its fold.

In the 5th and final part of the Digital Movement, I will bring my soapbox and declare what is good and righteous about comics in digital format.