Broken Frontier

Considering the recent endorsement I have made in this column for the development of a new digital distribution system for comics, I wanted to make it clear that I’m not actually lobbying against print comics or the survival of the local comic shop. As a matter of fact, I think digital distribution can actually help comic retailers. And by this I don’t mean that they’ll soon be selling memory chips or morphing into electronic shops. I mean that they’ll actually be able to sell print comics more effectively with the existence of digital comics.

I’ve never felt that print vs. digital was an either/or type situation. They’re two options, and a marketplace with multiple options, allowing each one to play to its own strength, will be a more effective one.

Recently, I was listening to a couple of podcasts at Comic Geek Speak where they interviewed both Rantz Hoseley of Longbox and David Steinberger of ComiXology. I found it interesting in both instances to hear how much their love for comics and desire to see them succeed in the future was a focal point of their business model. They saw the digital era of comics as not only a way to improve the market for themselves, but for traditional comic retailers as well.

This belief really comes down to two principles. First, that the amount of content in print today is more of a problem than an advantage for retailers. And second, that the number of clientele who frequent a comic shop is much too small.

So how can digital comics help this situation? Well, the first part is easy. Having a good portion of the current move to digital would help clear up the overcrowded shelves and allow retailers to dedicate the space to top sellers.

This wouldn’t be a problem for new creators and small publishers because they could use digital comics to prove their worth and build their audience. If they then felt like collecting material into a book, then retailers would more likely have space for it and would be more likely to order it based on its previous success.

And another part of the solution is understanding that the digital first model has not shown a decrease in sales at the print level. Look at the webcomics that have been going on for years. As Comic Geek Speak pointed out in their podcast with David Steinberger, the collected Girls with Slingshots sells out like crazy despite the fact that it contains the same content that’s been on the website for years for free.

As a side note, I also feel that once smaller publishers prove they can go digital and no longer need the shelf space in stores, the bigger publishers won’t be as compelled to dominate it. They’ll likely pull back on the amount of titles they publish, or make them digital.

The other advantage to cutting down the number of print comics is that it makes comic stores look a lot nicer without the clutter and the stacks of longboxes filled with back issues. Stores that look cleaner and better organized will bring in more casual customers, which we desperately need.

Which brings me to my next point. We need more people reading comics. Hopefully having comics easily accessible to the billion people on the Internet, not to mention the millions buying mobile devices will attract new readers to comics.

But how can more people reading comics digitally help retailers? Like I said earlier, print and digital work side by side, and it makes for an easy transition. If people start to like what they read digitally, at least some of them (and potentially a lot of them) will seek out the content in print. People like to buy and have physical copies of what they really love.

And once people get more comfortable seeing comics as a real source of entertainment and become more familiar with them, then that corner comic shop won’t seem like such a strange place anymore. All of a sudden they’ll have something in common with the people who typically frequent it. It won’t feel so intimidating to walk in the store if the person is well versed in comics from reading them online.

They may even be interested in seeing what else there is that’s similar to what they’ve read. And that’d be a good thing for all of us.

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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.
© 2009 Tyler Chin-Tanner.  All rights reserved.
Email: tyler@awaveblueworld.com
www.awaveblueworld.com