Broken Frontier

I said I would check back in when I had more news on the smart phone comics, and here it is: I have a comic on the iPhone and Google Android. It’s the first 26 pages of my new series American Terrorist, a political drama about democracy and dissent.

It seemed pretty surreal at first for me to see my comic up on iTunes like that. I have been all over the place with the publishing plan on this project. First I was going to do the usual individual comics leading toward an eventual graphic novel. Then I switched it up to starting with the thicker, prestige format comics. Then I ditched the idea of individual issues all together and was going to go straight to graphic novel, but then I decided I might as well put some of it online. The question was, should I still try and serialize it as low priced digital downloads or just preview it for free.

And without coming to any solid conclusion or marketing strategy, here it is on the iPhone. Well, at least the first 26 pages.

And this installment is free by the way so you should all take a look at it if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or any of the Google Android phones.

Personally, I don’t have any of these devices (not with the times yet), which is another reason why this was an odd way for me to go. It’s certainly not easy for me to describe to people how to find and download this comic. The only way I know how to do it is to go to iTunes and search for “iVerse Media” and then look down the relatively short list for American Terrorist. This is easier than doing a search for American Terrorist first because than you’ll have to sort through a bunch of songs and other media by that title.

It goes something like this:

And then this:

And if you’re one of the many people “with it” enough to have an iPhone, you can just go to the Apps store and search for it on your phone. And the Google Android people can go to the Google Marketplace to search for it. As of now, I don’t believe the Android phone has its Apps accessible from a desktop of labtop like we’re able to do with iTunes.

You can see why I haven’t bothered to send out a press release that tries to summarize all that. But it’s okay. I’m actually holding off of any major announcements until I have a better idea what I’m going to do with the printed content. For now, that first 26 page free issue is more of an experiment, both in how the whole phone comic system will work, and how my comic will be received.

So far things are looking pretty good, but there’s still a lot to figure out. The biggest question, much like webcomics, is whether enough people be willing to pay for these phone comics to make it worth while. Like I said, I put up the first issue for free which is common for many first issues on iTunes. And all of these free issues are the most popular rated downloads, without exception. Within the first day it was made available, my comic soared on past all the non-free comics in popularity rating. And this was without any announcement or press release on my part. The conclusion I’ve come to based on this is that the sales on the comics that charge the $.99 are still pretty low.

But I guess that should be expected for a new system like this. It would make sense that readers would try all the free ones before moving on to the ones they have to pay for. The question is, will they eventually accept the system of paying for comics like people eventually came around to paying for music.

I would think that if a reader really enjoyed the first issue, $.99 would be a pretty good bargain for a comic that fits in your pocket (not just one, but thousands) and can be read on the go?

I suppose I’ll have to put the next issue up for $.99 and find out. And maybe one of these days I’ll actually get a smart phone and try it out myself.

In the meantime, for any of you out there that have one of these devices, go read my comic for free and let me know what you think, both the process of reading a comic on the phone and the comic itself.  Either email me with your thoughts, or better yet, post a revue on iTunes.

###

Tyler Chin-Tanner started his own publishing company, A Wave Blue World, and writes and draws layouts for Adrenaline, its flagship series.
© 2008 Tyler Chin-Tanner.  All rights reserved.
Email: tyler@awaveblueworld.com
www.awaveblueworld.com