Comix Influx Blog: Don't Panic

Will Amazon’s new eBook Reader, the Kindle, get an indifferent public hooked on comics, and reinvigorate monthly titles along the way?

Well, it appears that Amazon have launched the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy!

Okay, obviously Amazon’s Kindle is an eBook Reader and is basically aimed at selling more books through Amazon… But! But! But! For me, its always-on connection to Wikipedia makes it as close as dammit to a terrestrial version of Douglas Adams’ unreliable guide.

And I know there are lots of things to criticise about the Kindle – and those things are important – but I think the device is more significant than that analysis suggests, and will have major implications for publishers everywhere, including comics publishers.

For those who haven’t already read all about it exhaustively, here are some of the Kindle’s significant features:

• (Obviously) carry loads and loads of books around simultaneously
• Wirelessly downloads books (via mobile phone chips, not wifi, so works wherever a mobile phone would work)
• Search within a book!
• Brand new books for about a fiver
• Books delivered in under a minute
• Uses “Electronic Ink”, not a traditional screen (more comfortable, paper-like reading experience; lower battery consumption)
• Free wireless to Wikipedia
• Blogs cost up to about a quid a month
• Newspapers delivered to your device, looking like papers, not web-pages

I wonder whether the most groundbreaking bit of all that will turn out to be persistent (and free) wireless access to the web – albeit only to Wikipedia at present – in the same way that the Blackberry revolutionised the PDA market.

It’ll be particularly interesting to see how publishers take to the device. Importantly for publishers (and newspapers in particular) it gives direct remuneration for their content, without the current total reliance on advertising. But will that be successful? I can’t see it working for Blogs, but it could be ideal for comics.

Now the Kindle won’t really be viable as a mainstream platform for comics until there is a full colour version, with a higher resolution than the 167ppi it boasts at the moment. But when a device like that becomes available it could be ideal for reading comics, and could become an amazing disruptive technology in the comics market. There are essentially two main effects:

• Far lower production and distribution costs will enable a far lower price-point
• Automatic delivery will take comics out of the realm of specialist stores, frequented only by enthusiasts, and put them within reach of regular readers

It could be argued that comics are already within reach of regular readers, having made major inroads into bookstores. But these are largely prestige editions – “graphic novels” to follow the marketing. On the other hand, the Kindle is ideal for subscriptions, and so can put monthly issues within reach as well. With a low price, and ubiquitous availability, subscribing to a monthly comic should just become an impulse purchase.

That should open up a huge new market of casual readers – those who would (regularly) like a smart, relatively quick, enjoyable read, but are not interested in the actual artifacts.

In addition, there will be a significant long-tail effect, with a huge range of titles available, essentially forever, opening up publishers’ back-catalogues.

Basically, there’s a huge opportunity here for comics publishers, and the additional good news is that the market for comics printed on good old paper will still be around, as comics is such a tactile medium. In some cases it’ll even be stimulated: I’m sure a lot of those casual readers will become interested in converting some of their subscriptions to hard copies, in exactly the same way that people will buy DVDs of Heroes despite having seen all the episodes already (and those glorious splash pages just won’t cut it on the portrait-oriented display of an ereader!)

From a Comix Influx point of view, I can see a potential cross-over with eReaders some way down the line. It’s quite conceivable that comics distributed on an ereader, could have their original text switched out for a version in a different language, similar to how DVDs have alternative language settings for speech or subtitles. That could be an official translation bundled with the eComic™, but presumably that won’t be available for very many titles, and also not in a very wide range of languages.

However, if the formats were appropriately structured and sufficiently open, it’s possible that people could switch in another translation of their choosing… who knows, maybe eReaders could provide the ideal platform for people to use the collaborative translations from Comix Influx.