Digital Comics: Problems & Potential, part 3

If You Build It, They Will Come

By Eric San Juan

Okay, here's the thing. You can get digital comics into the virtual hands of thousands of readers. You can create a huge amount of buzz. And you can make money doing it.

Heck, you can probably spark a renewed interest in comics among lapsed fans while doing it, too.

Thing is, Marvel and the publishers that follow have to avoid handicapping themselves right from the start. After all, others are on the right path. So let’s throw something out there. An idea. A means of making digital comics profitable and, frankly, awesome.

Oh, there are those in the industry who will be against this. Who have, in fact, spoken out against models such as the one I'll outline below. We'll deal with them next week. (I have some bitter ranting to do.) For now, focus on those wonderful P words: Potential and Profit.

Now, I don’t pretend to have come up with this idea all by my lonesome. It’s not something fresh and new and vibrant that I've spun out of pure imagination. In fact, it’s something that many comic fans in cyberspace have dreamed up all on their own, far removed from one another, and far removed from little ol' me. How? Because it’s so (frustratingly) OBVIOUS, that's how.

Okay, remember those crazy cats at Apple? Sometimes known as innovators, sometimes known as failures, one thing they've done right is create a market where others said none existed. Among other noteworthy entries for your list of bullet points, the folks at Apple endeavored to make their computers cooler looking (still can’t play the best games, but we'll let that slide) and they have the best (and most obnoxious) ads in the business, but more important than either of those things … they have the iPod and iTunes.

Simple. Elegant. Obvious.

Scratch the iPod for a moment, because that’s a technical innovation and there is no real expectation that Marvel could, or should, attempt to play in that arena. Let Amazon.com and their new Kindle develop the tech we’ll need for what follows. (And make no mistake, decent tech will be a big part of making this a profitable reality.) Instead, turn your gaze towards iTunes for a moment. It’s not perfect, to be sure, but it does just about everything a music fan in touch with the digital world could ask it to do. It sorts our songs and albums by a number of categories, allowing us to browse our music libraries with easy. It allows us to listen to our favorite at will. To view our spiffy little album covers. And – this is the important part, comic execs, so pay attention – it allows us to access the handy, dandy iTunes store, where we can purchase individual songs for rottenly low prices (99 cents a song), whole albums for a nifty $9.99, and access free subscription content such as podcasts.

No muss, no fuss. Point, click, we’ve got music and the music industry has our money.

It was so stupidly simple, no one had yet bothered to do it, yet once Apple brought the business model to the world, everything changed. The impossible was proved: Yes, people WOULD pay for stuff they had been getting online for free. They WOULD fork over the bucks. But you had to strip out the hassle, strip down the price, and give people something that made sense for their lifestyle and their wallet.

See where I’m going with this? Marvel, your monthly subscription fee is a roadblock. A reason for me and thousands like me NOT to sign up and give you my money. Others may be keen on the idea, but for those on the fence the initial price of entry is too steep for this as-yet untested market. You've got to let us dip our toes in the water before you ask us to jump in the cold, cold lake.

“But Eric,” you say, “for your subscription fee you get unlimited access to thousands of comics! It's a FANTASTIC deal!” That’s true, I do, which is why I fully support that payment plan as one option. Not, as is the case with Marvel, the only option. Outfits like Napster and Yahoo! Music Unlimited use subscription plans to great effect. Yes, like their plans, when I cancel my subscription with Marvel, my comics (or in their case, music) is gone. But UNlike their plans, you do not grant me the option of paying a small charge to download and keep the comics I choose to keep.

And let me tell you, that's essential.

That’s why Apple’s plan was brilliant. That’s why it works. Few would have considered their service had they jumped straight to a monthly fee, as Marvel has. They dangled a little itty bitty price point out there and reeled in hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people who otherwise would never have considered buying digital content. They made habitual digital music buyers out of these people. They saw a great void out on the World Wide Web and created a marketplace many people didn't even realize they wanted. This is a good thing!

In the world of comics, if anybody has the library to make something like this work, it’s Marvel.

So Marvel, listen up. If you want to make digital comics work – and it’s 2008, you MUST make them work – you’ve got to do the same. More than anyone, more than even the Distinguished Competition, you’ve got the library to do it and make it stick. You set the example, you lead the way, and the comics industry will follow to the benefit of all. Your own benefit most of all.

Get to work, guys. The clock is ticking.

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