A Digital Comics Open Standard?
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May 13 2010, 2:05 PM
Michah Baldwin, CEO of Graphic.ly to Comic Book Resources;
Since I started this business, something that’s been bouncing around my brain is the fact that if somebody were to buy a comic book on comiXology and then want to read that comic, for whatever reason, on Longbox, they’d have to buy it again. Fundamentally, that’s the reality. If I get a book on Panelfly, and then I get into comiXology and it’s also in their library, I have to rebuy it. What’s interesting is that if you look at it, that’s primarily driven by the technology and not necessarily by the publishers. I think that’s lame. It’s lame that somebody can’t take a book they bought on my system, decide they don’t like Graphic.ly and would rather go read it in comiXology and then actually go do that.
Very, very interesting read.
I’ve thought about this issue before. As most of you know my iPad allegiance is with ComiXology because of their fabulous feature set and also because I don’t want to tie myself up with too many comic book apps. I want everything centralized.
Micahs proposal is intriguing on several levels. This time-frame in digital comics reminds me of the time before iTunes became the defacto digital marketplace for music. Right now in the comics world there are a handful of companies trying to get their piece of the pie. But, for now, there is really no official .mp3 for comics that is used in all the stores. And the format that is used in all of the Comic app stores is absolutely locked to that app. In fact, I have downloaded the free copy of New Avengers #1 in the Marvel iPad app, but need to pay $1.99 for the Comics app version. The odd part is that app is developed by the same team.
If there is a universal standard created for these digital comics, the issue then moves over to DRM. Would these app companies allow you to take Robot 13 from iVerse into the ComiXology app? If so, how would you be able to do it? My guess is there would be an “Open With” option inside the app that would allow you to open it from another comic reader. But that’s getting ahead of myself.
I think the idea of having that standard is great, but I also feel that it may eliminate the store portion of most of the readers. If this were to happen, I would imagine Marvel, Image and Red 5 would just create their own store front apps to gather a better percentage than they get from the reader apps. Why bother going exclusive with certain ones if they can just be distributed among others?
Micah did mention that this seemed to be a technical hurdle more so than a publishing one. I’d be interested to see what the ComiXology, iVerse and PanelFly had to say about this proposal.
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My name is Delgado, or @slim on the Twitter. I do a tech podcast, nerdcastONLINE.
xoxo
Michah Baldwin, CEO of Graphic.ly to Comic Book Resources;
Since I started this business, something that’s been bouncing around my brain is the fact that if somebody were to buy a comic book on comiXology and then want to read that comic, for whatever reason, on Longbox, they’d have to buy it again. Fundamentally, that’s the reality. If I get a book on Panelfly, and then I get into comiXology and it’s also in their library, I have to rebuy it. What’s interesting is that if you look at it, that’s primarily driven by the technology and not necessarily by the publishers. I think that’s lame. It’s lame that somebody can’t take a book they bought on my system, decide they don’t like Graphic.ly and would rather go read it in comiXology and then actually go do that.
Very, very interesting read.
I’ve thought about this issue before. As most of you know my iPad allegiance is with ComiXology because of their fabulous feature set and also because I don’t want to tie myself up with too many comic book apps. I want everything centralized.
Micahs proposal is intriguing on several levels. This time-frame in digital comics reminds me of the time before iTunes became the defacto digital marketplace for music. Right now in the comics world there are a handful of companies trying to get their piece of the pie. But, for now, there is really no official .mp3 for comics that is used in all the stores. And the format that is used in all of the Comic app stores is absolutely locked to that app. In fact, I have downloaded the free copy of New Avengers #1 in the Marvel iPad app, but need to pay $1.99 for the Comics app version. The odd part is that app is developed by the same team.
If there is a universal standard created for these digital comics, the issue then moves over to DRM. Would these app companies allow you to take Robot 13 from iVerse into the ComiXology app? If so, how would you be able to do it? My guess is there would be an “Open With” option inside the app that would allow you to open it from another comic reader. But that’s getting ahead of myself.
I think the idea of having that standard is great, but I also feel that it may eliminate the store portion of most of the readers. If this were to happen, I would imagine Marvel, Image and Red 5 would just create their own store front apps to gather a better percentage than they get from the reader apps. Why bother going exclusive with certain ones if they can just be distributed among others?
Micah did mention that this seemed to be a technical hurdle more so than a publishing one. I’d be interested to see what the ComiXology, iVerse and PanelFly had to say about this proposal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My name is Delgado, or @slim on the Twitter. I do a tech podcast, nerdcastONLINE.
xoxo
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