Pricing digital comic books

(My apologies if somewhere out there on the internets someone else has posted an identical solution. There’s a lot of opinion and information out there on digital comics and after a while it all seems to blur together.)

I’ve been reading 95% per cent of my comics digitally for three months now. And for the most part I’m pretty damn satisfied with the experience. Oh, there’s definitely times when I’m buffeted by waves of nostalgia but those moments come few and far between.

The convenience factor is a huge plus. I’m loving that every week I can download all the comics I’m interested in directly to my iPad without leaving the comfort of my desk. No more striking out halfway across the city, braving inclement weather and rushing to get back to the office before my lunch hour is over.

Guided viewing on the iPad has changed how I read comics. Comic books are now more of a cinematic experience, like looking at elaborately crafted storyboards. And if the books are laid out in a particularly unique way I always have the option of toggling back and forth between the guided and the standard view depending on what I’m looking for.

The colours are gorgeous. No more faded colours in older books or shine from overly glossy paper in the newer ones. Instead I’m treated to bright and vibrant colours that look as if the colourist just put the finishing touches on mere moments before I arrived. Fantastic.

Pricing continues to be an issue though. And this is the complaint I hear most often. Currently the vast majority of comic books put out by the Big Two are released digitally online the same time as they show up in your local comic shop. After a few months the price might come down by a buck, but on the whole the differential isn’t that great. Which, if you’re like me and you don’t have the patience to wait three months to read the latest issue, can rankle a bit. Why should I pay the same price to read a digital comic book as I would pay to buy it in a store? Especially since I’m not left with a physical product at the end.

Well, the short answer is that comic publishers are keeping prices the same so as not to undercut the bricks and mortar stores that sell their product. During this transitional period, and I’m blindly assuming here that digital comics are the way of the future, publishers can’t afford to undercut stores because the stores are still responsible for selling the vast majority of their product (pure speculation) and the last thing they need is to get into a pissing match and possible boycott scenario with one of their biggest income streams.

So what’s the answer? How do you protect the financial viability of the small businesses that keep this thing running while still catering to a growing demand from consumers?

My solution? Digital rentals.

Much like iTunes allows you to rent a movie for a certain period of time, before erasing it from your hard drive, let comic book readers ‘rent’ a comic book for .99 cents for up to, say, a month. When that month is up the comic book goes poof. Hell, you can even put a little pop up notice that comes up at the end of your rental copy, asking if you’d like to pay the difference between the rental price and the regular price so you can outright buy a digital copy.

Readers who enjoyed the story enough that they think they might read it again can buy it then and there and those on the fence can simply led it fade away.

This way, people who want to read stuff digitally, but are put off by the high price and their lack of ownership of a physical product get a lower price point to entice them in. I know personally that I’m much more likely to sample a wider range of books if I know I can do so at a cheaper price.

Adding a 99 rent option allows people to sample digital comics on the cheap, but it handicaps them because they don't get to keep a copy for themselves, either digitally or physically.

Readers will ALWAYS have the option of buying a digital copy outright at the same price point that the books sell for now. And bricks and mortar retailers get the opportunity to remain competitive from a costing standpoint. Everyone wins.

As digital consumption becomes increasingly popular the fate of local comic shops is up in the air. Take a look at the music industry. Chain stores all over the world are scrambling to diversify and rejigger their business model. If they’re having trouble with the new digital reality I have no reason to believe that a loose network of mom and pop comic retailers will be able to weather the same storm.

I fully appreciate the need for comic publishers to support their retail partners. But I think it’s dangerous to think that they can justify keeping digital comic prices at retail levels forever. Eventually, change will come and it’s in both parties best interests to start looking forward to what comes next.

Extreme Makeover: Indigo Books edition

Interesting article here from the Toronto Star yesterday.

It talks about the efforts of Indigo (Chapters\Coles) to rebrand themselves as more of a lifestyle store, as opposed to a bookstore.

It seems like you can’t go into any big chain store these days without walking into a lifestyle store.

I’m serious, have you been in a Canadian Tire lately? I hear Canadian Tire and I think auto parts and maybe, MAYBE, some construction related tools or something.

I don’t think of living room furniture, snacks and diapers, which seems to be taking up an increasing amount of CT’s floor space.

All ranting aside it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that offering a wider range of goods and services is probably healthier from a business sense over the long run. Specialization is nice, but it doesn’t offer you as much cushioning from the ebb and flow of economic forces.

And besides, out of all the brands I’d like to see reinventing themselves, I think physical media focused outlets are exactly the sort of places that I think need just this kind of rebranding.

HMV and like minded stores were at the far edge of this trend in Canada. With music sales moving primarily to digital downloadery they needed another hook to bring customers into their bricks and mortar storefronts. The solution was to become a sort of music/video game/DVD/t-shirt emporium for all those young turks with cash to blow.

You can argue about the relative success of the venture (not very) but it represented a strong shift away from the core commercial identity.

Now with the growing popularity and affordability of ereaders it looks like book stores are the next outlets to get an extreme makeover. I don’t think there backs are as quite up against the wall the as their music-based cousins yet, but I have no doubt that they can see the change coming nonetheless.

While I bemoan the loss of the traditional bookstore I’d much rather they stick around in this bastardized form then cease to exist at all. Because the end of the bookstore as we know it is coming.

Just last week I stumbled across an Indigo gift card from my last birthday that I had yet to use. A couple years ago this would have been unheard of. Now I download books straight to my iPad and use Amazon to deliver physical copies right to my door. The only time I ever go into a bookstore anymore is if I’m killing time between appointments.

Until I sat down to noodle on this post a bit I wasn’t aware just how much things had changed over the last couple years. Unlike my music and comic purchasing habits, where I made a conscious decision to stop buying physical copies, my book buys are now driven completely out of convenience rather than principle and it all happened without me noticing.

If a hardcore bibliophile like myself feels this way, I can only imagine casual readers have long since realized that bookstores are becoming less and less necessary to the actual act of reading.

Trading Up: eReaders

I see it every day on my commute to and from the office, fellow commuters who have abandoned paper and ink in favour of consuming their media of choice through a handheld tablet.

They tell me it’s called progress.

And yet, I’m on the verge of taking the plunge myself. I was sniffing around a Kindle last year when it dropped in price, but I just wasn’t able to commit to the change. Its not that I’m a technophobe or even against substituting books with eReaders. Its just that as much as I love books I’m almost equally in love with the physical process of reading them. Yes I realize that if you truly love reading than the format doesn’t matter, it’s the content that counts. But there’s no rule, at least none that I’ve seen, that says you can’t enjoy both.

I get a thrill looking over the books on my shelf and knowing that about two thirds of the way through THE STAND there’s that really great scene with the Trashcan Man. I can remember the sensation of the book’s weight in my hands as I’m as reading it and literally feel the thickness of the pages I’ve read under my thumb. So I’ll pull that book off the shelf and start leafing through the pages where I think that scene is. Sometimes I’ll get lucky and find it right off that bat. But even when I don’t, I usually start reading some other great scene and the whole dilemma is rendered moot.

(The best sound you can hear when reading? The rifle shot that comes when you pop open a hardcover and crack the spine for the first time.)

For me, the tactile sensation of reading is intrinsically tied to the material itself.

But my purchasing habits have already begun to change, I can’t tell you the last time I bought a CD or a DVD. And, like most of the legitimate media purchasing throngs I get a lot of my audio\visual material through iTunes now.

So now, with a basement overflowing with books, I need to take some of the steam out of my book and comic buying routines as well and see if I can move some of my purchases into the digital world.

Why switch?

Storage space
I’m in a real jam. I've got books stacked two rows deep on my shelves. They're cluttering up the bedroom and I've got little stashes hidden all over the house that I'm praying my wife doesn't find (FYI, its not just sheets and towels making a home in the linen closet these days). If I want to continue to buy physical copies of books from authors I'm coocoo for cocoa puffs for that means casual faves are going to need to be shunted into digital purchases. I just don't have the space anymore to keep buying things at my current rate of consumption.

It doesn't help any that I'm really bad at letting things go. Even when I'm being tough with myself I never seem to be able to donate or sell any books that I have even a passing attachment too. A couple months ago a pulled a stacks off books my shelf with the intention of donating or selling them to a used bookstore. Instead they sit angrily in my basement, forcing me to guiltily avert my eyes every time I walk past them.

Obviously an eReader would be a simple solution to this problem. I can buy book after book and as long as I have enough hard drive space I never have to worry about making room for any of them.

Price Point
Are you sick of dropping 30 bones (fellow Canadians I’m looking at you here) for every hardcover you buy? Or maybe you’re one of the lucky few that have the crazy-mad willpower necessary to wait until a title’s paperback release.

A huge mark in the eReader plus column for me is the fact that ebooks are so much cheaper than their physical cousins. Without having to worry about all the costs associated with making a physical copy of a title (printing, shipping, storage, etc) ebooks are able to appeal instantly to the budget conscious consumer. Suddenly your dollar stretches a little further and now you can buy two or three new titles where once you could only afford to get one. Seems like a win-win scenario for me.

I guess the biggest drawback here is that suddenly you’d have too much disposable income, leading you into a lifetime of sloth and gluttony. But at least you’d be a well read glutton, so good on you.

If you’re a comic book reader, like I am, you unfortunately won’t find that level of savings in your digital comics. There’s still a significant price drop, digital comics come in at about half the price of the paper and staple variety, put percentage wise it doesn’t really compare to the drop you see in books.

Selection
Ever go into a bookstore absolutely giddy at the prospect of picking up your favourite author’s latest offering, only to find the shelves have been picked bare and that your only option is an autographed copy of GARDENING FOR DUMMIES? Me neither. What’s more likely is that you got a solid recommendation from a friend about a slightly older book and you decide to give it a try. Only none of the book stores in town seem to have a copy.

That changes with ebooks. Suddenly every title you’ve ever wanted is available at your fingertips. And if that’s not the case, then hopefully it will be soon. Obviously there are practical limitations. Obscure books are unlikely to get the digital treatment any time soon. The upside to that is if the title is so obscure its unlikely to be in high demand.

As well, I’ve seen rumblings from various publishers and copyright holders over the years about not transferring material to a digital format because of compensation concerns or a fear of illegal copying. It’s important to deal with these anxieties without sweeping them under the table. After all, when you’re dealing with creation of a new industry there’s an enormous potential for all potential stakeholders to make a great deal of money. No company wants to move too fast and make the wrong deal, taking themselves out of the game while smart savvier players strike it rich.

But nothing solves problems faster than money and I’m sure whatever the hiccups are that prevent a universal library (or book store if you’re a good capitalist) from flourishing can be smoothed over by finding the right dollar amount.
So I’m on board. There are a growing number of digital consumers out there and I think I’m ready to become one of them.

But what to buy, an iPad, a Kobo, a Kindle, a Nook…what? Right now I’m leaning towards an iPad, primarily because I want my eReader to double as a platform for me to read comic books on as well.

Either way, it means trawling the Internet for a bit and getting my research on.

Any Iceberg regulars out there who’ve already made the switch? Got any recommendations (or warnings)?