Bulent Yusuf has an excellent look at the intersection of file sharing and comic books. The short version is that pretty much any comic book you might want to read is available on the Internet — illegally, of course.
No, what the comics industry has to do is think of another solution to the problem. Marvel comics has taken some tentative steps by offering CD-Roms containing the first ten issues of classic Lee and Kirby series like FANTASTIC FOUR and THE AVENGERS, but that’s not enough. For one thing, a CD-Rom can store a lot more than ten measly issues. Offer something like one hundred issues per disc, and then they might generate some interest. But an even smarter solution might be something like the one offered by Apple’s iTunes online music store. Why not offer comic books for digital download, with built in digital rights management software?
The savings that companies will make on national and international distribution would be huge, and some of those savings could be passed on the readers who pay for them. And this isn’t to suggest that the market for old-fashioned paper products would simply die out – remember the comics collectors who like to scan ‘em and bag ‘em? With this business model, they wouldn’t even have to go through the process of scanning the comics. They could just buy both a physical copy and a digital copy from the company. But perhaps the most significant benefit of digital downloads is that the talented folk working on the comics could get a cut from every comic book sold online. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Yep, it’s a brave new world out there, and the thing now is for the comics industry to rise to the challenge rather than shy away from it. Tempting as it seems, on no account should they start throwing lawsuits around; this would only acerbate the problem. They need to realise that there’s a new market out there in cyberspace, and perhaps even a new opportunity to reinvigorate the industry. And they’d better do it soon, or I really will start downloading those comics.
Okay, he’s wrong about DRM which is just plain stupid and unusable. One of the best features of the Marvel CD-ROM is precisely the lack of DRM (and, by the way, contrary to Yusuf, that CD-ROM contains 100 issues — 10 issues from 10 different series.)
Otherwise, I couldn’t agree more. Look, the comics book industry experienced a lot of economic problems over the past decade. One of the more amusing rumors that occasionally pops up is that a company like Marvel is planning to stop publishing since it makes so little money off of actual comics compared to what it makes from licensing those comics to Hollywood.
I rarely buy comics, but I do buy the trade paperback compilations that collect 6 or 12 issues at a time. The problem is that these typically costs $15-$25, which means collecting them gets very expensive very quickly. So there are a lot of titles that I’d love to grab that I simply don’t bother with.
But if publishers would put several of those collections on a CD-ROM for $20, I’d change my mind. So far, though, Marvel is the only company that’s even done this tentatively. Hello, this is the 21st century — would marketing types at these Marvel, DC and the various other comic book publishers please buy a clue. As Yusuf notes, this stuff is already all over the Internet and available for anyone to steal without a second thought. Why not mean the needs of customers legitimately and make money off of people like me who are never going to be able to buy your product otherwise?
Source:
Understanding Piracy. Bulent Yusuf, NinthArt.Com, March 22, 2004.
