[Groop] eComics: ethics, the future & ME

[Janet Harriett]

Digital distribution and the future of comics...hmmm.

When Elie first introduced me to comics, he explained that there are  
two kinds of comic fans: readers and collectors.  Readers buy comics  
to read them. Collectors buy comics to have them, usually in pristine  
unread condition. Most people aren't exclusively a reader or a  
collector.  Those are the people who buy a reading copy and a copy to  
keep in mint condition.

Digital distribution is great for readers. It makes the comics  
portable, accessible and less space-hogging. A comic book is compact,  
but get two or three thousand of them, and that's a lot of space, and  
raw poundage.

However, there is a logic by which digital comics will be the death of  
collectors.  With digital media, there is nothing to collect,  Sure,  
you can get all the files for Groo, but if all of them are on a  
torrent site, collecting becomes trivially easy, thus no longer much  
of a hobby. Porter wrote:


>
> I think of comics as as a content and collector industry. Not owning  
> a copy (or usually four or five copies) is unacceptable to me, as I  
> imagine it is for all Groopers.


Elie and I do not have a complete set of Groo. We are missing  
something like ten issues from the middle and end of the Marvel run.  
One of the fun parts of going to comic cons is searching through all  
the vendor's bins trying to find the elusive issues.  To the extent  
that I am a collector, the fun is in the chase. Digital archives of an  
entire run eliminate the chase. I'm a reader. I collect the back  
issues so I can read them. The prospect of one day owning a complete  
set is gravy.

The secondary market for a lot of comic books would evaporate with  
digital archives of them. As much as I like the chase, I would  
probably take a nice digital copy of a Groo comic over a beat-up  
physical issue. Action Comics #1 will still fetch astounding prices at  
auctions, but a lot more middle-of-the-road late model comics are  
going to be quarter bin material when better digital copies of the  
books become easily and legally accessible.

I am given to believe that the comic industry has weathered some rough  
patches relying on collectors who buy multiple copies of books, either  
to have a reading copy and a collecting copy, or to have all six cover  
variants. Unless publishers can convince people to shell out multiple  
times for the same content, that strategy is toast with digital  
comics. I think that, to make digital comics a viable future for the  
industry, publishers are going to need to ensure that the expanded  
reader market both compensates for the reduction in multiple-buyers  
and actually pays for the content. If comics survived by having 50,000  
people buy 100,000 copies of a physical comic book, they'll need  
100,000 paying digital readers. Actually, more than that since I  
suspect comics will have to come down in price per issue to compete  
with other digital reading material. When full-on ebooks are going for  
$10, readers aren't going to shell out $5 for 32 pages.  Of course,  
without the overhead of actually printing a book, the profit margin  
could probably be maintained at a lower price point.

So, I can see how digital comics would be a good prospect for the  
future of comics, as we become more accustomed to all of our  
entertainment coming in digital format. The question then is, whether  
electronic distribution expands the readership enough to compensate  
for reduced multiple-copy buyers, freeloaders who get the content  
without paying, and the necessary change in price structure.

Janet
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