So it is that last week’s near total layoffs of employees and seeming sinking of the brand as an independent entity within Amazon was met with sadness by the online comics community. (Number one is Apple’s own iBooks.It turned out that digital was additive and people liked paper – and though Comixology was viewed with suspicion for years, quietly and patiently, they became a respected member of the comics community, and a solid sales platform. The Marvel app has been hovering near the top of the most popular free book apps in the App Store since it launched, and today DC’s app shot past Marvel, as well as Amazon’s Kindle app, to become number two. There seems to be a big demand for these comics. In an attempt to assuage the concerns of store owners, DC (which is owned by Warner Bros.) said it will “collect a portion of digital revenues to be invested back to and on behalf of comic book retailers in a variety of initiatives.” Marvel has been dipping its toe into the same model, but so far only with one issue of Iron Man. DC said it will experiment with releasing digital issues of a miniseries called Justice League: Generation Lost on the same day they go on-sale in physical stores. Most of the comics are at least a few months old or are previews rather than full comics, so they don’t compete directly with the issues in stores (something that store owners have understandably been concerned about). As far as the actual content goes, DC is only selling a fraction of its library for now - about 100 issues with ComiXology and 80 issues with PlayStation, including the first issues of popular titles like Sandman and All Star Superman. (Sony Online is developing a multiplayer game based on DC’s characters, called DC Universe Online.)Ĭomics will cost between $0.99 and and $2.99, DC said. In addition, DC has announced a deal with Sony PlayStation to sell comics for reading on the PlayStation Portable. ComiXology built a reader for your desktop Web browser, too. All of the apps use the company’s “guided view,” which helps users glide between panels by swiping their touchscreen rather than reading a whole page at once, or awkwardly trying to zoom in to different parts of the page. With this deal, ComiXology has enlisted the two biggest comics publishers for its plans, plus a number of other smaller ones.
0 kommentar(er)
