Comicking in the New Millennium.

[KWill]

Being used to french A4 comic book standard, ...

>=(

DIN A4 is most certainly not French.

( =P )

[Brockway]

The thing about iTunes is it has a set price for almost all it's music, ¢99 a song. But with their eBooks, they are going to let the publishers set the price, and right now it's looking like that's going to be in the range of $12 - $14. Like Brockway said, pretty much the same as an actual book, which will probably hurt the sales of eBooks.

Thing about that is, if it does hurt the sales, that means that publishers will then have to lower their prices in order to continue getting business. It's supply and demand. The same reason all songs sell for ¢99 each. Any more expensive than that and people aren't willing to pay, so they download illegally.

Edit: Thinking that publishers are going to let the sales of eBooks be killed is just silly. There's too much money in it for them. with virtually no production cost and all profit, it's in their best interest to make it work.

the ipad like the iphone is going to initially be bought by people who really aren't going to be concerned over a few bucks. Apple knows that to began with they are going to get people to pay the higher fees. as it becomes more affordable the prices will come down. Apples ability to generate buzz will drive sales no matter the prices. just think of all the ridiculous apps people bought for 10$ on the iphone and ipod touch. If the prices are too high one can always got to a library and read books for free (it's what i do).

Apple MADE music downloads mainstream against the wishes of the music industry. A $1 is a good price for a song download. There's already an ebook marketplace in place with what most people seem to think is a good price (Amazon's store along with Borders and Sony). Its not exactly mainstream yet though due to reader prices being high. But its getting there. Sony's got a $200 reader now.

Publishers HATE ebooks, just like the music industry hates music downloads. Apple is setting up a system where the publishers can KILL ebook sales by pricing them above what people want to pay. Apple had the balls to stand up to the RIAA but not book publishers. And I hate them for it.

I really wish the ipad came in a 4.3-4.8" size with the same resolution screen. The itouch just has too low of a screen res to me. Any horizontal scrolling is just too annoying when surfing. I'm still looking for an internet tablet type device around that size. Something fast, but still pocketable with close to 10 hours of battery life. So far the Dell Mini 5 is the closest, but its not going to be out till mid year.

[IVstudios]

Publishers HATE ebooks, just like the music industry hates music downloads. Apple is setting up a system where the publishers can KILL ebook sales by pricing them above what people want to pay. Apple had the balls to stand up to the RIAA but not book publishers. And I hate them for it.

What they hate is the fact that they can't charge more for them and have little control over their use after download, because if things get too expensive or annoying people always have the option of illegal downloads. If the Music industry could somehow magically gain total controls over all downloaded music, it wouldn't disappear, the price would just skyrocket and you'd only be able to listen to each song 10 times before you had to buy it again.

Companies want money, and digital sales make them money. Maybe not as much as they'd like, but iTunes has sold 10 Billion songs. No one is going to let something that can sell 10 Billion of something just die.

Edit: Got a bit off topic there. Back on eBooks, publishers may indeed kill them, but not on porpoise. They're not thinking "We need to find a way to destroy eBooks." They're thinking "We want more money, let's charge more."

[Brockway]

If the recording industry could push a button and kill all digital music formats, they would. Same with the publishing industry, except with internet news sites. They want ip tied to physical media. They want ebooks to die. I kind of hoped publishers would be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital model like the recording industry was. But yeah, horribly off topic now.

As for media tablets, anyone else see the Notion Ink Adam? Its a 10" android tablet with a pixilq or whatever screen. Now that would make an awesome reader. It will get awesome battery life and be totally readable in sunlight with that transflective display. Its still too dang big to me though. You'd have to hold the huge thing with one hand while trying to spell stuff with the other.

Smart phones are getting closer and closer to replacing netbooks though. My dream device is something sort of like the Droid. Pocketable, internet anywhere, with a thumb keyboard, thats fast with good battery life. Why carry around a slow netbook when your phone can do the same job?

[McDuffies]

What's the case with formats? I've heard that most of readers nowadays support only their own format, which pisses my sister to no end being that she'd like to use them to read documentation for her work because, get this, not every pdf out there is a pirated book. I take that a reader that handles most of formats is the one that'll sweep the market.

Can't care less about publisher companies. It's just a case of one kind of business replacing the other kind of business. But if anything really moves ebook market forward and make it mainstream, it will be piracy. Heck, it was illegal filesharing that made mp3 sufficiently popular to make iTunes possible.

[IVstudios]

Upon further research, it is the Kindle DX that will have the PDF support. Don't know how good it will be, but I imagine it should be able to handle text and static images just fine.

[Brockway]

Actually, with those new pixilq screens, it looks like dedicated readers with e-ink are obsolete. Soon there should be tablets out with daylight legible screens that can still play movies and read email and surf the web. The format thing is annoying as heck. There are other ones out there other than Sony and Amazon that use the open formats. I think most of them are no-name brands though.

[Yeahduff]

Over a year later I've finally used one of these things, and it's clear: We need to rethink how we do this.

Anyone made any adjustments to accommodate the iPad? My new plan is to offer my typical lo-res comic as the standard but having a hi-res pdf available for download too (helps I'm working in individual issues now). Is this a good plan? Anyone have a better one, or a better format?

[IVstudios]

As far as I can tell, either a .pdf or a .cbz/.cbr file seem to be the way to go.

.cbz and .cbr are the standard used by most comic reader programs and are pretty easy to make from what I can tell. Just save all the pages of the comic as individual images (.pings or .jpgs) and place them all into a folder. Compress the folder and change the file extension from .zip/.rar to .cbz or .cbr respectively (depending on how you compressed it.)

This page gives some more details on the process.

[CMikeNIke]

That's the plan I intend to use for my comic, have it online, then sell CBZs or CBRs for, like, a buck with a bit better resolution. I don't know about the other readers, but when I read comics on my Kindle, I certainly prefer CBZs over PDFs. I will say, however, that the PDFs I have are two comic pages as one, which is a bit of a hassle in itself, and it's probably better one page at a time.

And I was surprised how well the comics look, even with a greyscale, everything is still quite easy to read.

Also, for what it's worth, switching from CBRs to CBZs (Kindles only work with CBZ) is easy enough, but a time sink to be sure. So be aware of that when picking.

[Bustertheclown]

I always feel kinds disappointed when I have to read a comic in a pdf. Since it's a document reader and not specifically an image reader or a comic reader, comics always feel like they've been kinda shoehorned into the technology, whereas CBR/CBZ, since they were developed specifically with comics in mind, feel more like they allow for a more organic comic reading experience.

I still have yet to use any portable readers, so I don't know if that organic feeling translates to something like a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad. What I do know, though, is that, as a guy who likes to have a bit of control over how I experience my entertainment, not being forced into the specifications set forth by the program itself -- like the pdf does with issues like image resolution and the ability to pick through source material file-by-file -- I would hope that the CBR/CBZ still has that zip/rar reader quality that it does on a PC.

Plus, there's the issue of proprietary programming. With a pdf, if you're not using Adobe Reader, you're probably not going to be looking at the document without going through some trouble, and while Adobe Reader isn't exactly uncommon, it's still something that I'm not wild about. From the creator end, I need a program to be able to save pdf documents, which can also be a hassle. On the flip side, anyone can make a .zip file, and anyone who can view graphics can view jpegs or png files, so when compiling work, it just stands to reason that a CBR/CBZ format would reach the widest audience. After all, even if a person doesn't have a comic book reader program, they can still open up the archive and view the individual files through any image display program.

[Laemkral]

So yeah, I have no problem with reading comics on my iPad. It's awesome, I do it all the time at work. As far as converting them to a format? I know that The Book of Biff has made its volumes available for viewing, and even released Vol 1 for free as a teaser. He does have the advantage of being single paneled, but I think that most average sized comics will fit the format. Otherwise, pinch and zoom and scroll to get around, but that's the price paid for unconventionality.

As far as regular eBook sales go, I mainly get eBooks when I can't find the paperback around, or if its cheaper. For example, many classical works of literature are available for free as eBooks courtesy of The Gutenberg Project. I've gotten "THe Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", Dante's "The Divine Comedy", "Dracula", "Pride and Prejudice", "Les Miserables" and others all for free. Would I have ever paid money for a Jane Austen book? Hell no. But if its free then I will certainly get it and read it. I like this, because it makes classical literature more accessible and encourages people to read something more complex than the latest Dan Brown conspiracy thriller. Did I get quite a few of the Dresden series in eBook format? Yes, but mainly because the post library didnt have them on hand and the post book store didn't have them in stock and I wasn't waiting 10 days for Amazon to send it. It is convenient. I do however enjoy having the giant bookshelves filled to the brim with ALL the different books I read so people can see them and go "holy shit, you've read a lot". So, I really wish book publishers would find a way to do what the movie folks do and pair eBook downloads with a physical copy. Buy a book, get a code at checkout you can redeem for an eBook version. Hell, I'd even pay them an extra $3-5 on top of what a paperback already costs for that. If they limit it to hardcover sales, I'll buy me a whole lot of hardcovers because IT IS CONVENIENT. Sometimes I want to read at home with an actual physical book, and sometimes I want to have 20 books with me that weigh less than 5 pounds and take up all the space of a magazine because I'm in the field and space is limited.

My thoughts.

[McDuffies]

I tried some cbr readers back when I first encountered the format and found that ACDSee was much more comfortable for use. Since then I haven't tried any new reader, being lazy and all. It would be great if there are some good cbr readers, since handling a single cbr file is much better than handling hundreds of jpgs.

[IVstudios]

I finally found out a way of making a comic ePub that doesn't screw up the formatting.

If you turn the comic into a .cbz and import it to Calibre you can convert it to an ePub that will actually work on the iPad's ebook reader. You'll have to fool around with the conversion settings, but I found the generic "Tablet" output seemed to work pretty well without adding extra pages or distorting the images.

Which brings up the next issue: Distribution. Making it a free download is simple enough, but how would you go about selling it? I've been looking into Setting up a "Buy it now" page on my website using PayPal and it's way over my head. It seems like you need a working knowledge of web coding and Java to set it up (which I don't have).

It looks like there are some websites that help with that stuff. And there are some that function as sort of a digital version of CafePress, but I have no idea which ones are reliable. Anyone have any experience using any?

[Yeahduff]

This is all very helpful, guys, thanks. Next time I have access to one of these things I'll test these various formats.

[McDuffies]

They're still above my price range. Can't say I don't want one.