THE iPAD AND THE COMICS (Part One)

The CAPS (Comic Art Professional Society) Newsletter discussed comic books and the iPad in its March issue, to which Jeff Zugale (“an admitted Apple fanboy”) contributed an article assessing the impact of the new device. Here are snippets from the piece, direct poaching is in italics.

 

The main difference from the iPhone/iPod touch, of course, is that iPad’s size is about 8x10 inches — exactly the size of a modern printed comic book page. But physical compatibility is but a tiny aspect of funnybook future in iPad. Most of the future lies in the marketplace. Zugale turns to the Direct Market, the most viable of outlets for comic books, and finds it seriously wanting. Looking at the Top 300 titles on a monthly basis, he finds that while the No. 1 comic book sells about 100,000 copies, sales drop off pretty drastically, slipping to below 10,000 a little over halfway down the ranking.

 

If a publisher expects make a functional businesslike profit, he must be in the top 150 on the top 300 list. How many books that aren’t Marvel or DC are in the top 150? For December 2009, it was 15 — 10% of the total. And the comic book at last place “averages about 3,500 copies sold.” Calculating from the cover price $2.99-3.99, Zugale says the comic book at 300^th place returns a gross $4,185-5,586 to the publisher. Print/ship costs for that short a run on a color comic often exceed $1 per copy, leaving you with a paltry few hundred dollars per book (I figure around $1,200 on the average) to pay for everything else — all direct business overhead, marketing (including a Diamond Previews ad, which ain’t cheap) and paying your creators. In short, the Direct Market is not much of a market for comic book publishers.

 

Into that abyss, however, comes iPad. iPad will bring to market a lightweight (1.5 lbs.), portable e-reader capable of displaying comic book pages at an appropriate size and in full color. ... iPad is the right size and shape for comics. Full -color comics are likely to look pretty nice on this thing. ... While I’m told line art comics look excellent on them, the Kindle, Reader and nook cannot match this because they do not feature color.

 

Zugale then turns to the Big Question about the digital empire: how does one make money? The Internet has failed in this respect, but Zugale thinks iPad will offer a solution because Apple plans to offer books through a new iBookstore and will probably charge just as it does for an App from the App Store, an already-proven way to market digital content and feel assured you’ll get paid for it. ... If you can get people to download your comics at $2.99 each, you’d make $2,093 per 1000 units downloaded instead of just $1,196, the present rate of return via Diamond. On the downside, working through Apple’s stores has not always been smooth for small companies ... and, recently, in a controversial unilateral move, Apple has deleted all Apps containing “adult” material. ... There’s reason to be concerned about that aspect of their total control of the conduit.

 

But advantages may overpower disadvantages. There are only about 2,000 or fewer comic book shops in the U.S. and Canada, a tiny market. iPad is bigger. Even if the iPad is not as successful as Apple’s other devices, it will still stimulate competition and imitation. Then Zugale predicts: How about — by 2012 there will be 20 million e-readers capable of nicely displaying color comics pages out there. If you can somehow find and sell to even a tenth of a percent of that market — just 20,000 people — you’ve got a real chance to sell your comics as a functional, profitable business. If you are currently a print publisher, you cannot afford to ignore this kind of market potential.

Comments

[Francis]

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