Action heroes’ digital challenge

In a recent issue of the Superman comic book, the man of steel hovers in space and consults a tablet computer to learn about the latest menace to his home town of Metropolis. The culprit is a giant monster made of fire, its origins un­known, and Superman has no idea how to handle it.

His predicament could be an apt illustration of the comic book industry, which is grappling with an abrupt transition to digital publishing. E-reading, already a disruptive force in book publishing, is now up­ending the comic book universe. As with books, magazines and newspapers, print sales of comics are gradually declining, while full-colour tablets and e-readers are catching on, including Ap­ple’s iPad, the Barnes & Noble Nook and the recently announ­ced Amazon Kindle Fire.

“Digital for us is going to be the new news-stand,” says Peter Phillips, head of digital media at Marvel Comics, the biggest comic book publisher by sales. “Digital sales are hockey sticking right now and we’ve got a lot of room to grow internationally.”

But the fragmented distribution system for comic books, their inherently tactile appeal and the digital savvy of their target demographic are creating unique management challenges for the big publishers. These inc­lude Marvel, bought by Disney for $4bn in 2009, and DC Comics, owned by Time Warner.

Although digital editions still make up less than 5 per cent of sales in the $635m US market for comic books, demand is growing fast. With new apps for the leading tablets and e-readers every week, Marvel and DC are starting to bet on a future that would look at home in a science-fiction title – one where more people read on machines than on paper.

Publishers say digital distribution of comic books may increase overall sales now that there are millions more points of sale, with each e-read­er also serving as a storefront. “The great thing about having digital comics is that it is like having a comic-book shop on your digital device,” says Jim Lee, co-publisher of DC Comics. “It has turned comics from a destination buy to an impulse buy.”

Mr Phillips adds that the digitisation of the industry is forcing publishers to respond much more quickly to changing tastes and consumer demands. “People are clamouring for digital offerings,” says Mr Phillips. “There is less patience with digital than there is with print. They want it on Android, they want it on iOS, and they want it now.”

Marvel last month debuted its app for devices running Google’s Android operating system, and there are several apps for Apple’s iPad and iPhone. The most popular, Comixology, which sells digital editions for Marvel and DC, regularly shows up as one of the top-grossing apps on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when new titles are released.

Turf wars are already breaking out. Last month, DC struck a deal with Amazon that gave the e-commerce company exclusive rights to sell digital copies of many of its most popular graphic novels, including the Superman, Batman and Sandman titles.

This prompted Barnes & Noble, which is trying to encourage digital sales through its Nook e-reader, to pull the physical copies of those graphic novels from its stores.

Books-A-Million, another big book retailer, soon followed suit. The manoeuvring set off a round of bickering between publishers, retailers, fans and authors that may be a harbinger of further battles.

Yet, at the same time as publishers try to boost digital sales, they are also working frantically to preserve their physical distribution. “We still need the print comics to sell,” says Mr Phillips.

Unlike books, which still find wide distribution through bookstores, airports and other retailers, the majority of comics are still sold through independent, specialist comic-book stores that are usually owned by sole proprietors.

Just 10 years ago there were as many as 4,000 of these quirky shops around the US. Today, the number has fallen to 1,500.

Publishers say there will al­ways be a market for printed comic books, with diehard collectors obsessing over first-run editions. “There is a core group of people, young and old, who like to hold something,” says Mr Phillips. “There are some people who have a hard time getting over the digital hump.”

As visual products, comic books – much like fashion magazines – tend to look best on the printed page, while traditional books have found the transition to e-readers less troublesome. “From an art­istic standpoint, the preferred way is to read it in print, because you have got that double-page spread,” says Mr Lee. “When they get formatted for the digital device, they get shrunk down.”

Yet publishers and authors are also starting to explore the benefits of digital editions. Micah Baldwin, chief executive of Graphicly, a digital comics distributor, says it is experimenting with embedding video in titles.

Meanwhile, auth­ors are looking at newly available analytics that can help transform weekly titles in ways they could not reshape regular books. “You can now see that most people stopped reading 67 per cent of the way through, which was when a major character died,” Mr Baldwin says. “This gives you new insight into what people are liking.”

Some independent publishers are even going “digital first”, producing e-book-only comics. “What you will see with the independent creat­ors is that they will start to leverage digital in ways you cannot in print,” says Mr Baldwin. “Longer or shorter stories, things coming out on a weekly and monthly basis.”

One popular author and illustrator, Warren Ellis, has taken to posting a weekly comic on his website for free, then selling printed compilations of his work for a premium. It is a novel strategy, and one that probably would not work for an author of fiction. But it keeps readers engaged on a weekly basis without sending them to the comic shop every seven days, and provides a path for Mr Ellis to make money.

Marvel and DC have so far not taken this route, since the majority of their comic book revenues are still tied to in-store sales. But Mr Baldwin forecasts it will not be long before the comic book industry is reshaped by technology: “A year from now, we’re going to look at paper comics as the vinyl of the music industry.”