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When DC Comics announced their New 52 initiative last fall, the part that struck me as the most revolutionary was not about content.
It was about their choice to make their weekly print comics available as digital comics for the same price on the same day through ComiXology.
The direct market of local comic book shops has long been the only way to distribute weekly comics. It can be an oasis for the long-time comic fan and yet also a barrier to new readers. Some local stores are wonderful, others are clubby and less welcoming to newcomers and some people are not close enough to have access to a shop at all.
With newly released DC comics available digitally on the same day, at the instant touch of a button, a whole new market hypothetically opens up. Marvel Entertainment quickly did the same with their new releases. With the big two companies plus a number of prominent independent companies making their comics available digitally, it's a good time to have an interest in comics and a tablet device on which to read them.
ComiXology is at the center of all this. According to CEO David Sternberger, there have been 75 million downloads of comics via their app platform and one-third of that total has happened in 2012. Comics began in the Golden Age, morphed into the Silver and Bronze Ages but this decade may well be the beginning of the digital age.
Like most comic readers, I've had a lot of questions about ComiXology, how it works, what kind of audience they're drawing, and where they see digital comics going in the future.
Steinberger agreed to an interview to address some of those questions. While some of his answers--such as about demographics--are less specific that I was hoping, the answers overall are enlightening.
__GeekMom: __How did the site get started? What led you to a comics app?
David Steinberger:
____We're celebrating our 5th Anniversary this year at San Diego Comic-Con and our 3rd Year App-versary!
ComiXology initially began as a way to bridge the digital divide between brick and mortar retailers and their customers with our Pull List application. That took off and then we added digital comics with the advent of the iPhone. To date, we've had over 75 million downloads of comic books and graphic novels on our digital comics platform that is just 3 years old…and one third of those downloads have happened in 2012, so it's been a wild, expansive year for us!
But one thing I’d like to clear up is that we are not just an app — we’re a true buy once, read anywhere platform. That means when you sign up for an account you can buy and read on the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Kindle Fire and even the Web. Our great shopping and reading experiences, added together with being able to take your comics with you anywhere is why our customers love us!
GM: How did the partnership with both Marvel & DC come about?
DS: ComiXology started by understanding the complexity of the comic market and saw some technological holes left by the aging monopoly-distributed Direct Market model. By connecting brick and mortar retailers to their customers via pull lists and then to digital – we have over 150 comiXology-powered brick-and-mortar webstores out there – comiXology provided a much needed service to consumers, retailers and publishers.
As we expanded from pull lists to digital comics, we created the very best reading experience in digital comics with our Guided View technology. We created Guided View to solve the problem of reading comics on mobile devices, keeping the integrity of the comic reading experience intact – and that's one of the things that really shot us up to the top of the heap in the eyes of most publishers. They want their comics to shine and we were the only ones at the time that had a solution that FELT like reading a comic. What's most interesting is that not only is Guided View heads and shoulders above other solutions, but it is now poised to revolutionize digital comics as creators and publishers begin to take advantage of its unique properties for storytelling purposes.
The main through line though is that we've always been focused on having the best consumer experience possible. We are always trying to figure out what our customers need, from reading to shopping. That epitomizes Guided View, the great shopping experience we added with the debut of our 3.0 platform last fall, and led us to lead in terms of pure convenience that our “buy once, read anywhere” platform delivers. There isn't another platform out there that has such a wide range of OSes and devices where you can buy once and read anywhere.
It's all these things that publisher like Marvel and DC have recognized and responded to: deep respect for comic storytelling, connections to empower brick and mortar retailers, great shopping experience and a laser-like focus on great consumer experience. And it's not just Marvel and DC, but publishers like Image Comics, IDW Publishing, Dynamite, BOOM! Studios, Top Shelf, Oni Press and many others.
We're trying to serve up a diverse line of comics and graphic novels as we can and you'll hear much more about that at this year’s Comic-Con International.
GM: What kinds of comics are the top sellers and do you see differences between digital bestsellers and print bestsellers
DS: You know, it varies from week to week. We list our bestsellers right on the site (http://www.comixology.com/comics-best-sellers) and in all the apps. Lately, we've seen publishers move towards putting out comics and graphic novels that premiere digitally first and those have been a huge deal with our consumer base. Both DC and Marvel have done what we call “digital first” releases, Archaia is doing an aggressive slate of digital first releases this year and Top Shelf did a massive push behind a digital first comics. We’ll be seeing more and more of those as the year goes by.
GM: What types of adjustments (if any) do publishers have to make to change their content for digital?
DS: We try and make the process as painless as possible with publishers – as they just have to give us high res PDF’s for us to do the Guided View. But one fascinating thing has evolved from that and that is companies and creator using the Guided View tools and innovating in different story techniques. That's been really gratifying to see.
From early experiments like Box 13, Valentine, and Power Play to more recent efforts like Marvel's Infinite Comics, our Guided View tools are now ushering in a new era in comic book creation. This is something we are discussing at length during a panel during Comic-Con International next week.
GM: What do you see as the future of the medium? Are digital sales hurting print sales or helping them?
DS: Digital sales are growing like crazy this year.
The rapid expansion of the digital market this year has been unprecedented. At the same time, print is doing very well. There's no doubt in my mind that digital sales are helping drive print and an expansion in the comic market in general. Easy access to comics with a great user experience is driving this.
GM: Do you have any figures on the demographics of your audience? Do you think you're reaching audiences that are traditionally underserved by print superhero comics, such as POC (people of color) or the LGBT community or even simply women and kids?
DS: We know we’re reaching a ton of first time comic book readings and reaching a lot of people who can't, for one reason or another, get to a local comic store.
We've also heard a lot of stories about people re-discovering the medium after some time away from it because of our platform. By being available on mobile devices and the web across the globe 24 hours a day, comiXology is in a unique position to reach underserved groups of people looking for a great read!
GM: What types of sales tactics have helped digital sales? For example, making some back issues available for free to drive sales of current issues or Smallville's current price of 99 cents an issue that comes out weekly. What else do you think should be tried?
DS: Our fans really love our sales. They really love our new same day as print books. They really love digital only collections and those new digital firsts I talked about earlier. We've got a ton of other ideas to increase our already fantastic growth, but… that would be telling. (Laughs)
GM: Has the success of superhero movies like the Avengers driven sales?
DS: You know, before comiXology, if you got excited by seeing a comic book based movie and wanted to read the related comics, you'd have to find and make a trip to a specialty shop.
And as much as we all love our local comic shops here at comiXology, not everyone out there is going to do that or don't necessarily have a comic store near them ComiXology is the perfect solution for those people and we’ve definitely seen movies drive sales!
GM: Dream of dreams, where would you like to see ComiXology in ten years? Twenty?
DS: ComiXology's mission is to bring comics to people everywhere. I'd love to see even more people reading comics in the U.S. than ever before. Look, in Japan, people of all ages and genders read manga, and they read a lot of it. In my heart of hearts, I'd like to see comiXology continue to transform the marketplace by expanding the amount and type of people that read comics. And with the stellar growth we've seen this year… I firmly believe that we'll get there.
