Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey then, everyone, welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I have a special guest host, Christian Saga,
Speaker 1: writer and host extraordinaire. He's the guy who tells me
Speaker 1: what things I should say on certain videos. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: put the words in your mouth on brand stuff and yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes on lots of stuff. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: done want to know what the stuff scripts. So anytime
Speaker 1: you see me on video and you think wow, Jonathan
Speaker 1: seems in particularly well spoken, it's probably because Christian wrote
Speaker 1: the words, Oh, I don't know about that. You add
Speaker 1: the words yeah, well I you know, I just make
Speaker 1: them up. So that's all it's. But when I asked
Speaker 1: Christian if he would come on to the show, you agreed,
Speaker 1: and you you know, I gave you the choice, like
Speaker 1: can you want? You can pick anything you want that's
Speaker 1: tech related, and you came back with something that was
Speaker 1: really interesting. Because I know that this is an area
Speaker 1: that you have followed quite a bit. I am sort
Speaker 1: of only tangentially connected to this. I get a lot
Speaker 1: of it through osmosis. I'm talking about digital comics, and
Speaker 1: so the the the digital world. The digital um revolution
Speaker 1: you might call it, really shook up a lot of
Speaker 1: established industries, especially in areas like our own in terms
Speaker 1: of content, yeah and everything. We've seen it so many times. Right.
Speaker 1: We saw it first and foremost, i'd say, we saw
Speaker 1: it with the music industry. UM iTunes was incredibly disruptive.
Speaker 1: We saw lots of different companies resist that as much
Speaker 1: as they could in various ways, often by putting terrible
Speaker 1: DRM onto files, right yeah, which is something we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: With digital comics, it's still going through those growing One
Speaker 1: nice thing I'll say is that as far as I am,
Speaker 1: a where no one in in digital comics has uh
Speaker 1: installed d r M that would create a critical vulnerability
Speaker 1: in your computer system, unlike what Sony did with their music,
Speaker 1: right yeah, I don't think so. I have yet to
Speaker 1: hear about anything like that. You know, I wouldn't put
Speaker 1: it past some some publishers, right right. I would hope
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do it on purpose at least, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we've also seen it in film, We've seen
Speaker 1: in television. We've seen it in publishing in general, with Amazon,
Speaker 1: the Kindle and and and the Nook and all of that.
Speaker 1: The publishing cure, but now we're seeing it also in
Speaker 1: uh in comics. And when I think digital comics, are
Speaker 1: two things that come to mind. Either I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: comics that are produced digitally and then they may be
Speaker 1: printed in hard format or they may be distributed that way,
Speaker 1: or just strictly the distribution, and we're really going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the disc tribution side today, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, like digitally made comics started and probably
Speaker 1: like the early nineties, I want to say, but that's
Speaker 1: not what we're going to be talking about today. And
Speaker 1: in fact, like almost all comics have some kind of
Speaker 1: digitally made component nowadays. Pretty much everybody colors digitally now
Speaker 1: um and letters digitally as well. But um no, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about the distribution, and I want to
Speaker 1: clarify to that digital comics and web comics are two
Speaker 1: different things. Digital comics are comics that you would maybe
Speaker 1: find in a print edition, not always there are some
Speaker 1: digital first editions, but that are distributed in digital means,
Speaker 1: either through an app or PDF, and we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the different means of distribution later. But web
Speaker 1: comics are really comics that are hosted on websites and
Speaker 1: are meant to be read on a desktop. Yeah. We actually,
Speaker 1: way back in the day, tech Stuff did an interview
Speaker 1: with Chris Straub, who's a web comics artist, and we
Speaker 1: talked about web comics then. So if you guys are
Speaker 1: interested in the subject of web comics, check that old
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff out. But we're really going to
Speaker 1: talk about this distribution model and the consuming like how
Speaker 1: you consume the comics, right, So it's not just how
Speaker 1: how they are distributed, but how the the audience is
Speaker 1: able to experience that stuff. And uh, clearly, one of
Speaker 1: the big things that has really fueled this is the
Speaker 1: move to the mobile platform. I mean, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: there are people out there who still will read comics
Speaker 1: on their laptops or desktops, but that tends to be uh,
Speaker 1: it's not ideal. Difficult. Yeah, when I am When I
Speaker 1: was working on my thesis in college, it was about comics,
Speaker 1: and I had to read something like three comics for
Speaker 1: this thesis and it was before I had a mobile device,
Speaker 1: so I was like flipping a laptop on its side
Speaker 1: and reading a PDF, uh, like in my lap upside, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not not ideal because as as you were pointing
Speaker 1: out right there, just but from that description, the layout
Speaker 1: of a typical monitor is where you've got You've got
Speaker 1: that landscape layout rather than portrait. Yeah, and portraits really
Speaker 1: what you need to experience a comic book in the
Speaker 1: way the format that we're used to here in the
Speaker 1: units of print format. Yeah, and and that is something
Speaker 1: that both web comics and digital comment comics have and
Speaker 1: are experimenting with. Um. There are some digital comics that
Speaker 1: are designed specifically for digital and are in landscape format
Speaker 1: and have an interesting design and that their panel to
Speaker 1: panel transitions. You wouldn't be able to get away with
Speaker 1: it in print because they would be so slow, but
Speaker 1: like be the same image and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: a word balloon would pop up as you scrolled to
Speaker 1: the next one. So it's almost like a cross between
Speaker 1: very slow animation and uh and and print comics, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I guess the next step will be interactivity, where
Speaker 1: it becomes there there. Yeah yeah, yeah, well yeah, Marvel
Speaker 1: is already they're all over it. Every south by Southwest.
Speaker 1: They announced all this interactivity stuff that they're gonna embed
Speaker 1: into their digital comics over the next year, and then
Speaker 1: like half of it happens. I can't I can't wait
Speaker 1: to get my hands on it, because I would love
Speaker 1: to have the moment where I go on and on
Speaker 1: to everybody about how the comics I have manipulated makes
Speaker 1: so much sense and they're so consistent internally, and then
Speaker 1: after three issues say this is hard. Yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 1: If if comments, if comics only had the same comments
Speaker 1: fields that our YouTube video has had, I can only
Speaker 1: imagine how horrible that, I mean, people would write in
Speaker 1: their readers did kill off Jason Todd. So there's there's
Speaker 1: some there's some uh, some precedent for that. So now
Speaker 1: that we have these mobile devices that are often in
Speaker 1: the layout that at least are it can be um modified,
Speaker 1: A comic can be modified to fit it, and perhaps
Speaker 1: in a way that is closer to the print editions
Speaker 1: that were used to in the States. Uh. They we
Speaker 1: really started to see the dig digital comics industry kind
Speaker 1: of take off, and we'll talk a bit about how
Speaker 1: popular they've become. And I love that. In the notes,
Speaker 1: By the way, guys, we're gonna be relying heavily on
Speaker 1: Christians notes here and and he is an exhaustive note taker.
Speaker 1: I I didn't have to lift a finger for this episode,
Speaker 1: So I thank you for that. Yeah, no problem, I
Speaker 1: mean it helps that, uh I. So I used to
Speaker 1: write about comics for CNN before I worked at How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, and I did articles in interviews with people
Speaker 1: in the digital comics world as it was sort of
Speaker 1: starting up while I was over there, and also self
Speaker 1: published my own comics also, and I've worked with digital publishers,
Speaker 1: have kind of gone through the system from the back end,
Speaker 1: and I understand how it all, the behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of it, how it works. In fact, my graphic novel
Speaker 1: is currently in queue at Comics Pology. I'm waiting to
Speaker 1: try to get that up there for sale. That's fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that's really cool about the
Speaker 1: digital approach is that it opens up distribution process for
Speaker 1: people who otherwise wouldn't have that access. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So,
Speaker 1: like without getting too far into because we could spend
Speaker 1: hours talking about it. Most prit comics in the United
Speaker 1: States are distributed through a company called Diamond Distribution, and
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, Diamond made a decision that
Speaker 1: they would not distribute books unless they could guarantee that
Speaker 1: they would sell I think it was at least I
Speaker 1: want to say, fift undred dollars worth of copies, which
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a lot, but for some small press
Speaker 1: people really is. And so they lost the ability to
Speaker 1: distribute their small press books two stores around the country
Speaker 1: unless they were local. Um. So yeah, digital has sort
Speaker 1: of replaced that for them, that they can get eyes
Speaker 1: all around the world on their books, no matter how
Speaker 1: small and unknown they are, and it gives an opportunity
Speaker 1: for discovery that wouldn't be there. Uh. And we can
Speaker 1: talk more about the potential for discovery, I think towards
Speaker 1: the end of this. So the first big one that
Speaker 1: we need to talk about. The first big platform for
Speaker 1: digital distribution is comics Ology. Uh and uh that's probably
Speaker 1: want anyone out there who is familiar with digital comics
Speaker 1: you probably probably have this app. Uh. It's it's one
Speaker 1: of the most well known and uh, it's been around
Speaker 1: for a while in various forms. The earlier ones were
Speaker 1: more of a uh, kind of a discovery tool and
Speaker 1: then became a digital reader further on in its existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: comics Oology the company, if I'm remembering this correctly, They
Speaker 1: started off as sort of like a way to keep
Speaker 1: track of the comics that you bought at the store
Speaker 1: every week. And also it would allow you to know
Speaker 1: what was on the pull drawers at various comic book shops.
Speaker 1: So if you were if you were in the market
Speaker 1: for a specific issue of a specific comics, you could
Speaker 1: go on there check it and they would have a
Speaker 1: database there. Essentially they would have all the comics listed
Speaker 1: yeah right, yeah, and then giving you the addresses of
Speaker 1: course in the stores so you can go find them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it um. They released their app for digital comics
Speaker 1: reading was called just Comics, and and no one that
Speaker 1: I know in the comic book world, readers or creators
Speaker 1: ever referred to it as comics. They always just called
Speaker 1: it comics oology. And I think it was like maybe
Speaker 1: a year year and a half ago that they finally
Speaker 1: gave up and we're like, all right, find comics Sologna.
Speaker 1: We're not going to fight it anymore. Yeah. So they
Speaker 1: facilitated more than two hundred million downloads. That's a lot. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's through desktop, tablet, phones, you name it, yea,
Speaker 1: through all the different platforms. It does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: two hundred million purchases. We are talking downloads here the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, Like if you ever read a
Speaker 1: press release from company that talks about how many units shipped.
Speaker 1: Units shipped and units sold are two different things. Uh.
Speaker 1: But and Apple says that Comics Oology is the highest
Speaker 1: grossing iOS app that is not a game, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: so like stuffitely, candy Crush is obviously like bigger than
Speaker 1: Comics Oology. But in terms of content, uh, comics Ology
Speaker 1: is killing it on iOS and has been for a
Speaker 1: couple of years now, six billion pages of comic books
Speaker 1: and graphic novels. I think it's a It's ranked eleventh overall,
Speaker 1: or at least it wasn't. And we'll talk later about this,
Speaker 1: but uh, comics Ology and their new owners Amazon had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a kerfluffle with Apple earlier this year.
Speaker 1: So I'd be curious to see at the end of
Speaker 1: this year where they stand in those rankings. You know what,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that for a second. So
Speaker 1: the kurfuffle you're talking about here is that the way
Speaker 1: Apple's policy is is that if you have an app
Speaker 1: and you allow in app purchases, Apple takes a cut
Speaker 1: of those purchases of the fee. In the case of Comicsology.
Speaker 1: I think that's it across the board for Apples, for
Speaker 1: any in app purchase, for any app that's in the
Speaker 1: Apple Store, Apple gets cut. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys know this out there tex stuff Land, but
Speaker 1: Apple and Amazon are kind of competitors in many ways,
Speaker 1: and uh, generally speaking, if you are producing something or
Speaker 1: you're distributing something, you want to be able to get
Speaker 1: as big a cut of that as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: This also is tough on creators because if you look
Speaker 1: at the slice of the pie that creators get from
Speaker 1: print versus digital, you would think, oh, well, with print,
Speaker 1: you take all those printing costs out, you take all
Speaker 1: those shipping costs out, all the physical warehouse space, all
Speaker 1: of that is gone. All you have is a file.
Speaker 1: You must be breaking in a huge amount. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true, right, Yeah, because you're looking at the
Speaker 1: breakdown first between Apple and comics Oology, and then between
Speaker 1: comics Ology and the creator. Yeah, and so by the
Speaker 1: time you get down to it, it might be that
Speaker 1: the creator is actually making less per issue than they
Speaker 1: would with a print. That's a possibility, especially because usually
Speaker 1: the cost of digital comics is less than it would
Speaker 1: be for print. Yeah, and uh, so Apple and Amazon
Speaker 1: are kind of butting heads in that sense. So Amazon
Speaker 1: is looking at I think they've already done it where
Speaker 1: they're uh, you would purchase the comics outside the app,
Speaker 1: and then you could read them inside the app. So
Speaker 1: they they they modified the comics Ology app. First of all,
Speaker 1: Amazon bought Comics Oology, I want to say in March
Speaker 1: of the spring, and maybe a month month and a
Speaker 1: half later, Comics Oology announced that they were no longer
Speaker 1: allowed for in app purchases with within iOS devices. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: if you're on an Android device, you can still make
Speaker 1: an app purchases. Um. Uh, and I would suspect if
Speaker 1: you're on a Kindle Fire you probably can as well.
Speaker 1: I would imagine it's encourage you. Yeah. Um. But it
Speaker 1: basically works the same way as like an Amazon Kindle
Speaker 1: app would work on an iOS device. In that like
Speaker 1: the same way you can't buy your e books through
Speaker 1: the kindle L app. You have to go to Amazon
Speaker 1: site by your book and then when you go to
Speaker 1: the Kindle app you can download it through your account.
Speaker 1: So it works the same way now with comics Ology, right,
Speaker 1: So that way they bypass the in app purchase and
Speaker 1: Apple doesn't get that cut. So yeah, it will be
Speaker 1: really interesting to see how that plays out politically, because
Speaker 1: Apple could say, well, we'll just make sure that this
Speaker 1: doesn't get featured in any way, so that exactly, it's
Speaker 1: not that we might not necessarily remove it from the store,
Speaker 1: but we don't have to, you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: to profile it in the store either. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the comic book world who
Speaker 1: were up in arms about it when it happened as well,
Speaker 1: because they felt like that the in app purchases allowed
Speaker 1: for more sort of um, compulsive buying or impulsive rather buying. Uh,
Speaker 1: while you were reading, like let's say you finished Holk
Speaker 1: number twelve and you said, wow, I immediately want to
Speaker 1: read Hulk number thirteen. All you have to do is
Speaker 1: just hit a button and it would it would charge
Speaker 1: your credit card. Yeah, totally, And now you have to,
Speaker 1: you know, go to to the desktop version, pay for
Speaker 1: it there, and then download it in. So they're worried.
Speaker 1: I think they're worried about the money, but I'll be
Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see what the figures look like,
Speaker 1: because numbers were very high. Ninety million dollars digital comics made,
Speaker 1: which was almost a thirty percent increase over the year
Speaker 1: before that. If you look at year over year gains,
Speaker 1: it looks the story seems to be negative if you
Speaker 1: were to just look at the percentages, and it's only
Speaker 1: because you don't realize how young this industry is. So
Speaker 1: from year one to year two it was a seven increase,
Speaker 1: and then you have like a two hundred something percent increase,
Speaker 1: and then a hundred something percent an increase, and now
Speaker 1: a thirty percent increase, and you think, wait, that increase
Speaker 1: is going down, But you have to realize that that
Speaker 1: year one that was like a million dollars and year
Speaker 1: two was eight million dollars. So the figures, while while
Speaker 1: the percentages are going down, the actual figures of money
Speaker 1: are are much higher. We're talking ninety million. Now, that's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money for something that's still so
Speaker 1: young as this this particular form of distribution, and it's
Speaker 1: still a smaller percentage than print holds in the industry,
Speaker 1: but it is gaining. At the end of every year,
Speaker 1: when you see interviews with comic book creators or publishers
Speaker 1: or editors and they say, you know, they're asked what
Speaker 1: their prediction is for the following year. They usually say
Speaker 1: digital is going to get bigger and it and it
Speaker 1: always does, right. And the nice thing for for the
Speaker 1: comics industry right now is that it does not appear
Speaker 1: to be taking a huge like it's not taking that
Speaker 1: chunk out of the print side. I think that for
Speaker 1: one thing, the success of comics and other forms of media.
Speaker 1: And granted, you know we should say comics are go
Speaker 1: well beyond superheroes. Superheroes is what we always think about
Speaker 1: because they are the high profile ones, but comics are
Speaker 1: all sorts of genres, not just superheroes. But I would
Speaker 1: say that the superhero successes at the box office recently
Speaker 1: Marvel in particular, have really helped drive more interest in
Speaker 1: comic books. UM yeah, And and interestingly enough digital has
Speaker 1: had a hand in that as well too, So like,
Speaker 1: for instance, UM, Guardians of the Galaxy just I think
Speaker 1: I read today it just hit seven hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: for for sales in UM. Before Guardians of the Galaxy
Speaker 1: came out, they Marvel knew that that property was fairly
Speaker 1: unknown amongst people unless they were like hardcore comic book fans,
Speaker 1: and so through digital they started publishing digital first only
Speaker 1: comics about the characters about Rocket Raccoon and Groot and
Speaker 1: star Lord, trying to get people familiar with these characters
Speaker 1: for they were either free or like super cheap likes
Speaker 1: or something like that. So you would go, huh, I
Speaker 1: heard this, Guardians the Galaxy thing's gonna come out later
Speaker 1: this year. I'll click on that. Read that, and now
Speaker 1: I sort of have an idea of who this raccoon
Speaker 1: with machine guns is right going to the movie. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: and now I can understand how a raccoon can be
Speaker 1: an action hero, right yeah? Yeah uh. And another interesting
Speaker 1: note you have here going back to comics Ology is
Speaker 1: the comics Ology Submit program, which allows the the independent
Speaker 1: comics creators a chance at having their work featured and
Speaker 1: carried by comics Ology. Yeah, so comics Oology Submit. I
Speaker 1: think they unveiled that to two and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: It was it was at a south By Southwest event. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's what I was talking about earlier in
Speaker 1: terms of small press being able to find a place
Speaker 1: to distribute their comics since Diamond h raised their premiums Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so basically what you do, I've done it with one
Speaker 1: of my books. You submit your book, you upload the files,
Speaker 1: you um create an account through comics Ology. You have
Speaker 1: to have a an Amazon sinked payments account of course. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind so far. Yeah, it is. It's a lot
Speaker 1: like that, and um, they will review it and determine
Speaker 1: whether or not the content is safe for them to distribute.
Speaker 1: So um. For instance, Uh, one of my books actually
Speaker 1: got ding for music copyright because we had lyrics from
Speaker 1: a song in there, and so we haven't resolved that yet.
Speaker 1: But for instance, they wouldn't carry a book for that.
Speaker 1: But like I have a horror book that made it through.
Speaker 1: It's pretty it's pretty gory, and they're okay with that. Um,
Speaker 1: they format it specifically for their devices because they have
Speaker 1: a specialized I guess it's exclusive to comics Oology system
Speaker 1: of reading called guided view technology, which is basically it
Speaker 1: zooms in on the panels no matter what you're on,
Speaker 1: if you're on a desktop or tablet or a phone
Speaker 1: or whatever. It scales the panel to fit the screen
Speaker 1: of the device you're reading at the time, so it's
Speaker 1: it's readable and you can go panel by panel as
Speaker 1: opposed to page by page exactly. Yeah, I read a
Speaker 1: person's account of that, and they said it took some
Speaker 1: getting used to it first. It felt a little odd,
Speaker 1: just because you know, there's there's a certain way that
Speaker 1: you've become accustomed to reading comics. But once you get
Speaker 1: used to it, you really see the value in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am definitely a convert. Um. I love Guided You, Um,
Speaker 1: not just because comics Oology carries some of my books,
Speaker 1: but I love Guided You because it zooms in so
Speaker 1: close on the panels that I can really see almost
Speaker 1: at life size, the artists renderings of how they're working
Speaker 1: on stuff. Usually artists work at a much larger scale
Speaker 1: than what's printed, and so you get to see it
Speaker 1: at the scale that they were drawing it at, and
Speaker 1: the fine details that you normally wouldn't notice. And I
Speaker 1: really like that, um, and the it is it is interesting.
Speaker 1: It sort of changes the language of comics if you're
Speaker 1: talking about it in like a formalist perspective, because before,
Speaker 1: when you're reading common because you were looking at all
Speaker 1: the panels on a page simultaneously, but you were reading
Speaker 1: the panels in sequential order, whereas now, depending on the
Speaker 1: settings that you put in in in guided view, you'll
Speaker 1: just see the first panel, and I'll scroll those second
Speaker 1: panels so you won't necessarily see what's at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the page that you want to. So you could,
Speaker 1: in theory, as a creator, you could you could bank
Speaker 1: on certain things actually being a surprise without it having
Speaker 1: without requiring a page flip. Right, Yeah, like if you
Speaker 1: write exactly what you used to have as page turn
Speaker 1: cliff hangers, what you can now do within panel to
Speaker 1: panel if you if you so choose, that's really cool
Speaker 1: us as a storyteller, I really think that's neat to
Speaker 1: give extra tools like that. So we've got some other
Speaker 1: ones that you've listed here that we can kind of
Speaker 1: mention some of the other platforms, some of which were
Speaker 1: instrumental early on but never really stuck around someone, which
Speaker 1: are still around today. So why don't we go through
Speaker 1: some of those. Okay, So let's start with long Box,
Speaker 1: which was created by a comic book creator named I
Speaker 1: think he pronounced his name Rance Hoseley. He is most
Speaker 1: known for being the editor of It's a book called
Speaker 1: Comic Book Tattoo that was a compilation of comic book
Speaker 1: stories based on Torre Amos songs, but he's done other
Speaker 1: comics work. For a number of years now. He developed
Speaker 1: the idea for long Box back in two thousands and seven,
Speaker 1: and I remember being I was at the Hero's Con
Speaker 1: convention in North Carolina pushing my books and he had
Speaker 1: he had just done a panel about long Box, and
Speaker 1: everybody who went to that panel came running down to
Speaker 1: the floor and they're like, Oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: going to be the next big thing, this is going
Speaker 1: to be the big break for books. We've all got
Speaker 1: to sign up with this guy. And then it completely flopped. Um,
Speaker 1: it just I don't know if it was technology issues
Speaker 1: or business related issues or what, but long Box didn't
Speaker 1: come out at a pace that was competitive enough, competitive
Speaker 1: enough with comics ology, and it was largely focused on
Speaker 1: desktop reading rather than mobile and tablet reading. So I
Speaker 1: think in the end that is probably what killed it.
Speaker 1: Uh and and and it's I think he ceased running
Speaker 1: it as a company in and in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: That's the year when the iPhone came out. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: no one was predicting the huge move to mobile at
Speaker 1: that time because there there had not been a smartphone
Speaker 1: to take off, at least in the United States and
Speaker 1: the consumer marketplace. I mean, you had executives running around
Speaker 1: with blackberries, and that was and nobody was thinking about
Speaker 1: reading comics on their BlackBerry and so. And then of
Speaker 1: course the iPad, Like there had been tablet computers before,
Speaker 1: but no one had made one that really appealed to
Speaker 1: the general consumer. That iPad wouldn't come out until two
Speaker 1: and when the iPad came out, comics Ology was already
Speaker 1: in business. But I remember then too, When the iPad
Speaker 1: came out, a lot of people were like, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is going to kill print because everybody's going to move
Speaker 1: to digital. They're going to prefer the tablet and not
Speaker 1: having to have you know, actual physical lung boxes stacked
Speaker 1: up in their basement or their closets somewhere, just having
Speaker 1: their comics backed up on a hard drive. But that
Speaker 1: hasn't necessarily happened yet. Most digital readers still read print. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't really dismiss the like there are people who
Speaker 1: really enjoy collecting, like they love to have the physical collection,
Speaker 1: the physical representation of the thing they love. There's an
Speaker 1: emotional attachment to that. Same thing is true for people
Speaker 1: who really love books. There are people who will argue
Speaker 1: till the end of time that a physical book is
Speaker 1: going to be a superior experience than having something digital.
Speaker 1: I used to be one of those people. Then I
Speaker 1: moved into a house that has less space, and now
Speaker 1: I trumpet the value of the electronic format. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: actually moved completely digital with my comics other than uh
Speaker 1: like hard bound ex exclusive editions that I can't download
Speaker 1: onto my device. Uh but yeah, about two years ago,
Speaker 1: I used to get all my comics through direct mail,
Speaker 1: and then I did the math and it turned out
Speaker 1: that it was going to be cheaper and faster for
Speaker 1: me to get them digitally and I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: have to fill up my closet anymore with all these
Speaker 1: books on the shelf. Right. The downside being that you
Speaker 1: can't uh one day end up selling your your collection
Speaker 1: for something that Yeah. Yeah, even with some of the
Speaker 1: DRM stuff that we'll talk about later, I doubt that
Speaker 1: any of my the PDFs of my comments are going
Speaker 1: to sell for anything. So another one that we have
Speaker 1: here is Graphically. Yeah. Graphically is a really interesting company,
Speaker 1: and again I had personal experience with them. They carried
Speaker 1: a book of mine as well. Was started by a
Speaker 1: guy named Michael Baldwin, who is largely known as the
Speaker 1: guy who coined hashtag follow Friday on Twitter. But he um,
Speaker 1: I've had some conversations with him, especially when I was
Speaker 1: working with graphically and for distributing my book, and he's
Speaker 1: he's a really cool guy, but he sees himself as
Speaker 1: sort of like a startup mentor and helps out other startups. Graphically. Um.
Speaker 1: They again weren't really able to compete with comics Ology
Speaker 1: in terms of the publishers that they were getting exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to and how the their comics were read, the
Speaker 1: actual consumption of the product. So in April of uh,
Speaker 1: they emailed all of their creators and I received this
Speaker 1: email and said, Hey, we are turning into an e
Speaker 1: book company instead, and so what we're gonna do now is,
Speaker 1: rather than have a digital comics platform for devices, we're
Speaker 1: going to offer distributing your comics to all of the
Speaker 1: more popular e book platforms. So kindle, Uh, Cobo, is
Speaker 1: Cobo even still around? I don't know that it's still around,
Speaker 1: but I do remember it. Yeah, Cobo. They did Nook,
Speaker 1: Google and iTunes, obviously, and so if you are already
Speaker 1: one of their partners, they automatically did that for you.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to submit a new book. You
Speaker 1: would pay a fee, you'd get an I sp N number,
Speaker 1: and they would distribute it to those uh different systems.
Speaker 1: That didn't work out so well for them. They tried
Speaker 1: to sort of market it as a children's book market
Speaker 1: rather than comics, and that didn't really work out for them,
Speaker 1: and in May of this year they closed their doors. Uh.
Speaker 1: The stories that I've heard are that, uh, they weren't
Speaker 1: acquired by this company, but that six of their remaining
Speaker 1: employees were hired by a company called Blurb that specializes
Speaker 1: in print on demand books and then uh, sadly some
Speaker 1: of the creators have been kind of left out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been uh a number of complaints that creators
Speaker 1: who were expecting payment from Graphically never saw a check
Speaker 1: show up in their bank account or their direct deposits
Speaker 1: show up four books that they sold through graphic And
Speaker 1: this this is kind of it's sort of a microcosm
Speaker 1: of what you saw with the dot com bubble verse too.
Speaker 1: You see like a flood of competitors and then h well,
Speaker 1: with the dot com bubble, it was just suddenly confidence
Speaker 1: totally was pulled away from the entire industry. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: in the same way iTunes rose to the top of
Speaker 1: the MP three game. I would say that Comxology has
Speaker 1: sort of carved itself out, you know, a niche for
Speaker 1: for comic digital comics. Yeah. I like that you have
Speaker 1: i Verse here because of course they they distribute my
Speaker 1: favorite comic of all time, Archie. Yeah. Yeah, Archie comics
Speaker 1: are getting to be awesome. Man, Like, there's been some
Speaker 1: really cool stuff that's been happening in the Archie universe lately.
Speaker 1: Like they have this horror book called Afterlife with Archie
Speaker 1: that is just I love this stuff. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about the one about like looking into the future,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, there's some pretty crazy stuff. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: been doing some really kind of progressive, interesting stuff with Archie.
Speaker 1: But yeah, because you would not have predicted. No, it's
Speaker 1: not the past of arch comics. Yeah, but yeah, they're
Speaker 1: exclusively distributed through I Verse and their app is called
Speaker 1: Comics Plus and I Versus another one that had difficulty
Speaker 1: competing with Comics Ology. They haven't closed their doors yet,
Speaker 1: and really like they're the niche that they're trying to
Speaker 1: make for themselves right now is that they want to
Speaker 1: distribute comics to libraries as um the same way that
Speaker 1: like Overdrive distributes e books to libraries, and so they've
Speaker 1: made a library edition of their app and their marketing
Speaker 1: themselves pretty heavily to the library world. So we'll see
Speaker 1: if if that play is out or not. A lot
Speaker 1: of it's gonna depend on licensing with their publishers. Then
Speaker 1: you've got dark Horse where they have their own app. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dark Horse is interesting and that unlike a lot of
Speaker 1: other companies who all just signed on with comics Ology
Speaker 1: or i vers or graphically, dark Horse said hold up,
Speaker 1: we're not going to just jump into this digital comics game.
Speaker 1: And they waited and developed their own app. So again
Speaker 1: they're not having to split person scentage write that distributor
Speaker 1: there because they own the huge chunk of it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing there is that, you know, this
Speaker 1: is one of those deals that makes it tough to
Speaker 1: be a consumer in the sense that you can't go
Speaker 1: to a one stop shop and get all the things
Speaker 1: you want. You have to have multiple apps. If you
Speaker 1: are a true connoiseur of comics and you like lots
Speaker 1: of titles across lots of publishers, it makes it more complicated,
Speaker 1: like with reading the comics themselves. You have to really
Speaker 1: be aware of the landscape and the almost continuity of
Speaker 1: of where to get digital comics, yeah, because they're kind
Speaker 1: of all over the place right now. Then you've got
Speaker 1: Electric Comics that was just announced this year and they
Speaker 1: haven't actually, as far as I know, distributed or produced anything.
Speaker 1: But it's the claim to fame is that Alan Moore,
Speaker 1: who you know wrote Watchmen and From Hell and Leak
Speaker 1: of Extraordinary Gentleman, is widely regarded as one of the
Speaker 1: best writers of comics. He is part of the team
Speaker 1: that is putting together Electrocomics, along with his daughter Leah
Speaker 1: Moore and her husband John Reppiano. And then we've got
Speaker 1: this self published category here. Yeah. So some people have
Speaker 1: decided that rather than sign on with comicsz Oology or
Speaker 1: or any of these other distribution services, that what they'll
Speaker 1: do is they'll put out their own comics, but they'll
Speaker 1: do it as PDFs and uh. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: the Radiohead model of distributing an album digitally. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the the two guys who are really at the forefront
Speaker 1: of this are Brian Cavan and Marcos Martine, who produce
Speaker 1: a book called The Private Eye and their Their digital
Speaker 1: distribution company is called Panel Syndicate. And so these are
Speaker 1: d M free, DRM free downloads of their books. You
Speaker 1: choose how much you pay for them, which is an
Speaker 1: interesting model as well. And uh and basically you can
Speaker 1: do whatever you want with the PDF. Once you've downloaded,
Speaker 1: you can also get Sorry, there are other formats too.
Speaker 1: I mean I primarily read PDFs, but there's CBZ, which
Speaker 1: is a comics reader type type software. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting because it does display both sides of the
Speaker 1: democratization of the web. Yeah. And but I would say this,
Speaker 1: like with radio Head, the reason why these guys are
Speaker 1: able to succeed is because they're both already big names
Speaker 1: in the world of comics. Brian Kavon wrote for Lost
Speaker 1: and like, uh, you know is uh it was fairly
Speaker 1: successful with the books that he wrote for Marvel and
Speaker 1: independently and is still writing. He still he writes an
Speaker 1: independent book for Image right now called Saga that's incredibly successful. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that later. Actually Saga actually ties
Speaker 1: into some of those digital comics uh stuff. But the
Speaker 1: thing that's really interesting about the Private Eye this is
Speaker 1: like maybe only a month ago, is they announced that
Speaker 1: they had made Uh they were vague about it, but
Speaker 1: they said six figures in terms of dollars that they've
Speaker 1: made off of their book and a number of downloads,
Speaker 1: which is pretty big for an independent comic book. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you're with such a you know, dramatic different
Speaker 1: approach to pricing. I mean the fact that it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that that you the cynic immediately thinks.
Speaker 1: So everyone's just gonna go for the lowest amount of
Speaker 1: or they'll wait till they'll they'll they'll give their friend
Speaker 1: a nickel and then the friend downloads in since it's
Speaker 1: CRM free, that just copy. But that's not what we're seeing,
Speaker 1: which is great. Um. I also like that it is
Speaker 1: a great illustration, Like you point out, you know, these
Speaker 1: are guys who are known, so the average creator is
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to see any kind of success on
Speaker 1: the same level as what they saw. And also it
Speaker 1: shows that, um, you know, you can try and go
Speaker 1: it alone, but it is often a lot easier if
Speaker 1: you're using an established platform. We see this across all
Speaker 1: sorts of media as well. YouTube is a great example. Right,
Speaker 1: I could create my own video web video stuff, not
Speaker 1: use YouTube but that's where the audience is, and that's
Speaker 1: that's where I'm going to get the most eyes. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's also they've already done a lot of the
Speaker 1: work for me, so sure if I have I try
Speaker 1: to monetize it, they're going to take a cut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they have a pre built in monetization system where
Speaker 1: the Brian Cavan and Marcos Martin are having to do
Speaker 1: their own books on this too. I would assume or
Speaker 1: pay somebody to do it right, right, which is another
Speaker 1: that's another expense and another another thing that you're accountable for. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then we've got Marvel Unlimited. Yeah, so Marvel. Both Marvel
Speaker 1: and d c uh distribute their comics through Comics, Oology
Speaker 1: and other platforms. But Marvel has this thing called Marvel Unlimited,
Speaker 1: which I'm a subscriber to. I just subscribed in the
Speaker 1: last couple of months and I've been enjoying it. It's
Speaker 1: ten dollars a month and you get access to almost
Speaker 1: their entire lie very up to six months ago of publications.
Speaker 1: So you don't get comics that have been printed in
Speaker 1: the last six months, but everything before that. Um, there's
Speaker 1: some obscure stuff that isn't in there. If you're really
Speaker 1: hunting down for some weird comic Marvel published in or
Speaker 1: something like that, you might not find it, but there
Speaker 1: is a lot of content in there. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you factor in that, like the average print comic
Speaker 1: cost nowadays, uh, if you just read three books on
Speaker 1: Marvel Unlimited a month, it's worth your money, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I've seen. One of the biggest criticisms I've
Speaker 1: seen toward digital comics is not any sort of limitation
Speaker 1: that is due to the technology. It's that you actually
Speaker 1: have the the potential to have and entire backlog available
Speaker 1: for purchase. So for those so those folks who want
Speaker 1: the complete collection of a title, uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: may be prohibitively expensive or impractical for them to do
Speaker 1: that with a print edition, and they may be they
Speaker 1: may just want to have I just want this full story,
Speaker 1: I want this character arc, or I want this uh
Speaker 1: incredible storyline that that went through multiple issues from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, and I can't find it in the physical format,
Speaker 1: or if I do, you know, one of those issues
Speaker 1: is ridiculously expensive. So item type stuff. Sure, yeah, So
Speaker 1: this would be the opportunity for companies to actually continue
Speaker 1: to make money off of old I p they have
Speaker 1: in ellectual property that they have um, Because for the
Speaker 1: most part, if you're going out to a comic bookstore
Speaker 1: and you see a copy of a comic that you
Speaker 1: really wanted and it happens to be a few hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: here's the news flash. That few hundred dollars is not
Speaker 1: going to the company published it. So this is a
Speaker 1: way for them to actually make money off of stuff
Speaker 1: they've already made aid um. I imagine that the rights
Speaker 1: issues are probably pretty complicated with that too, depending upon
Speaker 1: how the contracts were formed for the various writers and artists.
Speaker 1: That is a story all on its own. For the
Speaker 1: comics world. That would be a whole another public podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we probably a whole another show exactly, not an episode
Speaker 1: that would be we could do comics stuff and have
Speaker 1: just a and and arc episodes that all talked about
Speaker 1: the complicated contract issues that have plagued the comics industry.
Speaker 1: And as we're recording this last week, the Curbya States
Speaker 1: settled with Marvel actually, which is pretty historic. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was one of those big stories for a really long time.
Speaker 1: So this is uh, you know, it's not a huge
Speaker 1: shock to me that the entire backlog is not available.
Speaker 1: It is the dream right to have that that access
Speaker 1: where you can suddenly say, like I've always been scared
Speaker 1: to ask people, but now I can finally find out
Speaker 1: what Secret Wars really was all about. Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. Well it's very timely. They just announced this
Speaker 1: week that there's another Secret Wars. They're doing a third one.
Speaker 1: It would be the third one, right, they're not going
Speaker 1: to call it Secret Wars three. I think it's just
Speaker 1: being called Secret Wars. But yeah, at least that's if
Speaker 1: they're bringing the Beyond Her back. I'm happy. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: any rate. Well, so we talked a bit about the pricing.
Speaker 1: The pricing can range from around the same price as
Speaker 1: what you would find for the print book. Sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: find it cheaper um. And we also talked about how
Speaker 1: with the platform taking a cut and the distributor taking
Speaker 1: a cut, and the creators getting a small cut, sometimes
Speaker 1: a small cut, that it can sometimes be less profitable
Speaker 1: for a creator than the print depending upon the actual
Speaker 1: how that all falls out. Sure, And I will say
Speaker 1: this though too, that like once you've put your book
Speaker 1: on a platform, uh, there aren't costs involved. Actually for you,
Speaker 1: you don't have to pay comics Ology to put your
Speaker 1: book on their platform yet across your fingers. They just
Speaker 1: take a cut of what you make, right exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, Like, for instance, my book that's on
Speaker 1: there right now, I think I made like forty cents
Speaker 1: off of it, like last quarter or something. I've I've
Speaker 1: seen my dad's a writer. I've seen royalty checks about that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, so I mean I'm not living off
Speaker 1: of it, but at least people are reading it. But
Speaker 1: the neat thing is that, you know, while you could
Speaker 1: say the cut for a creator is smaller, the potential
Speaker 1: audience is larger. Like the fact that you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna find comic book stores that aren't going to carry
Speaker 1: certain titles just because they figure that they're the readers
Speaker 1: aren't that interested, or maybe they've only ordered a few
Speaker 1: copies of them and therefore there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: for Yeah, that's definitely true. Um. There is some regulation
Speaker 1: about what kind of comics can be distributed through comics ologies,
Speaker 1: app um, but that is mostly content graphic violence or
Speaker 1: sexuality stuff like that. But yeah, independent small press stuff
Speaker 1: is in there just as much as Wolverine and Secret
Speaker 1: Wars or whatever big you know, Superman, uh title that
Speaker 1: you can think of, and they're by and large. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could say that it's an equal playing field, but uh,
Speaker 1: those companies have part you know, handshake deals with comics Ology.
Speaker 1: They're featured in the the really like hot click areas
Speaker 1: on the site or on the app, and uh and
Speaker 1: they also have great sales. Every Monday, Marvel does a
Speaker 1: sale where some Marvel series is cents a book or
Speaker 1: something like that. And pretty much every weekend there's a
Speaker 1: big sale from a number of publishers. And what's what's
Speaker 1: interesting there to me? As well as that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we could we could see a lot of implementation of
Speaker 1: especially now that Amazon has Comics Oology, seeing more implementation
Speaker 1: of the sort of algorithms Amazon uses to suggest alternate
Speaker 1: or additional titles, things that you would like based upon
Speaker 1: the stuff that you already have shown an interest in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Comics Oology did do that and does do that. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to get better as part of their acquisition.
Speaker 1: And that's fantastic that that becomes a discovery tool. I mean,
Speaker 1: discoveries like the big thing for a lot of different
Speaker 1: apps out there, and you know, it was a real
Speaker 1: buzzword for a while, but it's generally one of those
Speaker 1: things that I rely upon, like whether it's Netflix, Amazon, whatever.
Speaker 1: Pandora is a great example of of me discovering stuff
Speaker 1: I did not know about. But because of my my
Speaker 1: viewing habits or my consumption habits, I am I am
Speaker 1: almost guaranteed to enjoy. So. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that's really uh unique about digital comics as well, at
Speaker 1: least in theory, is that we know that there is
Speaker 1: a stigma for certain readers of walking into a comic
Speaker 1: bookstore and buying a comic book, uh, and that they,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason it is, they may feel uncomfortable about
Speaker 1: doing that or and and and for that reason maybe
Speaker 1: quit reading comics years ago. With digital comics, you don't
Speaker 1: have that stigma because you're just sitting on your device.
Speaker 1: And so in theory, we're getting back an audience A
Speaker 1: large part of that, and I mean, you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're kind of we were dancing around it right there,
Speaker 1: but a large part that is the female audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh definitely, yeah, um they right, you see all kinds
Speaker 1: of One of my favorite sites that focuses on comics
Speaker 1: and sci fi popular culture is the Mary Sue, and
Speaker 1: it focuses on it from a female perspective. Uh, and yes,
Speaker 1: they often joke about the ideas of what it's like
Speaker 1: to be a woman going into a comic book store, Um, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're buying this for your boyfriend. Yeah, and sometimes those
Speaker 1: are stereotypical, and sometimes they are. It depends on your
Speaker 1: local comic book store. Yeah, it depends on the culture
Speaker 1: and environment that they build there. But yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is based more on on kind of
Speaker 1: the generalized idea of what a comic store is. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've we've seen that depiction multiple times in various forms
Speaker 1: of media. There's obviously like the comic book guy from
Speaker 1: the Simpsons. Yeah, exactly, that stereotype right there. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: actually been in those comic stores though, so yeah, that
Speaker 1: was back in the eighties. Maybe they're a little better
Speaker 1: than that now that We've got a couple of comic
Speaker 1: bookstores in Atlanta that I've seen, uh, that seemed to
Speaker 1: be pretty cool about that sort of thing. Atlanta has
Speaker 1: a decent comic book community, both in terms of creators
Speaker 1: and and uh retailers. Yeah, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: this regulation issue that you've you've laid out in the notes,
Speaker 1: because it is really interesting. It's one of those things that, uh,
Speaker 1: when you first think about, you would think, oh, the
Speaker 1: digital approach would be something that would free you up
Speaker 1: from the restrictions that you might face in a brick
Speaker 1: and mortar store. But that's not necessarily the case, right,
Speaker 1: especially when you're working together with big companies like Apple.
Speaker 1: Um So, Apple is very careful about what goes into
Speaker 1: their ecosystem. Um I think most tech stuff listeners are
Speaker 1: probably aware of that and how controlled the environment is
Speaker 1: in terms of what apps you can download and what
Speaker 1: contents of And what's interesting is that they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: publish what the criteria are exactly. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like submitting a film to the m p A. A
Speaker 1: don't you can never be sure if you're going to
Speaker 1: get that hard are if you're gonna get a PG
Speaker 1: thirteen that sort of thing. In a similar way with
Speaker 1: the Apple app store, you don't you don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: you know what things are going to be, uh, what
Speaker 1: things are just gonna glide on by, or what things
Speaker 1: are going to hit at a brick wall. It does
Speaker 1: It really depends. And so what's interesting is that yes, Um,
Speaker 1: comics Ology was reluctant to distribute some material for a
Speaker 1: while and then UM back to this Brian Cavan, who
Speaker 1: is a pretty well known guy and has a popular
Speaker 1: book called Saga. In April, Saga number twelve came out
Speaker 1: and it had a very small scene in it you
Speaker 1: would you would miss it if you blinked um of
Speaker 1: gay sex between two characters, and it was pulled out
Speaker 1: of the comics Oology store the day that it was released.
Speaker 1: People were furious about it, people meet being readers, I
Speaker 1: mean m Brian Cavan himself issued a statement about it
Speaker 1: and and thought that it was Apple, that it was
Speaker 1: because of Apple's censorship. It turned out that actually what
Speaker 1: was happening was that comics Ology, in anticipation of Apple's policies,
Speaker 1: were doing their own presensoring before they were submitting stuff.
Speaker 1: And so they saw that in the issue and they
Speaker 1: said there's no way that's going to get past Apple,
Speaker 1: and they didn't bother submitting it. And then I think
Speaker 1: like within two or three days this admitted to Apple
Speaker 1: and it was up in the store and everything was forgotten.
Speaker 1: But it's one of those things where because of Apple's
Speaker 1: reputation of the way they handle things in the App store,
Speaker 1: I mean Comics Oology. When you look at it, it's
Speaker 1: handling titles from so many different publishers. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a big business thing. If this were something
Speaker 1: where suddenly the Comics Oology app was was discontinued in
Speaker 1: the Apple Store, that would be catastrophic. So you can
Speaker 1: understand a year catastrophy, you can. You can understand there
Speaker 1: there there the way why they were being so conservative
Speaker 1: in that sense, although certainly some communication from Comics Oology
Speaker 1: might have been merited, I suspect that since then, so
Speaker 1: that was over a year ago, that they have developed
Speaker 1: a much better line of communication between their publishers and
Speaker 1: themselves regarding content like that. But that said, there is
Speaker 1: still content that's produced by fairly big publishers like Image Comics,
Speaker 1: who were the publisher of Saga, that you cannot buy
Speaker 1: in app through you know, you can't buy anything in
Speaker 1: app anymore through iOS, but through Android or other devices.
Speaker 1: Um so, like there's a book that's by Matt Fraction
Speaker 1: and a guy named chips at are Ski called Sex Criminals,
Speaker 1: has been pretty popular in the last year or two,
Speaker 1: and a couple of those issues have been banned from
Speaker 1: the the in app purchases. But if you go to
Speaker 1: their actual site, comics Oologies actual site, you can purchase
Speaker 1: them there and then download them later touch. It's just
Speaker 1: not one that you can get buy directly from the
Speaker 1: mobile device anymore. Well, uh one or the other. We
Speaker 1: mentioned the idea of DRM as well. How how that's
Speaker 1: a big issue. I mean, that's a big issue with
Speaker 1: any kind of media that's distributed over the Internet. U.
Speaker 1: There are of course outlets that are putting out files
Speaker 1: d r M free so that you don't have any
Speaker 1: restriction there. That seems to as a consumer, you want
Speaker 1: that because it means that you have the freedom to
Speaker 1: enjoy the content in whatever way you choose. UM. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a smartphone, I've got a tablet,
Speaker 1: I've got a laptop, I've got a desktop, and uh,
Speaker 1: I want you know, I'm not I don't have a
Speaker 1: big household, i don't have other people living with me
Speaker 1: other than my wife. So it's really just gonna be
Speaker 1: me looking at whatever the content is, and I want
Speaker 1: to be able to do it wherever. However, from a
Speaker 1: creator standpoint, a distributor standpoint. I totally understand the reticence
Speaker 1: to allow someone to do whatever they want with it,
Speaker 1: because what if I'm the guy who I live in
Speaker 1: a college dorm and I've got this thing, and now
Speaker 1: all the buddies that I have in my dorm, not
Speaker 1: just my dorm room, but my entire dorm now have
Speaker 1: it too, because I've made copies for them. That's the fear. Um.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, the music industry kind of bore
Speaker 1: this out. If you make something easy enough to purchase,
Speaker 1: and you make it easy enough to consume, people purchase
Speaker 1: it in the consume it and the the number of
Speaker 1: pirates who are actually illegally stealing stuff is relatively low.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a small number comparatively speaking. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: and it's shrinking too. Um. Piracy and comics was a
Speaker 1: big deal before digital comics were, uh, you know, coming
Speaker 1: around in two thousand and seven, because pirates comic pirates,
Speaker 1: that's a weird word to say, but they were scanning
Speaker 1: the pages in and then making their own PDF or
Speaker 1: CBC files, distributing on the torrents and such. Uh but
Speaker 1: so and and there was concern over that and how
Speaker 1: that was going to affect the print industry. But you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's still here. Um, But yeah, I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could go online right now and still find a
Speaker 1: bunch of piracy sites. However, Um, you're right in that
Speaker 1: digital comics and the ease of purchasing it and the
Speaker 1: better reading experience that you get through it. You don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about getting a virus. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: another big deal that that actually is true for all
Speaker 1: of the media as well. Yeah. I think I think
Speaker 1: it's only when you see the resistance from the the
Speaker 1: merchants side, or the distributor or the creator side. It's
Speaker 1: only then when you start to see the rise and
Speaker 1: piracy because people start to feel like there's no legitimate
Speaker 1: way for them to get the thing they want, but
Speaker 1: they still want that thing. There's actually a really cool story,
Speaker 1: and I didn't put this in the notes, but I'd
Speaker 1: love to tell it to you. So there's a guy
Speaker 1: named Steve Lieber who is a comic book artust. He
Speaker 1: lives in Portland, and he worked on an independent book
Speaker 1: called Underground with a writer named Jeff Parker. And when
Speaker 1: their book came out in trade format, Steve realized that
Speaker 1: on four Chan people were distributing links to pirated versions
Speaker 1: of Underground, and instead of getting upset and yelling at them,
Speaker 1: what he did was he went over and he started
Speaker 1: interacting with the community there and engaging with them and saying, oh, hey, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I just like you to know, like, the
Speaker 1: way that this book works out is that this is
Speaker 1: how we you know, this is how I make my
Speaker 1: money off of it. This is how I make my living.
Speaker 1: Here's the breakdown. He talked about that traditional breakdown of
Speaker 1: money between publisher and distributor and creator to them, and
Speaker 1: Underground saw this huge spike in orders on Amazon that month.
Speaker 1: I mean it was tremendous. The people said, oh cool,
Speaker 1: we get it. This guy, you know, needs to make
Speaker 1: a living off this stuff. We like his content, and
Speaker 1: they went and paid money for it. Yeah. I've seen
Speaker 1: that kind of story repeated in various forms of media.
Speaker 1: And now where these days, like in other kinds of media,
Speaker 1: you're seeing patron Patreon, and patrons and Patreon are supporting
Speaker 1: directly supporting the folks who are making the stuff that
Speaker 1: they love. And I'm a Patreon supporter of a couple
Speaker 1: of different things. Yeah, I am too. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so we're starting to see that there really is this
Speaker 1: this model there. The thing that needed to be there
Speaker 1: was the support system for it to happen exactly, and
Speaker 1: once it was there, it did. So it's interesting because
Speaker 1: you had the companies vilifying consumers and the consumers vilifying
Speaker 1: the companies, and then once the structure was there, everyone said, oh,
Speaker 1: now we can work together, we can actually do exactly
Speaker 1: and it turns out that it's ninety million dollars a
Speaker 1: year worth of business. Yes. Now, to conclude this great,
Speaker 1: great conversation, we have to bring up something that kind
Speaker 1: of shows the the vulnerability of the comics ology approach.
Speaker 1: I'm specifically talking about an event that happened back in
Speaker 1: March two thousand thirteen, the beginning of South By Southwest,
Speaker 1: when Marvel decided to do a big event by giving
Speaker 1: away seven hundred first issues. Uh, and it turned out
Speaker 1: some people wanted them. Yeah, a lot of people like
Speaker 1: those Marvel comics, and everybody tried to download all seven
Speaker 1: hundred of them all at the same time. Christian, let
Speaker 1: me ask you something. When a huge number of people
Speaker 1: try to access a limited amount of information on a
Speaker 1: limited number of servers, what typically happens. Well, it crashed. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and it was not just the Marvel comics that were
Speaker 1: for free that crashed, but all of the comics available
Speaker 1: on comics Ology in total, which included the Comics Oology
Speaker 1: Submit books that had launched also to by Southwest. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of independent creators who were like
Speaker 1: I already have a hard enough time competing with Wolverine
Speaker 1: and spider Man for dollars, but now because they did
Speaker 1: this big giveaway, I think Comics Oology was shut down
Speaker 1: for like three days, I want to say, and this
Speaker 1: is this really goes to show the vulnerability of having
Speaker 1: a cloud based kind of approach to anything. So people
Speaker 1: even who had purchased stuff already, we're having trouble accessing things.
Speaker 1: I couldn't access things. Yeah, and that's part of the
Speaker 1: DRM thing too. That's been big with comic Xology this
Speaker 1: year is that a lot of people argued against digital
Speaker 1: comics for a while because, as they said, well, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you're just renting your comics,
Speaker 1: You're not you don't own them. You don't own a
Speaker 1: file that you can turn to. It's off in the
Speaker 1: clouds somewhere, and in the last year, Comics Oology is
Speaker 1: twice i think, made announcements that a number of publishers
Speaker 1: have gone DRM free, so you can actually download the
Speaker 1: file as opposed to just accessing the po Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I'm in the process of back downloading my entire
Speaker 1: archive onto like one terabyte hard drive at my house
Speaker 1: right now. Um. Yeah, I mean. The the beauty of
Speaker 1: the cloud is that it allows you to to access
Speaker 1: your content on whatever device you know that has been
Speaker 1: authorized for it, wherever you are. That's the beauty. The
Speaker 1: downside is that if the cloud service goes down, you
Speaker 1: don't have access to that material. And uh, in fact,
Speaker 1: a very similar thing we can mention. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: a day, I think it was Tuesday, um, where Google
Speaker 1: Docs had some issues earlier in the day and suddenly
Speaker 1: we couldn't access Google Docs. And a lot of us
Speaker 1: are using Google Docs now to help create show notes
Speaker 1: like what we're doing right, and then suddenly you don't
Speaker 1: have access to that and you realize this is a
Speaker 1: brilliant tool until it doesn't work. Yeah. And and I
Speaker 1: think we all have this kind of magical idea that
Speaker 1: a company as big as Google could ever possibly crash,
Speaker 1: but it happens, It does happen. It's it's again, you know,
Speaker 1: not to put too much of a negative on cloud computing,
Speaker 1: because obviously the same sort of problems can happen on
Speaker 1: a single machine. If I had if I had all
Speaker 1: these notes just stored on my computer and my computer crash,
Speaker 1: I'd be just as you know, out of luck. Or
Speaker 1: also like if a brick and mortar store said we're
Speaker 1: gonna give away seven marble issues every person who walks
Speaker 1: in the door, you know, like there'd be so many
Speaker 1: people inside the store if it might fall over, the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, with the same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: with a brick and mortar store saying we're not going
Speaker 1: to carry this title because we object to the content exactly.
Speaker 1: It's it's the sort of thing that does happen. So
Speaker 1: when it happens digitally, we tend to react in a
Speaker 1: very specific way. But if you think of it like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we just had, you know, translate this into
Speaker 1: an actual physical location, would we be as surprised if
Speaker 1: it happened there? And often the answer is no, it's
Speaker 1: just that we see that they think there's a different
Speaker 1: set of criteria to judge the digital experience from the
Speaker 1: physical it is that I want it now sort of
Speaker 1: mentality that we've become accustomed to with our content is
Speaker 1: the fact that the fact that digital can allow you
Speaker 1: to have it now is you know, it'sn't like we
Speaker 1: said and enabling. If I'm trying to watch Netflix and
Speaker 1: the rings starts spinning ten minutes into a movie that
Speaker 1: I'm watching, I get frustrated. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge, you know what, like there's how many
Speaker 1: customers as Netflix have out there, and maybe my bandwidth
Speaker 1: isn't so great or something. Yeah, I usually I just
Speaker 1: get mad at my internet service provider. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: common thing at my house. Well, Christian, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show and for suggesting this
Speaker 1: this topic. It was really cool to get into this.
Speaker 1: And uh, for people who are interested in learning more
Speaker 1: about your work, why don't you tell them where to
Speaker 1: find it? Yeah, the best place to find me is
Speaker 1: at Christian Sager dot tumbler dot com. That's where my
Speaker 1: personal work is posted, um, the comics stuff that I
Speaker 1: work on, and also I have links to the content
Speaker 1: that I work on here at how Stuff Works. Um,
Speaker 1: but you can find me here at how Stuff Works. UM,
Speaker 1: I write for and sometimes host brain Stuff. I'm currently
Speaker 1: writing for our newest show, What the Stuff, which I
Speaker 1: think your first episode debut was while I was on vacation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I used to write for Stuff of Genius and
Speaker 1: host new episodes of Bad, but that shows on hiatus
Speaker 1: while we're working on new content. Yeah, but keep your
Speaker 1: eyes up and never know when something that we put
Speaker 1: on the back shelf comes back up. Well, Christian, thank
Speaker 1: you again, and guys, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, please get intepted me let
Speaker 1: me know what you think. Send me an email. The
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or brought me a line on Twitter, Facebook or Tumbler.
Speaker 1: The handle it all three of those is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and we'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics because
Speaker 1: it has Stuff works dot com