Category Archives: graphic novels

November 29, 2011   Morris   advice, comics, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, graphic novels, opinion  
9

What eBooks can learn from eComics

Digital publishing is changing the industry, from the author to the reader and everyone in between. The comic book industry is also turning digital. Now, I’ve been reading comic books since I was 8 years old, and I visit my local comic shop every week. Comics are as much a part of my personal reading as traditional prose is, so I’m very happy to see comics embracing new technology. But comics are facing many of the same problems the traditional book publishing world is dealing with, and more. For example, digital comics still have technical issues, with different apps providing different reading experiences with different ways of jumping from panel to panel, and still none of them can figure out how to satisfyingly reproduce a full-page spread.

However, I have also noticed some very positive trends in digital comic publishing.

(For those of you who are unaware of how comics are published: Comics are released every Wednesday. Hundreds of comics are released every week, and comic book stores display the new releases on the walls or on magazine racks. As the comic-book-buyer looks at the new releases, he or she grabs what they like – “pulling” it off the wall. New purchases have been lovingly nicknamed “pulls.” Comics are generally published serially, month to month. So Spider-Man Volume 1 will come out first week in January, and Volume 2 first week in February. Meanwhile, X-Men will come out on the second week of the month, and Captain America on the third, etc.)

I have said for the longest time that I refuse to buy an eReader until I get an ebook bundled with the purchase of a physical copy. (I simply prefer paper, and I don’t see myself buying a digital book and not wanting the physical copy on my bookshelf.) Marvel is going to start doing just that in January with their Ultimate line and several Graphic Novels.

Comixology, the leading digital comic retailer and online comic book resource, is utilizing what they call “digital storefronts,” so that the customers can buy digital comics though their local stores, and so continue to support them. The comics cost the same to the consumer, but the retailer is the specific shop – not Comixology.  Comixology also fully supports physical sales by linking your “pull list” – your picks for the week – with your local comic book shop, so that they hold them for you.

The incorporation of digital editions in the comic book world utilizes and embraces the brick-and-mortar, physical side of things.

I, for one, would like to see the traditional publishing world follow suit.

April 22, 2011   Michael   children's books, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, graphic novels, Michael  
4

Publishing in nine months

As always, when Mike Shatzkin blogs, I read.  And today he put out some thoughts on the future of publishing–the near future, just looking nine months down the line for the next Digital Book World conference.  As usual, I think he’s got a really good grasp on the changes and challenges ahead, including territory restrictions for e-books, selling and marketing directly to consumers, and the decline of the brick and mortar stores.

He’s also bullish about something that’s yet to appeal to me, a staunch e-book reader: illustrated e-books.  I love e-books–I buy at least one a week–and I love illustrated books of all sorts, from graphic novels to coffee table books.  But I’m having a hard time imagining my favorite illustrated books living on my iPad.  That’s not to say that I can’t imagine visually-oriented material doing well, things like the Elements app, for instance.  And, I do think there’s going to be a lot of creative and interesting interactive e-books for kids.  I just think I might have finally hit my own “but-what-about-the-smell-of-books” moment.  I love my illustrated books!  I love showing them off on my coffee table and bookshelves (and so many other surfaces around the apartment).  I like paging through them when I have a free moment, just ’cause they’re there.  Is it possible that I’m becoming a luddite?

No.  I like my tech, and I like the attendant usefulness and ease of digital products.  I’m sure I’ll find the illustrated e-book or book-like-product that will wow me to the point of purchase, and then I’ll start snapping up more of them.  But there’s no way I’m trading in my The Making of the Empire Strikes Back.

July 26, 2010   DG&B   fun, graphic novels, Jim, reading  
14

Jim reads comic books

by Jim

I remember first becoming aware of the concept that a comic book could also be a “real” book around the time that Maus hit Entertainment Weekly’s best of the year list about a million years ago. In the years since I started working at DGLM, graphic novels have gained more and more traction in sales and become increasingly respectable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about them for one incredibly obvious reason: I’ve started selling them. In the coming years, adaptations of a few of the novels I’ve sold will be hitting stores in graphic novel form. And as we move forward with these projects, I’m reading more and more books in the format and also becoming increasingly intrigued about how readers crossover from one format to the other. Take Laurell K. Hamilton: I’d guess that most of the folks buying her graphic novels were already fans looking forward to a different approach to the stories and characters they loved. But I have to imagine that there’s also a dedicated comic readership whose first exposure to Hamilton’s Anita Blake came through the adaptations.

While pondering this all, I also finally read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. If anyone else still hasn’t read it, you totally have to. It’s, well…amazing (truth in advertising!). and it relates here because it’s about two cousins who participate in the birth of the comics boom in the States in the 40s. It made me want to read more comic books and graphic novels. So I have.

I dug into Watchmen and was blown away by the richness of it all. Emboldened, I kept going. From memoirs of Iranian girlhood (Persepolis) to the biography of a mathematical philosopher (Logicomix) to tales of a dorky Canadian battling his girlfriends seven evil exes (Scott Pilgrim Saves the World), I’ve been incredibly impressed by the integration of art and language. It’s incredibly encouraging that so many artists and writers are committed to growing the format as its own art form.

Of course, the fact that it took me this long to really get behind the movement in full force probably speaks to a bit of snobbishness that I held onto until now.

I’d love to hear if any of our readers are graphic novel obsessives. And I’m completely open to suggestions for what to read next!