DC Comics Announces 1st Day Digital Distribution
- Scribbled on June 2nd, 2011 by Jordan Lund
- Filed in Industry News, Off Topic
With the nascent digital distribution of comics so far there has been one thing holding the industry back. No, not bootlegged .CBR and .CBZ files – it’s been the lack of an ability to keep current.
DC Comics, Marvel, IDW and others each have their own comic book buying and reading apps in the iOS marketplace, but when you go to buy comics there are two drawbacks:
- 1) A dazzlingly random selection of titles and issues. Global Frequency was one of the better 12 issue series to come out, and you can buy it digitally through D.C.’s store. Well, the first 11 issues anyway. The print version of #12 came out almost a decade ago but it’s still not online. I always liked the JSA books from D.C., but currenly the only legitimate digital copies you can get are three random issues from 2004.
- 2) When they do end up doing something right they botch the delivery system. $50 is a tiny price to pay for the first 25 issues of Batman from the 1940s, but the only way to do it through the DC Store is one book at a time. You don’t have the option of going “Yeah, give me 1-25″.
Fortunately, DC is tackling problem #1 with their newly announced initiative to do day and date digital publishing with the new issues of their comics coming out in September. The plan is to take 52 books, zap the numbering back to #1, and make the print and digital versions available on the same day. This will go a long way towards solving problem number one: consistency of content.
Now all they need to do is allow for an online subscription service that lets you add all the books you want into a shopping cart so you can buy them all at once instead of a single book at a time. The app does support push alerts, which is good, but if you buy a lot of titles then your iOS device will beep like crazy on Wednesdays when new books come out?
All in all, though, DC’s plan is a huge step forward for the online comics industry, it will be interesting to see if Marvel follows suit.
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