Digital Comics Gaining Strength at Comic-Con 2013
July 2013 – At the 44th Comic-Con in San Diego, the crowds were the largest ever. As show that started as a celebration and community sharing artistic creativity in form of print comic books and artwork, has become an increasingly electronic centric show. The expo now features TV, movies, web shows, video games, and electronic content creation tools in addition to the collectibles and print comics. Since 2007, a new electronic platform has joined this content – the digital comic book.
From a humble beginning of under a $1M first year TAM, the sales of digital comics in 2013 should be over $100M. In 2012, the totals for the reported companies was over $70M, and continuing to grow. This triple digit growth was reported by most of the major publishers including IDW, DC Entertainment, DarkHorse, Marvel and Comixology. Other companies in the publishing game such as Image Comics have entered the market with a no DRM product. This is in response to the constant issue of piracy of digital content, the cost of fighting it and the impact on the end-user’s experience as a result of anti-piracy measures.
The market has expanded beyond just the publishers providing the content, but there are major distribution sites also selling the Digital Comics. These include Apple’s iBook, Amazon and Barns & Noble all as sellers of the products. The large variety in the marketplace is undoubtably Comixology that has 10’s of thousands of titles from over 75 publishers. They support iOS, Android, Windows, and the Kindle Fire. They have recently introduced subscription pricing and bundled pricing to their title selection. These are in addition to the standard single issue purchase and many free titles ( http://www.comixology.com/Free-Comics/comics-collection/1158 ).
The digital comics are typically held in the cloud for the reader so they are available as all platform content, rather than having to be downloaded multiple times. Companies like DarkHorse Digital are providing advanced capabilities for thier titles with zoom features and other tools as part of their reader. Most of the new titles are being made available in both print and digital form. Comixology and DarkHorse make an effort to have the digital version available on the same day as the print issues – hence the tradition of “comic book Wednesday” is un-effected by the new technology. Breaking the 8 figure TAM milestone, means the sector is not only on a roll, but it here to stay for quite a while as a secondary channel for the content.
