A Thought on Longbox, iPhone Apps and the Future of Digital Comics Distribution

I’ve become quite involved with the digital distribution of comics in the past year, helping Top Shelf launch some of its books on the Amazon Kindle, sifting through the various iPhone third-party distributors and then moderating a panel on digital distribution at Heroes Con this past weekend.

This seems like a good point to look into the possible impacts on mainstream publishers of digital publishing, particularly as Rantz Hoseley’s Longbox project launches (read a very good summary of the project at iFanboy).

One absolutely undeniable trend we’ve been seeing is the monthly single-issue comics sales falling off, evident as much in Marvel and DC’s sales slipping consistently in the long term (does anyone have a good historical chart of this?) to Diamond’s recent move to cut off titles that don’t sell in high enough numbers.

In the long run, then, it appears the current method of creating monthly comics and repackaging those as trades won’t be sustainable. So, the obvious question is, why not just eschew single issues?

It’s a good thought, except as was pointed out by folks from Marvel and DC during Heroes Con panels, it doesn’t appear to be economically feasible to go direct to a trade either. For one, the single issues serve to promote the trades, but more importantly, paying an artist to create a full trade is too much of an up-front investment to make for something that won’t see a return for months or a year. Even Jeff Smith’s Shazam book with DC, a sure-seller if there ever was one, came out first as single issues.

As outmoded as issues have become, they serve an important purpose by grabbing attention and spreading out risk. So, if it’s impossible (or at least not financially feasible) to kill off single issues, but it’s also impossible to keep producing them forever, how do comics publishers survive?

Therein lies the best potential of digital distribution. Let’s say that one form or another of e-comics, whether it’s Longbox or one of the many iPhone apps or Kindle, takes off and single issue sales continue falling. Publishers could then skip the printed single issues, instead releasing issues directly to an app, Longbox or the Kindle (or to a combination of places, as most digital distributors are offering non-exclusive contracts).

With enough digital readers (I think they’re out there, which is backed up by IDW’s Transformers books dominating the iTunes bookstore) paying, say, 99 cents per issue (with the occasional free promotional offering), and zero print costs, a publisher most likely could cover the editorial costs with ease and turn a profit on the issues. Then they’d be able to turn around and print trades directly for the bookstore market, which is quickly becoming its own thing anyway.

There’s already a living, breathing analogy for this method, and it’s something comics publishers should watch closely. Ed Brubaker’s Angel of Death creation is a serial live-action story released online first (watch all episodes here), and then it will be shown as a whole movie on FX and released directly to DVD. The Web release serves to sell ads and promote the TV airing and the DVD, but because it wasn’t first done as a full season of episodes, there’s much less risk. That’s not to say no risk, but certainly less.

If Angel of Death proves successful (much like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog did last year), it could help prove that the Web isn’t just another outlet for the same old stuff, but an opportunity to rethink distribution and all at once both cure one of the biggest looming illnesses of the comic book industry and provide access to more readers than the industry has seen in a long, long time.

The one downside is that this would likely signal the death of the majority of comic book shops, unless they find a way to adapt.