This Week’s New Comics: July 18, 2012
This week’s list of new comics in stores is sponsored by Manhattan Comics and Comixology. Buy new comics now!
(more…)
Tagged: Comixology
Monkeybrain and ComiXology announce exclusive distribution agreement for Monkeybrain’s new line of independent creator-owned comics
A press release from Chip Mosher of ComiXology.com:
New York Times bestselling comic book creator Chris Roberson is celebrating “Independents Day” a little differently than others this year as he and co-publisher Allison Baker launch MonkeyBrain Comics, with a slate of creator-owned titles from some of the top names in the field. MonkeyBrain Comics will debut digitally first on comiXology—the revolutionary digital comics platform with over 75 million comic and graphic novel downloads to date—through a exclusive distribution agreement between the two companies.
Joining Roberson (iZombie, Memorial, Cinderella) under the Monkeybrain Comics umbrella with their own independent titles will be a who’s who line up of creators, including: Grace Allison, Nick Brokenshire, J. Bone, Chad Bowers, Wook-Jin Clark, Colleen Coover, Kevin Church, Dennis Culver, Matt Digges, Ming Doyle, Curt O. Franklin, Ken Garing, Chris Haley, David Hahn, Phil Hester, Joe Keatinge, D.J. Kirkbride, Adam Knave, Axel Medellin, Jennifer L. Meyer, Michael Montenat, Ananth Panagariya, Thomas Perkins, Adam Rosenlund, Chris Schweitzer, Brandon Seifert, Chris Sims, Matthew Dow Smith, Paul Tobin, J. Torres, Josh Williamson and Bill Willingham, among others.
More creative teams with new titles will be announced next week at Comic-Con International during the Monkeybrain Comics panel on Friday, July 13th at 7PM.
“MonkeyBrain Comics was born out of a desire to directly explore what opportunities there were in the newly expanding digital marketplace for creator owned material,” said Roberson. “We knew from the get go that we’d want to work exclusively with comiXology, who have become the undisputed leader in the digital comics field with their platforms’ unparalleled reading and shopping experience. And we’re pleased to have so many of our close creator friends along for the ride. I can’t wait to see what fans around the world think about our first batch of releases!”
“We’re excited to be the exclusive digital home of MonkeyBrain Comics,” says co-founder and CEO David Steinberger. “ComiXology’s mission is to get comics into the hands of people everywhere and we look forward to doing just that with Chris and Allison’s stellar line of creator owned comics!”
MonkeyBrain Comics is a new comics imprint of Roberson and Baker’s long-running publishing company MonkeyBrain Books. Over the past decade, MonkeyBrain Books has published a line of prose novels by authors such as Phillip Jose Farmer, Michael Moorcock, Rudy Rucker, Paul Cornell and genre collections edited by such notables as Joe R. Lansdale, Lou Anders and others.
Launching their first titles on July 4th with the slogan “Independents Day” exclusively on the comiXology digital platform, Monkeybrain Comics are currently exploring following up their digital releases with trade paperback collections.
Related articles
- New MonkeyBrain digital imprint launches with five titles (comicsbeat.com)
This Week’s New Comics: July 4, 2012
This week’s list of new comics in stores is sponsored by Manhattan Comics and Comixology. Buy new comics now!
(more…)
US sues Apple and book publishers over e-book prices– are digital comics next?
Uh-oh…
The Justice Department has at last filed an anti-trust complaint in New York against Apple and five publishers over an alleged price fixing conspiracy. The decision to sue comes after weeks of media leaks that suggested the government was trying to pressure the parties into a settlement.
The issue turns on whether five publishers colluded with Apple to implement “agency pricing” in which the publishers set a price and the retailer takes a commission.
<snip>
The heart of the allegations turn on whether Apple acted as the hub of a conspiracy in which the publishers sought to freeze Amazon out of the e-book market unless it changed its pricing structure. Amazon had been using a wholesale model in which it bought books from the publishers and then charged what it liked.
Amazon often sold the e-books below cost in order to build market share and, in doing so, publishers believed it was setting an artificially low floor for prices.
via It’s on — US sues Apple, publishers over e-book prices — paidContent.
The relevant question, of course, is: if agency pricing for e-books is found to be illegal, how long will the same price point hold for digital versions of comic books? Or does it not matter because DC, Marvel, et al are licensing their books to Comixology and Graphicly, which could be construed as a much stronger form of agency?
Needless to say, we’ll be watching this case with great interest.
Related articles
- DOJ Sues Apple Over E-Book Pricing (technologyreview.com)
- How The $9.99 Ebook Died (buzzfeed.com)
All Marvel Digital Comics Will Be Available Same Day as Print
And the other shoe drops…
Marvel is taking its entire line of comics “day-and-date” digitally, meaning you’ll be able to download all of the company’s comics on the its mobile app just as soon as they’re available in physical stores. That polishes off one of the few downsides to digital comics: Having to wait for the latest and greatest.
The line-wide rollout will be finished by the end of March, 2012, and unlike DC’s 52-title relaunch, day-and-date will be coming to individual titles on a staggered basis, mostly to coincide with new story arcs. The move covers all of Marvel’s comics except third-party licensed works—like the Stephen King The Stand books—and its sex-and-violence-riddled MAX imprint.
via Gizmodo.
Well, it certainly hasn’t hurt DC any. And considering that Apple is still heavily invested in Disney/Marvel, it was inevitably going to happen, it was just a question of timing.
But again, I have to repeat: we still don’t know what digital sales figures for comics are like. And until we know that, we can’t tell if it’s working, if it’s helping or hurting comics stores, and so on. Data, people… we need data.
