Now there’s somewhere for you to get your comics online, and keep them online…
DriveThruComics, a sister site of DriveThruRPG, the most successful downloadable RPG site, launched this week. The business model derives revenue by selling PDFs of comics to consumers via download. Prices are set at $1.99 for most comics, and around 30% off for most graphic novels.
Comics are made available via download at a variety of times relative to street date, from slightly before to considerably after.
Publishers signed up for the launch include Dabel Brothers Productions, Shi, About Comics, Arcana, Archaia, NBM, UDON, Heroic Publishing, and Kenzer and Company, plus a number of others, including some publishers of adult material. Publishers expected to make content available soon include Antarctic, Heavy Metal, and Markosia. Around 250 products are available on the site now.
The site itself is here, and is currently offering some free downloads to get people interested…
September 21st, 2006 at 10:44 am
PDF Bad. CBR/CBZ good.
1.99, not so great.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:46 am
At $1.99 US, I’m not really saving that much over a print copy, and PDF is just a terrible format. This whole thing stinks of 1999.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:22 am
If I’m paying for a comic, then I want a real, phyiscal comic.
If I’m reading comics on a computer, well then, quite frankly, I can get them for free.
Pass.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:50 am
They’re not selling the books. They’re renting them out:
Adobe DRM-protected PDF
These eBooks are protected by Adobe’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. To use them, you must activate your Adobe Reader software. Click here for more details.
So, it’s not even a proper PDF.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:56 am
What everyone else said. DRM’d PDFs won’t end up on my PC even if you give them away, let alone make me pony up $1.99 for them.
On the other hand, I’ve bought a bunch of Slave Labor .cbz files. They get it.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:58 pm
word. CBZ all the way.
September 21st, 2006 at 5:42 pm
DRM in PDF is one of the most insecure things out on there. Here is an excerpt from a document right from Adobe Inc. I will leave out the company name of the company that makes the software to bypass the DRMed PDF.
************ is marketing a simple software utility, ****, that claims to be able to effortlessly and almost instantly break most, if not all PDF security.
I can confirm that the claims made by ElcomSoft are true. After running a battery of tests
on some of Adobe’s own secured documents, with the latest ******* utility, I was able to remove all security restrictions almost instantly, even with a low powered and outdated Windows based PC. Over 50 secured PDF files were tested and each one failed the test.
The ******* utility worked flawlessly!
Here is what I was able to easily achieve, in mere seconds, on a regular PC.
1) Remove the Master Password and all the restrictions** it controls.
2) Remove the User Password*** (File Open), 40 and 128-bit RC4 encryption.
3) Remove DRM security from a PDF eBook that was locked to my system, and revert this PDF eBook to a regular PDF file that can be viewed and edited in Acrobat.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Gonna have to also say — cbr or cbz files. And 1.99 US? Wow. Uh… no. Sorry. I can get normal comics cheaper than that most of the time.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:24 am
I agree that $1.99 is too much. They would need to take it down to iTunes like $.99 before I would even consider it.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:37 am
f it. download from bittorrent. y pay? nuff said.
October 15th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
£1.99!!!!!!!!!!!!
you bloody skanks, we should have it for free.
LOSERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!