Brigid Alverson has a great interview up with ComiXology’s David Steinberger at Robot 6, talking about the successes in 2011, and what lies ahead for digital comics as a whole and ComiXology in specific:
Who knows what the magic number is, but $1.99 is still an inexpensive purchase. But it says something, the 99 cents vs. 1.99 says OK, this is higher quality. It doesn’t say I’m ripping you off. Some people would argue that the $3.99 books are too expensive [but t]hey are selling quite well… The question is, would you sell more than twice as much if you drop the price in half? That is an experiment that hasn’t happened yet. DC has a public policy of dropping their day and date prices a by dollar a month after the comic comes out.
After 2011 being the year that everyone started taking digital comics seriously, 2012 is the year people will start working out where that magic number actually is, and we’ll see the business change as a result, I suspect…
January 2nd, 2012 at 10:00 am
10-13 page comics for 99 cents, released twice a month (or monthly 13 pagers for slower artists) is probably the “sweet spot” for serialized digital comics. 2000AD has made due with half that strip space for each new chapter for over 1,000 issues. Americans can get used to it too. Heck, offer the more popular books like Batman as a 10-page weekly for 99 cents and see how long before you have a steady circulation of 250K a week.
January 2nd, 2012 at 10:01 am
let’s be clear tho. This will take one of the big 2 on a title that matters to get that ball rolling. Burn Notice or Fringe comics won’t be enough. It needs to be Batman or JLA
January 3rd, 2012 at 7:57 am
I really hope this kind of thing happens. I’m currently just fine paying retail price for my digital comics, in effort to save physical space in my house, but it would be nice if they would be cheaper.