MIKE GOLD: The Paperless Chase
According to Pew Research, one out of every five adult Americans now owns a tablet or an e-book reader. That was before Apple announced its new e-textbook initiative.
Imagine buying all your college textbooks for about a hundred bucks and then carrying them around in a 1.33 pound device. You’ll never need your locker again. Students won’t pop their spines carrying a backpack that is so heavy PeTA wouldn’t let you strap one onto a mule.
And if you’re a comics fan, you’ll never need to schlep around a couple hundred long boxes. Well, not unless you want to.
So people should just stop bitching about electronic comic books. It’s not controversial any more. It doesn’t begat bootlegging; certainly not now that the government is shutting down bootleg sites. Just as soon as publishers start releasing their books at a fair price point – there are no printing costs, no paper costs, no shipping, no returns, and no alternate covers, so $2.99 (let alone $3.99) is a rip-off.
“But I like the feel of the paper,” you might whine. Yes, and I enjoy hearing the crack of the buggy-whip. Deal with it. Stop cutting down trees and milking our ever-dwindling oil supply to print and distribute all those books and magazines you read once – if at all. Publishing is an ecological nightmare; e-publishing doesn’t cure the problem but, like the hybrid and electronic engines, it helps. A lot.
The other by-product is even more interesting: we are breeding a new generation of readers. People are buying e-books and magazines and newspapers and we’re reading them on our iPads and Kindles and such. For a full year now, adult hardcovers and paperbacks, adult mass market books, and children’s/young adult hardcover and paperback have exceeded hard copy sales. In the past year, Borders finally bit the dust, Barnes and Nobles continues to cough up blood, and tablet/e-reader sales skyrocketed.
Tell me where our future lies.
If sales slow down considerably – forgetting how Apple’s sold zillions of iPads to schools and to businesses, forgetting how the iPad 3 is coming within the next 10 weeks, forgetting textbook sales – then it’ll take as long as, oh, maybe three years before over half of the population of American families have one.
Yes, you don’t have to use the device for reading. You can do a lot of other things with your tablet: play games, surf the Internet, write stuff, listen to music, watch teevee, even make phone calls via Skype. All I need is a comfy chair, a toilet, a shower stall, a refrigerator, a microwave and a great pair of headphones and I’m set for life.
Comics store owners – the smart ones – are beginning to adjust. They’re filling in the vacuum created by Borders’ vaporization by expanding their trade paperback and hardcover racks. They’re getting involved in more comics-related tchotchkes, more heroic fantasy movie stuff, and more innovative and distinctive product in general. They no longer have to endure as much terror as they go through the monthly Diamond catalog to guess which non-returnable pamphlets are going to put them out of business.
So, again I ask you – as comics readers, as book readers.
Where does our future lie?
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil
I agree with you for the most part Mike. I think digital should cost less but I don’t think print editions and monthlys will ever really go away. Other magazines and newpapers are in more danger than comics because of one thing comics have other periodicals- the collectability factor. Collectors buy alternative covers and variants because of collectibilty and I don’t think thats going to stop since it can’t be reproduced. I think tablets are the future but they aren’t a single path.
Kyle, I believe you will live to see the day that paper publications go away. I believe I might live to see the day that cheap paper publications go away — newspapers, most magazines, probably “standard” paperbacks, and comic books in pamphlet form.
I love the smell of newsprint. Hell, I could have been busted when I was at the old Chicago Tribune printing plant deep beneath the Tower. Ahh, the good old days.
Mike, I hear what you’re saying, brother, and I agree with most of your points but as long as there are paper versions of comics I love, I will make an effort to obtain them.
I DO buy digital comics, much as I was opposed to doing so when they first became a thing, but if I feel I want to read the comic ever again I make the effort to buy it both so I have the luxury of doing so and to support the publisher and/or creators.
Don’t forget the editorial costs associated with book/comic production. The real tell is when publishers start doing digital-only books (with later trade paperback editions, a happens with a number of webcomics now.) Will the price be dropped?
The other issue with digital is the volatility of the transmission medium — I’ve had a Sony Reader go tits-up on me with abominable swiftness, for instance, and I haven’t replaced it yet; also, not all tabelts are created equal, and there’s a lot of ereaders out there that are still small-screen black-and-white.
Very true and, if you read the fine print of those user agreements many of click yes to so readily, you don’t even own the digital content you’re “purchasing” sometimes, merely the right to read it.
In fact, I’ve had comics disappear from my graphicly library, nothing I’m heartbroken over, but it’s probably the single biggest problem I have with digital-only comics.
I haven’t suffered any losses, but I use an iPad and I back-up my iComics to my iMac (and not to the iCloud) using my iClock and iTunes. “i” is to Apple what “x” is to Marvel.
Like Brandon, I’m appalled at the “rent not own” concept of governing digital material purchased or stored “in the cloud.” One corporate thunderstorm and my digital collection would get drenched.
Yes, since I returned from Detroit I’ve been living in Metaphor Hell.
Yes, it’s wonderful that people are reading thanks to e-books, Mike, but there’s still nothing like going into a bookstore and browsing for hours.
Amazon?
Not the same.
Mindy
No, it’s not the same, Mindy. I enjoy hanging out at bookstores — Adriane and I killed the better part of an hour at a B&N in Detroit last week, and it was a great experience. Particularly since their bathroom was clean.
We should all enjoy it while we can.
Looking for a database program to track my collection the one requirement that was non-negotiable was that the data must be stored locally, on MY computer, not somewhere in “the cloud”. If the company providing the program were to go out of business I’d lose all of my data. It has to be under my control.
Similarly with the books themselves. I like having any of the stories I’ve paid for available for when I’d like to look at them again. I like being able to go back and re-read them, sometimes decades after I last did.
So while I”‘ certainly in the “I like the feel/smell of the paper, it’s part of the experience” camp, the REAL reason I’m resistant to moving to e-books is the worry that my entire collection could be wiped out instantly, even if the content is stored locally. (Google “Amazon removes 1984”.)
Like I see Brandon commented on above.
Great column. I agree with you. I do think paper will be with us for some time, mostly for collectors. But for regular comics, newspapers and magazines, it’s only a matter of time.
I say that as someone who hasn’t purchased a paper comic or magazine in over a year. I do it all on the iPad 2 these days.
Yep. And by the way, the iPad 3 will have that Retina Display screen with a ridiculously higher resolution, and this will be a major benefit to e-comics. Or iComics. Whatever.