Getting Your Electronic Comic Out There

[Emperor]

Sooooooo what is the best way to get your electronic comic out there?

Drivethru and Clickwheel seem fairly straightforward but don't get you on the iPad, which seems quite important.

http://comics.drivethrustuff.com
www.clickwheel.net

I know Alex de Campi's column covered a lot of the nuts and bolts of getting electronic comics online but I have yet to find out how you'd get listed on ComiXology or Graphic.ly which seem important venues to get your work on.

Someone forwarded me an email from Magazine Cloner:

I would like to bring to your attention our No Cost Service digital publishing solution

We offer a free service to digitise magazine content and make it available for sale globally, via iPhone and iPad, with PC, Mac and Android coming soon. There are no set-up charges or upload fee, we work on the basis of a revenue split of net revenue: 65/35 in the publisher’s favour for 1-4 titles and 70/30 for 5 or more.

www.magazinecloner.com

But if they are taking a 35% cut after someone like the iStore has had their cut then all of sudden you are looking at shelling out a big slice of the pie just for getting online when you probably don't need your content digitised but then a smaller slice of a larger pie is potentially worth more.

Anyone got any leads, thoughts, experience or general bright ideas?

[Emperor]

An offer from Graphic.ly - a contest to win mentoring from Jim Mahfood and then publication on Graphic.ly:

http://www.talenthouse.com/graphicly...omic-published

[Emperor]

Just to keep all the pondering in one place, this looks very interesting:

The release delay resulted in an accelerated refinement of the production tools, which makes it not only easier for publishers to schedule content, automatically process it, and validate the files, but it also makes it possible for us to support independent and self-publishers NOW, as opposed to 9 months from now (which was the original timeframe). In fact, Just this week, Mike Jasper scheduled, formatted and uploaded the first two chapters of In Maps and Legends (which started over at Zuda) using the production tools and publisher site with a shockingly small amount of input from us after a day with the system.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/10/...he-apple-ipad/

I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

[Emperor]

Looks like these are pretty good ways of getting on iPad, from what I'm told Amazon allow you to upload colour pages even though it only displays in greyscale, the colour then appears on the iPad (and any future Kolour Kindles):

http://dtp.amazon.co.uk
http://dtp.amazon.com

www.lulu.com/apple-ipad-publishing

[Emperor]

Some excellent advice over on Whitechapel and these seem like really good options:

• Graphic.ly - just send them an email to the address on their site, they are eager for content.
  
• iPad, B&N Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, etc. - Smashwords is apparently cheaper and easier than either Amazon or Lulu.

[Emperor]

More on comiXology making its developer tools available to small publishers:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/comi...nt-101116.html

Which links through to a beta sign-up page:

www.comixology.com/self_authoring_signup/

This doesn't start until 2011, but the sooner you sign up the faster you'll get access to the goodies.

[Joe B. Pangrazio]

Got this from Warren, but I figured I'd supply a direct link. Very interesting and worth having a look, I think.

Observe, the Not .99 method!

[Emperor]

I was just coming her to post that

And also:

Comics Alliance have analysed the top ten digital comics sales on comiXology:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...mics-and-what/

Mark Millar has given his thoughts, with the general feeling in the comments being that it seems better to sell direct (where the Not 99 Method come in?):

http://forums.millarworld.tv/index.p...mic-downloads/

DJ Coffman has suggested his alternative to the Not 99 Method:

http://www.djcoffman.com/2011/01/14/...igital-comics/

Should be lots more of this pinging around, so one to watch.

[Joe B. Pangrazio]

I was just coming her to post that

And also:

Comics Alliance have analysed the top ten digital comics sales on comiXology:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/0...mics-and-what/

Mark Millar has given his thoughts, with the general feeling in the comments being that it seems better to sell direct (where the Not 99 Method come in?):

http://forums.millarworld.tv/index.p...mic-downloads/

DJ Coffman has suggested his alternative to the Not 99 Method:

http://www.djcoffman.com/2011/01/14/...igital-comics/

Should be lots more of this pinging around, so one to watch.

The key to getting this off the ground is profoundly simple (and complex).

Someone with the ability (artistic and business-wise) to just do it and make it work.

If I had a reliablie artist, I'd be half tempted to do it myself.

[TonyDiGerolamo]

If you put your comics on a website, you're pretty much on an ipad.