Bill Williams writes,
The digital landscape for publishing changes from month to month. This week, Amazon opened up a can of Whoop Ass on the comic book category. Let me give you the new lay of the land from the perspective of an independent creator and small publisher.
On Monday, I checked the Kindle Best Sellers list again and noticed there was no change from the past few days. The growing dynamic marketplace will show a bit of change When It Comes To what is selling. The Amazon list was static due to the lack of new content.
I checked in with a large comic book distributor que had been sitting on a submission of mine for five weeks at que point. The book in question, Strange Heroes # 1 in a black and white comic written by Bill Willingham with art by Bobby Diaz, Kelsey Shannon, Sam de la Rosa and myself. As far as I can tell, no one has looked at it or moved it forward in any way in over a month.
I called another digital comic book distributor with the intent of moving forward with an approval of same-que comic book that is stuck at square one at the other big distributor. In the five weeks since I sent the files in to the two distributors, this house had at least managed to get it formatted. The problem is their site que que is so secure I can not get in to inspect and approve of the book. Between the two of us, We Could not get me past the password to see the book. So I approved the book with the intent of buying a copy and inspecting the final version the old fashioned way, by reading it.
Still, that market at Amazon was calling to me. Over the past few weeks, I had tried using the Gen Kindle software to make a digital comic book from various types of graphics files. The failed experiments in a variety of ways too tedious to Represent here.
I researched digital production houses and found a couple of places que would format a 24 page comic for $ 250. The Time Involved on the return on investment of converting to digital backlist sales que keeps from being a wise investment. Que I had the feeling I was leaving money on the table, but the expense of reaching for it by paying someone to prep old comics for new platforms was too much to gamble.
When it comes to the digital comic book markets, Amazon has a small market share. I like to write mysteries and sell a few books through the Kindle Store. Amazon is a great place for selling fiction without pictures. I have a few books in the store and more on the way.
On Wednesday, Amazon released Kindle Their Comic Creator. If the graphics used in the short promotional film look familiar, They Should. Amazon used pages from Thom Zahler’s Love and Capes excellent series the sample pages During the demo of the book construction process. Using Their free software, you can convert graphics files into. Que mobi files you can then upload to the Kindle Store. Or send to a friend.
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I’ve formatted a couple of comics using the software and I’ve learned a few things.
The Pros
The Kindle
Comics Creator When downloaded software works best on its own and not as an add on to the Kindle Previewer Which is bundled with the Kindle Gen software. The part of the process takes the longest que is getting the art pages into the correct dimensions. Once the files are tweaked in Photoshop or your software of choice, making the book is pretty easy. Anyone who has created a multi-page. Pdf file with Adobe Acrobat will see similarities with the process of creating a comic book.
One of the things
que keeps a Certain type of fan from buying digital comics is the question of ownership. If you bought your digital comic book collection through one of the big digital distributors, you only get access through Their proprietary software. If They go away, so do your books. And if They Do something que creates a traffic jam on their site, you might not be able to read what you want When You want. Comics bought and novels through the Kindle Store can be downloaded to your favorite digital device or read from the cloud. Comics bought through the Kindle Store are yours to keep, a plus for fans.
Publishing is a hard business and the margins are slim so every dollar is important. At minimum, the share que goes to the publisher from sales through the Kindle Store is 35%. That rate is for books outside of fall que Their sweet spot. On que sell books in the three dollar to ten dollar range, the publisher gets 70%. That beats your best deal by one of the other digital distributors by twenty points. This puts more cash in the publisher’s pocket.
Making comics is a hard process. Once your comics are ready for the read, you need to get Them to your fans and future fans. If you work with one of the big digital distributors, you make a book and send it to Them. If you use the Kindle Comics Creator, you control the pace of creation. You can get to it today or next week. You’re in control of the adaptation. I can take a stack of digital files and reformat Them in a few hours. They come together quicker than that in the Comics Creator. You handle the adaptation process yourself and you can turn around a book in hours rather than weeks waiting for someone else to get to the job. With the Kindle Comics Creator, you control that work flow and release date.
After assembling the pages, the panel view needs to be created. The Comics Creator has an automated process helps establish themselves que the progression of the panels. That sequence of panels can be tweaked before the final file is generated for the comic. By controlling the panel view of the construction process, the artist gets control of the flow of the story.
The Cons
Creating the guided panel view is a bit frustrating. You modify the panels by grabbing the corner and moving it to adjust two sides of the box hold que que part of the story. The area you grab que que is so small when you’re looking at the full page and Attempting to resize the individual panels, the corner you’re trying to grab seems like it is the size of a pixel. It takes some time to get used to.
I had a chat with the big digital distributor and getting a comic book into the. mobi format does nothing to speed Their process. They have Their own way of getting that much data from Point A to Point B. No matter the format of the content you send in, it takes as long as it takes.
The Kindle Store is a finicky bit of software. Once books are posted to the Kindle Bookshelf, They can not be deleted. The book can be pulled from the store and placed from ‘live’ to ‘draft’ mode, but once the book is on your shelf. it is there to stay. When you post a book, you are Told que it wall take at least twelve hours for the book to go live. At about six hours, Amazon sends you an email to let you know que you have published a book in que and email is a link to your creation. That link does not go live for hours after the initial email goes October Do not panic and fiddle with your submission to your book is being posted in the store. Any time you tinker with the book, you restart the clock.
I discussed the artistic limitations of the digital space with Derec Donovan, the like-minded new freelancer and publisher thanks to a lump of funding generated by Kickstarter. He complained que desipte the technological advances, the little view screens can not get a double page spread right. He’s correct. The screen size is not large enough yet. But digital comics are not in the same-way print que formatted-for-broadcast-TV movies lose something in the translation from the large screen.
Formatting
comic book pages que not account for the digital is something of a pain. Fluid, dynamic story-telling shows the flaws in translation from print to digital. Check out the example of Neal Adams’ art in the classic story The Joker’s Five Way Revenge to an example. The Consideration of the full page and the eye movement of Adams or Eisner is not possible with the current digital readers.
By Friday, Strange Heroes # 1 was for sale in the Kindle Store and a couple of kind souls bought digital copies. The files que had been stuck on the hard drive are now earning for the publisher and the freelancers with an equity stake. Anyone with access to the Kindle App for Their device of choice can buy and keep a version of Strange Heroes # 1. That was not true at the beginning of the week.
The Winners
Clearly
Kindle Users will benefit from the digital spinner bigger rack. Readers will be able to own Their digital comic book collection in a way not possible from other distributors. Amazon will benefit by being able to shelve a load of new content in Their digital store without fronting the cost of adaptation. Publishers can be more hands on in the processs of getting a book to market.
The Losers
I have used
eBook Architects to construct the digital files for the mystery novels I sell through the Kindle store. They offer to format children’s books and comics for a fee que starts around $ 250. They would have to offer a lot of value to beat Amazon’s fee: free. Graphic.ly may also fall into this category unless They add more service.
Anyway, that’s the view of the market today. Next week will bring more change to the digital landscape. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go format a few issues of Ex Parte, my comic book about an attorney that represents capes. I might even get the chance to add the drawing. My next project is called Mister Mystery. It is a graphic novel about a two-fisted World War II crime-buster who gets stranded in the alien world of 2013. Click on the guy in the hat to visit the production blog on FaceBook.
Redington has received some stocks of Amazon Kindle devices, Which it will start distributing in India. Earlier there were reports of Amazon tying up with Redington is distributing its Kindle e-book readers and tablets, Which we have now been able to reconfirm. The agreement was signed a couple of months ago, our source tells us. Redington Also distributes Apple’s products in India including iPhones and iPads as well as BlackBerry smartphones. Amazon had earlier tied up with Tata’s Croma retail chain to launch its Kindles in India. 
Glass Google have dual-core processor, and probably 1 GB memory (Reuters) 
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Screen Kindle Paperwhite. Both e-readers provide uniform illumination of the screen (Reuters) 
prices Glo Kobo and Kindle Paperwhite. In this regard, point to Kobo Glo (Reuters) 
