E-Books

[Will I. Cooling]

I recently got a new tablet and bought the America e-book - which is bloody lovely  . But there doesn't seem to be any other e-books produced by 2000AD. Any chance of getting some more collected editions converted to the electronic format?

[mogzilla]

Just been having this idea meself! i own a bog standard kindle which would be ideally suited for the b&w early strips including the new "b" format collections which are too small for my old eyes but on kindle i coulod zoom in and have the panel view activated as i have with the walking dead vol 1!    c'mon thargy's guys sort it out please???????

[The Adventurer]

I'm also in the market for getting more digital collected content for my iPad.

Will, does America really look great?

[mogzilla]

 the b-format books have been released on kindle but only the fire !!!!!  is there a reason it aint been put on the bog standard version?

[The Adventurer]

I would say because its images, and not text. But all the B-Trades are in black and white, and I heard black and white art reposes on regular Kindle E-Ink pretty well.

So that's a good question.

[mogzilla]

you can get "america" which translates rubbishly on mine but normal b&w is fine ask my daughter who inisted i download garfield!

[The Adventurer]

Okay. So I sampled the eBook editions of America and the Batman/Dredd files books that are available on Amazon. I'm of course using my iPad Kindle app to read my Amazon purchases. Amazon provides samples of their eBooks to treat drive so I tried both out that way. Apparently these GNs are optimized from Kindle Fire. Because on my iPad the art is small with a lot of white space boarding it.

I definitely am not interested in buying any digital GNs until they are higher res and optimized for larger screen viewing.

[opaque]

But at what price?
That's the thing for me. If you are paying the same sort of price as print (even ignoring the vat on digital formats) I'd rather have the print.

[The Adventurer]

Actually. I don't have a problem paying the same or close to print price (I buy digital monthly comics at print prices after all). As long as I get the content in a high quality* format of my choice.

*this being the important bit. HD reproduction is a must

[radiator]

I will never understand the justification for digital being the same price as print. How can uploading something to the Internet possibly have the same overheads as printing and shipping physical books?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think comics work out cheaper for UK reader if bought on Comixology as we don't have to pay inflated import prices. Same goes for US readers of 2000ad.

[IndigoPrime]

Digital should be cheaper than print, but I think people overestimate the difference, and they also don't always realise issues within the market. The majority of money goes into creation rather than production, and savings through not having to print and ship an item are often offset by other costs relating to digital. For example, while print books are except from VAT in the UK, digital books are not; additionally, while a publisher's no longer having to deal with physical store pricing shenanigans, every online store also takes a massive cut. This is further exacerbated by stores-within-stores, as Jim Campbell pointed out regarding Comixology.

[mogzilla]

yes thats all very interesting but why cant i get the b-format stories on my bog standard kindle when i can get dark night returns as well as many other batman titles?

[The Adventurer]

The cut Apple takes is the reason I make a point to always buy my ComiXology/Dark Horse digital purchases through their website, and not through the apps themselves. That way the publisher/distributor gets the majority of what I'm paying.

[Molch-R]

I will never understand the justification for digital being the same price as print. How can uploading something to the Internet possibly have the same overheads as printing and shipping physical books?

Because those books need creating, editing, designing, producing, uploading, and marketing. These things don't magically happen on their own. As with all books, the cost of actually producing and distributing the physical object is a tiny proportion of the overall cost.

[Molch-R]

*That's not a justification for same-price digital though, but the idea that ebook/comics should be MASSIVELY cheaper just because they're on digital is ludicrous.