social media
Twitter your questions for SxSW’s Comics on Handhelds panel
Comics on Handhelds
South by Southwest is currently underway down in Austin, Texas. The giant music, film and multimedia festival runs through March 22. On today’s agenda is a panel called Comics on Handhelds, hosted by Dan Goldman and featuring Diesel Sweeties creator Rich Stevens, Uclick.com CEO Douglas Edwards, Dr. Sketchy’s creator Molly Crabapple, Google Android engineer Dave Bort and The Longbox Group’s Rantz Hoseley.
No doubt this will be a great discussion, and if you’d like to participate, you don’t need a plane ticket to the Lone Star State … all you need is a Twitter account. Goldman explains:
And those of you not attending… you’ll still be able to interact with us over Twitter during the panel using #comicsonhandhelds. The panel will be available in audio+video online soon as well; watch this space for details.
That means if you Twitter a question, just be sure to include #comicsonhandhelds in the body of your tweet. The panel begins at 5 p.m. Central, so be sure to get your questions out there before then.
- March 17, 2009 @ 12:39 PM by JK Parkin
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Civil War #1, on a bed of Mylar
Publishing | Louis Holt argues that “collectibility” will save the printed comic from being replaced by the digital version.
“The fallacy of thinking that digital comic books will kill print comic books is that it ignores the collectible value of comic books,” Holt writes. “There is no telling how many comic books sold today aren’t even read but are immediately slid into protective sleeves with backing boards. People can’t trade or wrap digital comic books in plastic.”
I suspect Holt creates a flaw of his own by overstating the hold collectibility has on readers. Handling monthly comics like 1,000-year-old parchments before sealing them away in Mylar bags may be common practice among a segment of the audience (particularly those of a certain age). However, I don’t believe “collectibility” is a driving force — the driving force? — for the readership at large. The increasing popularity of trade paperbacks, the whole wait-for-the-trade “movement,” and, yes, webcomics would seem enough to cast Holt’s notion into doubt.
That said, the band shouldn’t start the funeral dirge for the printed comic anytime soon (whatever “soon” means). Any sort of seismic shift by the industry toward digital comics still faces numerous obstacles — e-device quality and affordability, and the necessity of new business models, among them. I just don’t think “collectibility” is one of the more worrisome ones.
Matt Maxwell also weighs in: “Well, pulp novels are collectable, so are wax cylinders. So are vinyl records. Anything can be made collectible. Collectibility doesn’t mean that a format survives or is necessarily a standard currency any longer. It just means that someone wants the artifact and is willing to pay for it.”
Copyright | Although manga publishers have yet to clamp down on scanlators — fans who translate Japanese comics and post them online — a University of London professor thinks conflicts could arise as the global market becomes more lucrative. She estimates there are more than 1,000 scanlation groups worldwide.
E-devices | Matt Springer sees Apple’s rumored touch-screen Netbook as a contender for “ultimate eComics reader.”
Social media | Advertising Age reports that Facebook is driving more traffic than Google to some large websites.
- March 12, 2009 @ 04:33 AM by Kevin Melrose
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
"Watchmen" on the Kindle
Conventions | Registration is closed for New England Webcomics Weekend, the March 20-22 event in Easthampton, Mass., that some already are calling “Webcomicstock.”
What’s Webcomics Weekend? It’s not really a convention, organizers say; it’s more a gathering — a free one, at that. It will feature panels, livedraw events, book signings, and guests such as Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes (Unshelved), Danielle Corsetto (Girls With Slingshots), Rene Engstrom (Anders Loves Maria), Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie), Scott Kurtz (PvP), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics) and R. Stevens (Diesel Sweeties).
E-devices | At Gearlog, Brian Heater tries out Bone, Jimmy Corrigan, New X-Men and Watchmen on Amazon’s new Kindle: “In my humble opinion, the best device for reading comics at the moment (besides, you know, old-timey comics themselves) is the iPhone.”
Webcomics | The Floating Lightbulb and The Comic Chronicles’ John Jackson Miller try to figure out what to make of GoogleTrends data showing a steady decline of unique visitors for many of the most-popular webcomics.
E-devices | Jason Ankeny lays out why mobile devices are the future of comic strips: “Few forms of creative expression are better suited to that kind of brief consumer engagement than comic strips. Life in Hell — a crudely illustrated but consistently sharp and insightful black-and-white strip — would seem like a natural on a Kindle or on an iPhone, as would any number of classic daily efforts including Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Krazy Kat or Doonesbury.”
Blogging | To mark the second anniversary of Super Punch, John Struan offers some good tips about blogging, with special attention to increasing traffic.
Social media | Gay & Lesbian Times looks out how artists are using DList, a social-networking site for gay men, to promote their work.
Podcasting | The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profiles local comics podcasters.
E-publishing | Fictionwise, the e-book retailer recently purchased by Barnes & Noble, has sold an estimated 5 million digital titles since its launch in June 2000. (via GalleyCat)
- March 9, 2009 @ 06:05 AM by Kevin Melrose
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
There’s a rapidly increasing amount of coverage devoted to digital issues, from piracy to webcomics to alternate distribution to social media, that it only makes sense to place them under one umbrella. If anyone has a better name for the feature than “Slash Print” — which has at least three conotations — I’m all ears.
LiveJournal
Scans Daily | While there aren’t any hard numbers to demonstrate whether Scans Daily harmed or helped the sales of comics that were excerpted on the site, Glenn Hauman offers some anecdotal evidence: He posted seven pages on Jan. 19 from the ComicMix webcomic The Original Johnson, but received just 50 click-throughs from Scans Daily. Hauman concludes that the community wasn’t a good promotional platform.
However, Johanna Draper Carlson points out some problems with Hauman’s experiment, and with his conclusion. I think she’s right on both points, namely that a community like Scans Daily isn’t likely to react as positively to publisher self-promotion — Warren Ellis points out it’s actually frowned upon there — and that a biographical boxing comic probably wasn’t the best match for the audience.
The discussion continues in the comments sections of Hauman and Carlson’s posts.
Digital comics | Robot Comics (no relation), “the first publisher of comics for Android-powered mobiles,” is seeking submissions. Android is Google’s software platform for mobile devices. Comics, games and other applications can be downloaded at Android Market. Last month BOOM! Studios announced it had partnered with iVerse Media to offer Hexed #1 on Android. (via Johanna Draper Carlson)
Webcomics | At Mashable, Sean P. Aune runs down his list of the 20 best webcomics. It’s the usual suspects, mostly.
- March 4, 2009 @ 08:40 AM by Kevin Melrose