Comments on: Marvel Makes Collections Available Digitally; What About Pricing?

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:26:06 +0000

We can see the rick of locked-in files by looking at e-books and music. The various digital music companies originally had to sell music with DRM encoding (now they can sell them as DRM-free MP3s). Napster (among others) have shut down their servers; those files now cannot be relicensed and thus cannot be played.

By: IDW Launches Digital-First Series at 8 Pages for 99 Cents » Comics Worth Reading

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:49:19 +0000

[...] hate to keep harping on digital price points, but as I watch companies experiment online, it’s one of the factors that jumps out at [...]

By: James Schee

James Schee — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:31:00 +0000

Yeah I agree with Ralf here. That price is just ridiculous, and I say that as someone who has made the switch to digital for the most part.

I’d love it, and would try more, if they were at a price where it was an impulse buy. Get back to when comics was a disposable entertainment field, that you bought without the intent of keeping it forever. (when you do find something worth keeping you seek out the TPB or the like)

By: Ralf Haring

Ralf Haring — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:48:34 +0000

Digital books priced the same as physical ones is crazy. Priced higher is … delusional. Price them at an impulse-buy level, so that there is no friction whatsoever from the time a potential customer sees the digital version to the time they click the buy button.

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:41:57 +0000

Definitely the longer view! But it’s a good point and a good reason why digital pricing should be lower than physical sales. Obviously the main publishers don’t agree (yet) with this. For what it’s worth the vast majority of my digital purchases have come from the “99 cent” sales but 99 cents sure adds up fast…

By: Johanna

Johanna — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:59:12 +0000

Oh, that’s just my negativity about proprietary systems based on what happens when someone gets tired of supporting the servers years later. Taking the long view, I have books that were my father’s and before him my grandmother’s, but no one’s going to be able to pass down a digital file.

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:15:01 +0000

“…locked-in files I am likely to lose access to at some point…”

I have not heard anything about this and have been following the digital scene fairly closely. I certainly will be very cross if the many digital comics I’ve purchased in the past 18 months are no longer accessible to me. Could you expand on this point or link to something which does? Thanks.