The comic landscape wil change in the years to come. Historically when a comic book fan had an idea and wanted to do a comic they would set about doing it sometimes putting the actual things together, photocopying A4 pages and stapling them together themselves. These things would be called minicomics Quality varied considerably and usually wasn’t all that great. Truth be told I’ve never bought a mini-comic. My problem is the actual lack of quality involved in these things.

When I first started this blog, part of it was to chronicle my journey into getting my graphic novel published, of course I’ve not actually finished said graphic novel but it’s getting there. Now when I originally decided to set across this path, there were no alternatives save self publishing or going to various publishers to try and get them to pick up my book.

A few months afterwards Cafepress decided to roll out their book publishing division. This was to my knowledge one of the first ventures into print on demand models over the internet. I was extremely excited about the prospect of having my book published no matter what. Distribution would have to be relegated over the internet, however this wasn’t something that I was completely unimpressed by.

Now there are so many different ways of publshing opening up all over the place. Lulu seems to be the one to beat since they’ve decided to expand their reach to just the internet. There are of course restrictions to what can and can’t be distributed (which is oddly based on the type of book being printed i.e B&W versus colour), however the doors are open for anyone to grab a hold of this model and run with it.

Comic book ditribution is a niche affair. If you want something specific you need to go via a comic book retailer. While I like my comic book retailer they don’t stock everything. They never offer me a discount on ANYTHING, and the store seriously isn’t a welcome place like it was in Greece, where the comic book store was effectively a home away from home, so I don’t really care if I buy the books from them or not.

What the comic book store does provide however is a means to browse and let something JUMP AT YOU. It’s a very important part of buying books. Something will catch your eye. It could be the design, it could be the cover artist, it could be the title that grabs you. The flip through test is the second most important part of the process. Most books fail in this respect and are returned back to the shelf. A more virtual method of browsing is no doubt going to be developed in due time that makes browsing titles a little more intuative with normal practice. Stubbling onto something by mistake should be easier. The consisness of the search feature can be a bad thing at times.

Now the online distribution method is one that’s still in it’s infantile stage. The professional comic book creators have yet to jump onto this model. At least I’ve heard sweet fuck all about this being something very successful in the comic book industry. Since I can only see from my back yard I’ll say that seeing as I’ve not yet bought an online graphic novel this model hasn’t taken off, since I’m ALWAYS on the hunt for good books. I would love to find a gem here or there, however the ones I’ve been looking at online are not of the quality that I’d expect from a comic I’d pay for under normal circumstances. I know that’s being seriously harsh, however I will say that I’m also one of the easiest person to get to buy a well produced graphic novel.

There are ways of making it work (an article for another time) and I believe those people who are the early adopters maybe haven’t tapped into that way just yet.