Culture is future » Innovation and digital

Always Further - Manolosanctis : a new way forward for the digital publishing industry

The ambition of the new comic book publisher Manolosanctis is to reconcile the paper format with the digital one. Even better, since its creation in 2009 it aims at using the opportunities of the latter to make the former more dynamic. In a word, the exploitation of the digital format is a springboard and not an end in itself.

According to Arnaud Bauer (co-founder), the digital book is “an emulator of artistic creation”: it allows many writers to emerge from an abundant supply.  For all that, the paper format is not outdated since many readers still prefer to read their comic books in this format. Any cartoonist can be published online, thus there is no risk of missing a new talent in the comic book world! Each month, books are chosen to be published and offered for sale by the members of the Manolosanctis community based upon a participative voting system.

 To promote the books, Manolosanctis uses both Internet and the resources provided by La Martinière (the prestigious publisher which is in charge of the printing). Thus, readers can discover the book on the Web (thanks to Facebook or Twitter where it’s easy to do viral publicity) and in stores. Manolosanctis doesn’t follow the beaten track of the traditional distribution system. Two reasons explain this strategy: the launch of the book is faster (usually, it takes at least one year for a comic book to arrive in bookshops) and the number of copies printed is smaller. This idea is quite interesting since at least 50% of books printed are not sold and are pulped.

At the moment, the Website has 21.000 members and 1.000 authors, which is proof of a promising future. In bookshops, you can find more than 30 books published by Manolosanctis.

A contribution of ESSEC/Camille Mauguy