Culture is future » Financing and economic models

Article - The 9th art carries out successfully its digital transition

Of all the literary genres, the comic strips bounces off the digital. Thanks to, in particular, the proliferation of platforms dedicated to them and to the dynamism of social networks of artists, publishers and readers.

Artists’ networks, a community which attracts publishers and readers.

In order to promote themselves, authors/draftsmen avoid publishing houses and directly use the platforms of sharing. The artists’ social network grows through groups of authors, like the 8Comix collective, initiated by 8 artists who post free and unpublished content or Delitoon, French adaptation of the Korean concept Webtoon, which distributes free digital comic strips and offers the possibility to read them streaming thanks to its economic model financed by advertising. A space fully dedicated to draftsmen enables them to directly post their creations on the website, receive readers’ comments and attract the publishers’ attention. This proximity between authors and readers of comic strips also allowed the emergence of crowd-funding platforms, usually used by the music industry, like the label MyMajorCompany. Thus, the Sandawe platform gives the possibility to readers very keen on comic strips to take part in the financing of albums from their favorite artists.

The digital comic strips : 77 million downloads and $70 million sales.

The 2.0 comic strips is booming. The Comixology platform, leader on the market of digital comic strips, has figures that speak for themselves : 77 million comic strips downloaded since the launch of the platform and $70 million sales in 2012, that is, a multiplication by 3.5 of the $19 million made in 2011. Its success comes from the combination of mobile applications and a web platform, which allows the synchronization of the purchase of comic books on different supports.

A segmentation of platforms, from creation to distribution, going through financing and publishing

While some projects of non-specialized publishers try to develop a universal integration model, the 2.0 comic strips proves, after the failure of Manolosantis, which combined streaming reading, a creation and distribution platform and a community publishing house, that the only viable models are segmented platforms that meet the expectations of the involved parties.

These successes peculiar to comic strips confirm the tendency of a usage segmentation, approach that the public authorities should usefully consider.

To go further, an article CULTURE IS FUTURE about Manolosanctis :

http://www.forum-avignon.org/en/always-further-manolosanctis-new-way-forward-digital-publishing-industry

To know better the french-speaking digital editors, you can refer to the lsit released by EditeursNumériques :

http://www.editeursnumeriques.com/liste.html