What Can Publishers Learn from Digital Comic Books?
As publishers continue to test the potential for interactive ebooks, investigating what other sects are doing may offer clues on how to thrive in the digital era. One underexplored publishing segment is comic books, graphic novels, and manga, or CGM for short. The visually rich, often non-linear nature of the form suggests an interactive, game-like approach is well suited to tablets and smartphones. The emergence of responsive design and HTML-based standards like EPUB 3 is expected to empower CGM publishers—and should serve as an example for others with complex content. We interviewed a number of CGM publishers and advocates to discover how they are adapting to digital, and to see what lessons they might offer others.
John Parsons (john@intuideas.com), former Editorial Director of The Seybold Report, is an independent writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He is the co-author of the interactive printed textbook, Introduction to Graphic Communication, on the art, science and business of print, which has been adopted by Ryerson, Arizona State, the University of Houston, and many other schools and vocational training centers. Custom editions of the book are under consideration by major printing companies and franchises for internal training purposes.