“Effects of piracy on the American comic book market and the role of digital formats”, Institute for Structural Research, Poland, March 2020.
This is the first really in-depth paper I’ve seen on digital piracy of comics in the Anglosphere. Specifically the reading of per-issue comics in the USA, as they are freshly released. It’s not about the collected series/graphic novels, so the research is only talking about the type of readers who are not averse to reading episodes that are dribbled out over as much as a year or more. I can’t imagine wanting to read a comic in that painfully strung-out way, but I guess there are people who do.
The paper’s headline conclusion is that, for the per-issue readers…
“11-14% more print comics issues could have been bought if not for illegal availability [of digital per-issue scans]”.
My suspicion then would be that some of the “11-14%” is readers who read the initial issues of a run and got bored, decided to sell the paper issues quick to newbs on eBay. Because the series had obviously become mediocre in their eyes. But they still kind of wanted to know how the story ended — so they read the pirated digital versions of issues #5-7, just to know if they should get the trade paperback or not. Probably not, 90% of the time, as they’re savvy readers who can tell when a comic isn’t going to work out. That would be one possibility.
As the new research paper points out, part of the problem here is that legal digital-issue copies are too high in price, often being nearly as expensive as the print version when first released…
“most of the readers who acquired a comic book without payment had a positive willingness to pay for the digital copy of the title … a reduction in [per-issue] digital prices could have incentivised some of the readers to purchase digital formats instead”
The author of the paper points out also a mis-match between audiences…
“the official app-powered digital comics [buffet-style services] target an audience whose specific intent is not to own a print version”
These U.S. digital ‘walled gardens’ give every appearance to an outsider of being mostly for manga-loving youngsters and their manga-nervous parents, and as such I assume they don’t lure away too many ‘$100+ a month guys’ from the comic-book stores. It’s likely been a profitable balance for the big publishers. Until now… as comic stores struggle to re-open and many a ‘$100+ a month on comics’ guy is now finding himself unemployed.
Another factor, as some Japanese research has recently suggested, is that the 11-14% per-issue piracy loss may effectively act as a string of ‘free samples’ that boost profits in the long term. Because they spur a significant boost in the eventual purchase of the collected trade edition in paper. Thus, per-issue piracy could actually benefit publishers, over a typical 18 month release cycle. Though that will likely only apply if the comic is a quality one. If your ‘free sample’ is boring after four issues, you’re not going to be buying the trade to cherish and keep on your shelves.
A further conclusion of the new paper is that, with a couple of key pirate sites seeing at least 10x more traffic than Amazon’s ComiXology walled-garden…
the high volume of pirate consumption suggests a large audience with no intention to pay for any of the formats available at the official market.
Interesting, but you’d want to break that down. How much of that traffic is from the USA, and how much from nations like China where piracy is just casually taken for granted? And how much is scraping bots?
The difference is going to come in curation, I think, in terms of getting highly subscription-averse people like me to get a monthly subscription. Which will potentially open up new adult markets. Give me guaranteed “download in digital and keep” access, from a store that only has truly completed story comics for grown-ups (i.e. no manga other than a handful of Hayao Miyazaki-level quality titles, very very few superheroes, clear out all the ‘young adult’ teen-angst stuff, and the gloomy art-school depressives, and make no sales that leave the buyer with ‘cliffhanger’ volumes). Stories that can entertain like a movie for between an hour and four hours, and which are complete. Then give me a digital comics ereader that can do frame-by-frame guided view, with no hassle every time and the ability to switch to b&w or mute garish colouring. Then curate your store catalogue by hand, and do it properly and with fine-grained facets. Oh and this is about entertainment, not political lectures — so let me hide all comics that have huge political axes to grind, with just one click on my Settings panel. “But there won’t be anything left!” you cry… Yes there will, you’ve just got to go out and search and curate the heck out of the online store. And if a suitable comic is not available in digital via your store, still give me a link/profile page for it and tell be exactly how to get it from elsewhere. Thus, your store should be the completist catalogue for this particular type of completed comic story. I’d pay $15 a month for that, and happily. Maybe even $20, if you throw in two free comics per month.