This link has been bookmarked by 3 people . It was first bookmarked on 21 Aug 2008, by Nele Noppe.
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26 Aug 08
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25 Aug 08
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21 Aug 08
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Publishers are taking a close look at a variety of models—from the Web and mobile phones to iTunes and the Sony Reader—for the digital delivery of comics.
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Examples of digital comics date back to as early as 1985, and pirated comics have long been available to savvy Web users on underground BitTorrent sites. But publishers, for the most part, have ignored the whole issue of digital comics for years. But no longer.
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But as publishers scatter in a variety of different digital directions, it's hard to know when—or whether—some kind of industry standard will emerge.
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Although Web comics have the distinct advantage of being native denizens of the Internet, they've also been much faster to capitalize on cross-media possibilities. While the Web model of distributing content for free has often been met with skepticism or even fear in the print industry, Web comics have used their free content to attract huge online audiences, and publishers are successfully monetizing them by collecting their free Web content in hardcovers and trade paperbacks.
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Nowhere is that more true than in manga, or Japanese comics, which have become the most popular form of published sequential art in America. Manga is published overwhelmingly in the paperback book format and its success is largely driven by a younger audience that also happens to be more Web-savvy and less wedded to print than its forbears. As cell phone and smart phone technology in America finally catches up with what's available in Japan and Europe, some comics publishers have moved quickly into mobile phone distribution, a format that has proved enormously popular and lucrative for manga in its native land.
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