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What The Proliferation Of Tablets Means For Comic Books

This article is more than 10 years old.

ComiXology booth! (Photo credit: PatLoika)

According to Walmart, the prolific retailer sold over 1.4 million tablets, led by Apple's iPad Mini, during its Black Friday sale last month. While consumer technology like computers and HD televisions have been a staple of Black Friday shopping for years, tablets have only recently joined them as a big holiday item.

Unlike when Apple debuted the original iPad for $499 in 2010, the market is now saturated with models at every price point, including a range economy tablets like the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD, and iPad Mini. As the technology has become cheaper, it's also become more widespread, with tablet sales expected to eventually surpass the combined sales of desktops and laptops sometime in 2015.

This has been a boon to both comic book publishers and readers. Just as the spread of tablets has fueled growth in book publishing, dedicated apps like Comixology have done wonders for the comic book industry. While companies like DC and Marvel were hesitant at first to distribute their books digitally, for fear of damaging longstanding relationships with brick and mortar retailers, the move has paid off. Especially for Comixology.

Though the overall growth of digital comic book sales slowed to 25% this year (down from a whopping 300% in both 2012 and 2011), the market continues to come into its own, buoyed by titles like Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga and Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead.

For its part, Comixology has continued to branch out, looking past best-selling books to both mid-tier and niche titles that can appeal to a wider cross-section of potential readers. The company, which supplies both a marketplace for digital comics as well the default "Guided View" reading technology used to consume them, reached 200 million downloads earlier this year. Bringing in new readers with different interests was no small part of that.

Unlike traditional comic book shops which are bound by the law of scarcity to stock only those comics they think are most likely to sell, online retailers like Comixology have the luxury of virtual shelves that can hold any title, no matter how small its audience, as long as someone out there is interested in buying it.

With its Submit portal, Comixology has followed in Amazon's footsteps and given independent creators interested in self-publishing a platform to do so. Speaking about the process at New York City Comic-Con last October, Joshua Fialkov, co-creator of The Bunker, called it, "a perfect way to get your book out to people without jumping through hoops." According to Fialkov, portals like Submit help streamline the publishing process, removing a lot of the costly barriers to entry while allowing for a direct channel between creators and readers.

One of Comixology's co-founders, John Roberts, noted at a company sponsored event that same weekend that, "Submit has become a top 20 publisher in revenue for us." As reported by Publisher's Weekly, Roberts said that one comic book series even saw more than a tenfold jump in sales once it made it on to Submit. “It’s a testament to the audience we bring and the better reading experience on small devices," he explained.

iPad Mini (Photo credit: 5goldpieces Photography)

First time comic book readers, which make up an important part of this audience, are more diverse as well. According to a survey done by Comixology of close to 16,000 customers, 20% of its readers are now women, up from just 5% back when the company was first starting out.

Online retailers like Comixology aren't necessarily in direct competition with traditional comic book stores either. While some see digital comics as the beginning of the end, others like writer Mark Waid (Irredeemable, Kingdom Come), see digital comics as the gateway to an expanding mainstream audience, one he hopes will find their way to local brick and mortar shops after being turned on to the medium through apps like Comixology.

Though tablet shipments are expected to fall next year, that's likely due more to market saturation than a drop-off in interest on the part of consumers. A survey by PBS KIDS found that "technology" will make up the majority of parents' gift purchases this holiday season, and among that segment tablets edged out video game consoles as the highest item of interest, meaning the potential market for comic books will only continue to expand.