machine

I thinl Jimski is bang on when he talks about Marvel making digital moves and retailers being unhappy; at Newsarama they had talked with a few retailers about that when it was announced, and it seemed to be the case.

Which, on the one hand, does make sense, but at the same time - that's the way things are going. I look at it this way: what would the cost of a comic be if you subtracted the 60% of cover price or whatever it is that Diamond takes  AND eliminated print costs?

Anything anyone says is speculation of course, but I could see myself trying comics I wouldn't normally buy if I could buy a digital copy directly from a publisher at a reduced rate. 

True enough, the publishers know that those digital comics WOULD end up being pirated and made freely available, but at the same time I think the major thing impeding that new business model besides retailers being against it is the ad based revenue generated. I think it's possible to find out ad rates for the major networks, and I've heard prices quoted in news articles and the like, but we don't know how much of the major publishers profits are ad based as opposed to sales.

Would advertisers be willing to pay the same rates for space in digital comics? I couldn't say, but I believe if they WERE already, we'd be seeing more comics made available directly to customers in a digital format.  

I know a lot of people say they couldn't read comics digitally, they prefer to have the paper copy, but if you put any stock in the figures people talk about regarding how widespread comics piracy is, I think it's clear there are thousands upon thousands of people who have no qualms about reading digital comics. Maybe I'm wrong and it's impossible, but I think publishers need to start examining how to turn those non paying customers into paying customers, even if only a small percentage of them. In a world where it's becoming very rare to see a comic sell 200k copies in a month, every bit would help.