Quote:
Originally Posted by Von Allan
Yes, I figured as much. And I figure I'm a bit odd since I'm actually talking about an authorized ebook version and not a pirated copy. I also used to run a bookstore and I do believe very much in print - I hear you on that front. But I also really like ebooks and reading on the screen in general. Is it the same as curling up with a good hard copy book? No. But that said, it doesn't bug me like it bugs some people.
In addition to that, I tend to put a lot of weight on the Tim O'Reilly line: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy." That's partially why I did my comic as a free webcomic in the first place. And since it's a black and white comic with grey watercolour washes, it would seem to be a good fit for black and white ereaders like the Kindle and Sony Reader.
Now, that said my book is available as a print collection (shameless plug - it's $12.95 US for 148 pages on Amazon - I think that's a fair price for a black and white graphic novel). But I'm also under no illusions that it's going to sell particularly well. It probably won't. Hell, as a ex-retailer I'm also under no illusions with how most books fair in general. It's hard out there. Very, very hard. In my particular case, I'm trying to build a career one step at a time. While I realize not everyone will like my book, I would at least like it to be as accessible as possible - and that means as many formats as possible.
What I may wind up doing is just creating CBR/CBZ files and using Calibre to try and convert it to a Sony Reader format instead of mucking around too much with PDFs. Part of my problem is I'm used to dealing with a high-rez documents for printing - low rez is actually challenging from this point of view.  |
One thing I'll note: the free Hugo-award celebratory version of Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic would probably look just fine, even if it's color... although you'd have to make sure it was scaled for the right dimensions of the reader (think 6-8" screens with similar resolution at this time), and you'd have to do the cleanup on PC to make sure that the conversion to grayscale doesn't go to hell.