Comixology now allows DRM-free comics

[fjtorres]

http://www.cnet.com/news/amazons-com...omics-backups/

At the San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, the company announced that its partner publishers can choose to offer their readers the ability to save comics to their local device outside of the Comixology app.

Comixology's first download partner publishers include Top Shelf, Image, Dynamite, Thrillbent, and Zenescope. Aspiring creators who publish their comics through the Comixology Submit program can also give their readers the option to download DRM-free. The downloaded files will be available in PDF and CBZ formats.

Associated detail:

At the announcement at Comic-Con, Comixology head of marketing Chip Mosher reminded the audience that Cory Doctorow said that he would come out in a cheerleader outfit and dance if they announced a DRM-free option. Doctorow, an author of books and at Boing Boing, was not at Comic-Con this year.

[AnemicOak]

I just got an email from them about this telling me some of my stuff was available for "DRM-free backup". The non-ability to download an actual file I can use on various things is the number one thing that's kept me from "buying" more than freebies for the most part where comics are concerned. Too bad we'll likely never see Marvel or DC go this route.

[rkomar]

Nice! We'd have a chance to read those on standard E-Ink devices.

[Jessica Lares]

Over 200 of my comics are available for download. YES!

[Stephen OConnell]

DRM free comics is great, now what about DRM free e-books Jeff?!

[RZetlin]

Does this apply to existing comics?
No epub format to backup to?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Stephen OConnell

DRM free comics is great, now what about DRM free e-books Jeff?!

Amazon has thousands of DRM free books. If they didn't offer DRM as an option they wouldn't have much of a store since many authors and almost all major publishers insist on it. This is no different. Many smaller and indie comic pubs are DRM free, but the big ones aren't.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by RZetlin

Does this apply to existing comics?

Yes, depending on publisher. Not all are offering their books DRM-free.

No epub format to backup to?

Nope, but very easy to convert a CBZ if your device doesn't support that format. Image Comics does offer ePub along with CBR, CBZ & PDF if you buy through their site.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Nope, but very easy to convert a CBZ if your device doesn't support that format.

Correct.
A cbz is just a (renamed) zip file full of jpgs.
Rename it from cbz to zip and you can extract a folder full of ordinary images you can view anywhere and do anything with.

For backup/insurance purposes it doesn't get any cleaner.
Very good move.

[Ninjalawyer]

Got the email for this the other day, checked my account page and saw that a good number of my comics are available for backup. Great move on their part; will definitely allay the niggling fear I always have when buying from a system with DRM.

[Jessica Lares]

My backup in total was about 8GB.

Is there anyway I could compress CBZ in batches? I'm blind enough that I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

My backup in total was about 8GB.

Is there anyway I could compress CBZ in batches? I'm blind enough that I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

Just leave it as is. 8 gb may sound a lot, but anymore it is just nothing. Sure, 8gb would hold a ton of non graphic books - more than you have time to read in a lifetime. Compressing the comics again will degrade their quality even more. Probably still plenty good for printing out, but for reading on display you want the best quality possible. Compression artefacts show up prominently onscreen, not so much on paper.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

Is there anyway I could compress CBZ in batches? I'm blind enough that I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

CBZs are already heavily compressed (as fjtorres says, a zip file full of jpegs) so further compression would cost you quite a lot of quality.

And 8GB isn't that much, especially compared to current hard drive sizes. My comic collection is more than 15 times that size

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

My backup in total was about 8GB.

Is there anyway I could compress CBZ in batches? I'm blind enough that I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

It is not a good idea because jpegs are already compressed using a lossy algorithm. Getting smaller sizes means either reducing the quality noticeably or resizing the images. Either way, text can get unreadable pretty fast.

Resizing is the easiest to do: Windows has the functionality built-in. You rename the cbz to zip and extract the jpegs. Then:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...gital-pictures

Recompressing can be done with this:

http://icompressor.blogspot.com/2008...ree-image.html

Since 8 GB is only about two single-sided DVDs worth of data, you might want to archive the originals on disk before experimenting with them.

[Jessica Lares]

I could probably automate it with Automator on my Mac. I'll look into it. I just want to shave a few 100 pixels off.

I just opened one up, and it's 1988x3056, the iPad Mini is 1024x768, and my computer monitor is 1366x768 in comparison.

This is how it looks like at 100% on my monitor:



I have to shrink it down to 25% before it fits on my screen.

At 828x1273 it's only 432KB, compared to the original 1.4MB.

This shouldn't be a problem I don't think? The text and graphics look fine at this size. I would keep my originals of course, and just have these smaller versions for the iPad.