Hello UYDers,
I bought a digital copy of Yokai for $5.99. I don't have an iPad but I have an iPhone4.
The water colors look great on the iPhone screen. The lettering can be read but is on the small size. I have to admit it look a lot better than I thought it would on such a tiny screen.
At first the Dark Horse app setting had the "panel zoom" feature automatically turned on. I found that extremely annoying. It zooms in and out of of panels on each page. You rarely get to see the whole page at once. Very un-comic like. I turned it off. It reads a lot better.
Of course you can only see on page at a time. With a comic you almost always see two pages at a time. The story is a little different that way. And when they get to the splash pages (i.e full images across two pages) the comic app mergers the pages into one seamless image (it looks good without the crease in the middle of the image). When you turn your phone sideways, you get a bigger horizontal image.
Of course I'm sure it must look amazing on an iPad. Maybe with the iPad 3 comes out I will buy one.
I have to admit it would be pretty cool to have every Usagi comic on one device.
When you buy a copy for you iPhone/iPad, you also get access to a digital copy on the darkhorse website. So you can read it on the computer as long as you have Internet access. I have a pretty big computer screen (24") so it looks pretty good. But not as good as the hardcover itself.
Overall, I'm satisfied with my purchase. I will probably pick up a black and whites Usagi to see how that looks as well. If it looks good, I may buy the rest.
Question: does digital copies of Usagi pay Stan less, more or the same than the print editions.
I love the single print issues. But at WonderCon, I heard panel after panel of how difficult it is to make a living on individual comics. At least I got the sense that most single issues don't make that much money and many independent cartoonist lose money on them. Trade paperbacks are where more money is made.
I went to a Digital Comic Publishers panel with the the three biggest digital comics distributors. They said there are a lot of hidden cost: paying the engineers, marketing folks, publishers, creators. It didn't seem to be a lot of money to be made. The one exception was pocket god. That mobile app game is so successful, it seems to make a ton of money that can sustain other parts of the business that aren't as successful. And when they made a comic based on the game, it sold well.
I think they would sell a ton of comics if they were only $1 each (and they do have sales). But I don't see that as sustainable for the digital distributors. I'm willing to pay $1.99 for digital copies of Usagi because it is cheaper than print edition (although as a collector, I like the print copies), more portable, doesn't get damaged, has a backed up copy on the web if I ever lost my phone, can access it from any computer as long as I have Internet access. I hope Stan gets a decent cut (i.e. same as the print edition) for each digital copy sold but I don't know if that is so.
It's a brave new world. I'm excited that digital Usagi is here. Now if I only can get myself to pay a chunk of money for my Usagi Tablet reader.
Peace, maka