Comics on the iPad

Yesterday’s unmissable news was Apple’s announcement of the soon-to-be-released iPad – like an iPhone, but bigger. And shinier. And surprisingly affordable for the basic model – easily on par with a lot of the netbooks out there.

What’s especially exciting about this announcement, though, is that finally the Apple marketing machine is promoting what is essentially an e-reader edition of the iPhone. Like a Kindle, but with more applications. And colour.

The iPhone itself is a nifty device useful for getting internet stuff while out and about, but its merit – being small and easily portable – is also something of a flaw when it comes to reading more than snippets of text, with lots of pinching and scrolling and stuff required. For comics this is especially the case, as having any more than a panel on-screen at a time makes it hard to see what’s going on – and for for a visual storytelling medium that’s no good.

The iPad, though, seems to have addressed that by the simple expedient of having a bigger screen. It looks to be about the size of a compact magazine, with an aspect ratio very close to that of print publications – which could make it an excellent opportunity for comic creators to bring their work to a wider audience (and make money from doing so!) without the expense of getting stuff printed.

The barrier to selling comics on the iPhone has been the lack of a way to charge for stuff – iTunes doesn’t cover books or suchlike publications, while getting into the App Store requires an investment of time and money in getting a developer’s kit and learning to code your own app. Not everyone has the time (or money, or inclination) to do that when they could be working on their comic instead, and an open-source WordPress equivalent (providing a customisable shell into which the creator inserts their comic for distribution) simply doesn’t exist.

The arrival of the iBooks store could potentially change that. If it’s implemented like the iTunes music store then rather than having to put together an app, comic creators could submit their works to the library to be downloaded directly (for money!). A micropayments-based business model suddenly becomes a lot more feasible.

I’m very interested to see where this goes.