[It's been a long march for LongBox, the ambitious downloadable comics application for multiple platforms that is ready to go public this weekend. Even as downloadable comics and e-publishing are establishing themselves as a new foundation of comics publishing, LongBox CEO Rantz Hoseley took a moment to peek under the hood of the new launch.]
THE BEAT: So tell us where we’re at with LongBox?
HOSELEY: We’re officially launching public beta at Emerald City Comicon — public beta in the true sense, anyone can download, register, and install it and have at it.
THE BEAT: How did you get to this point?
HOSELEY: We went to private beta in November. Our original intention was to launch the public beta in December, but in October we were contacted by a media company who offered an intriguing proposition. But after a month and a half of due diligence and multiple meetings and a plan to announce at CES [in the end] they offered us a document that was significantly different than all the previous negotiations. While there might have been some advantages for LongBox, it was a bad proposition for the comics industry as a whole and very much flew in the face of our entire intention of doing this in the first place, which was to create a comprehensive platform for comics—comprehensive in every sense of the word in terms of digital distribution on any digital entertainment device and the support structure given to publishers and creators. We’ve committed to the tools and production support given to publishers as well as sales and tracking on a dynamic ongoing basis — whether you’re talking the ability for the direct market and print retailers to leverage off of digital sales rather than it being a bifurcation, as well as the concept of being able to read content across multiple devices without multiple fees.
THE BEAT: So there was no agreement?
HOSELEY: With three days to go on CES we told them that the deal was not acceptable. It would have been flown in direct contradiction to things we had promised publishers and creators – as a creator myself it would have been repeating the sins of the past and the failings that the current distribution model has in the print world. They were seeing this as a typical tech investment; their primary interest was adding another widget to the piece rather than looking at how do we grow this when you have an industry that despite its current restrictions still does $700 million+ a year in revenue. Yes, comics are a niche market but it’s a niche market with legs, especially when you think about the barriers in distribution. Our goal has always been to reach a larger market. Plus you should leave the dance with the one that brung you.
We’re concentrating on reaching that larger audience but not completely disregarding the comics fans that have kept the industry going for years. Much the same way, look at the video game industry. When a console releases a new platform they always want to reach the mass market but at launch it is your hardcore early adapters who determine partially your momentum and become evangelists for you.
It was one of those situations where after looking at it, it was, I wouldn’t say it was a struggle to come to the decision, but it was certainly one of the rubber meets the road moments where the choice is do this right or shut this down entirely, which route are you going to take? We decided we ware going to do this right. We have too much invested in the comics industry and our love of the medium, for anything less than do it right,
If a partnership comes along that makes sense that’s fine, but we’re not going to let potential partnerships shape the direction or put us in a position to put our current launch plans on pause. It’s a much better tactic to take because we’re much stronger in terms of infrastructure with the application and multi platform support.
THE BEAT: Let’s talk about platforms. Of course, the shiny new bauble on the horizon is the iPad. Will LongBox be available on the iPad?
HOSELEY: We have an iPad version in development and an Android tablet version in development and we’re currently looking at the newly announced Winmo 7. In all of these cases it’s not just a matter of the technical adaptation, the bigger issue for us is that we’re not interested in just being in the user interface over to a tablet. There are distinct user interaction requirements that so many people seem to be failing at and that are failing on what the phone, much less what the tablet interface is going to be like. They are not thinking about the usability aspects of it — how is someone going to be holding and navigating this, how is someone going to interact with this device. Making sure that those interactions are consistent in this application [is key for us.] We’ve been thinking about things like the tablet interactions since day one.
THE BEAT: What kind of content is available at launch?
HOSELEY: The first launch phase is very similar to what the content in the private beta; with a couple of exceptions all content at the initial launch will be available for free, around a dozen that are clearly watermarked; every account has a number of comic block credits you can access without having to pay anything for content.
Phase two is code redemption. That began last week — we’re giving out codes which can be redeemed for comic blocks which can be used to purchase titles which are more general books that are not visually watermarked that are not outside of the sample range that are actually content that you would purchase. Code redemption phase will be through promotions via Asylum, Comics Alliance, promotions on CBR and IGN and some other sites both in terms of comic oriented sites and more technology and entertainment geared sites. And that will run through the next phase.
The final phase will be the eCommerce where you can purchase titles from the initial launch where we have watermarked titles; this will ramp from about 12 to 120 to 200 books. We’ve already got over 100 books that are currently on our internal servers; part of it is using the beta to stress test the system in a global manner. Part of it is also debugging the various platforms. Ironically, handhelds, phones and gaming devices are more defined pieces of hardware, as opposed to the PC market where you have a million different combinations of processors and ram configurations. So the beta is going to test this how this would work on a truly global market of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of users; it’s a much better cross section. Doing it in three phases allows us to stress test the different aspects of the application and the production structure.
THE BEAT: What do you see as the potential audience for this?
HOSELEY: I think the potential audience is amazing. Our entire business model was structured on being sustainable with 5% of the numbers done by the print market and every indication that we’ve seen both within the digital comics market and in the larger global digital entertainment consumer market has been that the market is much, much larger than that. I can’t even tell you how many meetings I’ve been in with [non habitual comics buyers] who says that they are a fan of comics but they don’t buy them because they can’t find them or they’re too expensive or it’s 2 in the morning and Amazon doesn’t have monthly comics available. Being able to remove those barriers and make it possible for comics to be an entertainment impulse buy again is really key. Mark Waid did a great post on the idiocy of people who keep talking about bringing back the spinner rack — kids are not in drug stores any more. If you want to capture the impulse market and want to grow that market you need to go where they are and they’re online. They are consuming content through phones and game systems through computers and that is the reason that you have such success with groups like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Digital; it’s not a hard sell for them. Every game system has Netflix.
THE BEAT: Is it a harder sell for publishers?
HOSELEY: It really isn’t. The amazing thing is when I first started this from a technology development standpoint over three years ago, meeting with publishers across the board – mainstream publishers, middle level even smaller publishers — there was nothing but opposition. Digital comics — it’s the end, dogs and cats living together, stealing content away, trivializing the value….etc etc etc. Every argument. It’s really telling both the state that the comics industry is in as well as the widespread acceptance of being able to consume digital content on any device, that there has been a complete sea change. A thing that has blown my mind is that a couple of very well known creators who are iconic brands more on the indie side who go back decades in this industry and who are just by the nature of their personalities the last people you would expect to be interested in and much less embrace digital have contacted us because they want to get on this platform. It’s very telling.
THE BEAT: What about the last frontier…retailers?
HOSELEY: Even if you go back the first non private showings of LongBox a little over a year ago at NYCC 2009, the reaction at retail at that show was mixed. There were some retailers who were “how can I work with you?” and some were very, very adversarial about it. And just in a year the number of them who have changed their stance is remarkable.
We’re making the effort to set up in an infrastructure so we can use this to help grow the whole market. So let’s figure out how to work together and part of that that’s going to be an ongoing evolving process. We definitely want to support retailers, especially the good retailers. There are some fantastic retailers out there and for a good shop you cannot replicate that experience in digital. It’s an environmental thing, it’s not just I bought this content, there is an atmosphere and a knowledge base and the whole social aspect. The really progressive and successful shops emphasize that and we are trying to work with those retailers so that they can be successful and grow the market so that it is profitable for everyone. This is our mutual goal. The complication is that the current distribution system for print makes that very, very difficult. It doesn’t make sense for retailers or LongBox to lose money on every sale. We’re working on a retailer advisory panel to help define how we can work together to overcome those things. We all see there’s a solvable problem there, and working on the same page is part of the evolutionary process.
Larry Marder and Scott McCloud and I have talked about this a lot. The thing we want to make clear is that that we have a bridge to cross now we have to have an infrastructure dealing with the content that is coming out now. Part of our entire production process for publishers and creators is that digital content in their future can be unique in a way that print can’t be and print is unique in its own way,.
When I was putting together Comic Book Tattoo [the Eisner-winning anthology of comics based on songs by Tori Amos] I was in the middle of putting together LongBox and there are things print can do that digital can’t, and vice versa. I think you’ll see over the next few years that kind of emphasis on things that are done in print. And I say all this with the caveat digital doesn’t mean you are going to get motion comics.
THE BEAT: What else should people know about LongBox going public?
HOSELEY: Over the last few months we’ve done major revisions to the user experience in direct response to the private beta and people’s suggestions of usability and clarity, We look forward to more feedback and input from comics fans and users. We’ll have a forum for suggestions to give input on what pieces we are developing for upcoming builds and also if they have suggestions or ideas that they feel would make them better. Also sometime within the next four weeks we’ll release the documentation for skinning the app so if users want to make their own custom skins we will be supporting that as well.
[Hoseley and Dean Trippe will be at Emerald City meeting fans and talking about LongBox. Readers and publishers who are interested are welcome to grab us on the floor or swing by Dean’s table in Artist’s Alley.]
Good Luck, Rantz!
That sound you hear? Like distant thunder? That’s the cavalry coming to comics’ rescue.
Go Rantz Go!
Rantz is my hero.
Biggest hurdle Longbox faces: The word comics is not in the name. Huge marketing mistake.
Best of luck to Longbox. With Apple getting into the graphic novel business with iBooks, hopefully Apple won’t block Longbox because it competes against them.
No Jimmie, he’s MY hero.
No “comics” in the name…
Not a problem. You add it as a descriptor afterwards. Like:
itunes music store
Kindle ebook reader
Sony Walkman cassette player
Google search engine
Kleenex tissue
Coca-Cola carbonated beverage
Eventually, if a company is lucky, it has a first-name-basis relationship with the public. People become friendly, possibly evangelical, with the brand. Perhaps they become so friendly they give you a nickname like “Mac” or “Coke” or “Ma Bell”.
“Man… did you watch Carson last night?”
“My 2-year-old niece was playing with my iphone and dialed Greenland!”
“You going to San Diego this year?”
“Man… you gotta try the hot tub at the BOB! Best ever baseball seats!”
Also, by keeping the distinct descriptor out of your name, you avoid setting your company in reinforced concrete. “Longbox” has a distinct definition among comics fans, who will automatically parse what the company does. For non-comics fans, they will probably parse it as “a really long box, holding everything I want to store”.
Remember: comic books are magazines. Magazines are booklets. Books are wonderful devices for storing and depicting information. So Longbox, if successful, could easily expand their catalog to other genres, formats, and titles, without being shackled with an identity that hurts their business.
There is just one thing that Mr Hoseley seems to forget: people will have to know about Longbox, they’ll have to find the website, they’ll have to download the program, and then (as long as it works on their computer) they’ll be able to buy comics. That is a lot of efforts that I don’t see any casual comic reader ever trying. Especially with the iPad and the iBookstore.
What I think a lot of people don’t realize is that Longbox is what is called a silo, a closed environment, a portal that tries to sell you something to experience in a locked company-defined software. And yes with heavy DRM.
Why would anybody buy something from Longbox when they can buy a platform specific version of the same comic directly from the publisher? Because we all know that every publisher is going to be releasing their own titles on the iPad, iPhone and computers any time soon (IDW is already doing it).
So why buy from Longbox? Why go to the trouble of downloading it? Maybe for the service it provides, maybe for the quality of the reading experience… That’s a big maybe. And it’s going to be hard.
Longbox would have been the killer app 2 or 3 years ago. By now it would be everywhere. But coming out late this year, after the iTunes Bookstore, after comixology, after graphic.ly, after iverse, Longbox is dead in the water. Stillborn.
Hoseley is allowing for the presence of competitors:
Platform compatibility shouldn’t be an issue. Assuming that his research is correct, reaching some of those potential buyers will be sufficient for profitability. LongBox doesn’t have to be the only digital comics reader to be viable, just as there are online book vendors besides Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
However, the market for digital comics certainly won’t be the same as the market for digital music. A digital song is standalone entertainment; a digital comic that’s one entry in a series isn’t (for me, anyway). The large publishers would much prefer, I’d think, to have digital comics readers subscribe on a monthly or annual basis. If the impulse buyers Hoseley wants to reach don’t discriminate on the basis of quality, creator, story material, etc.. if all they want is bathroom reader comics, then the large publishers will have large advantages over the small ones.
SRS
Too much DRM, not as good as the 10 years old CDisplay – I’ll come back in 2015 (which is about the time it tooks the music industry to get it) when the comics industry gets it.
There are too many differences between the music marketplace and the comics marketplace for their approaches to digitization to be comparable. Piracy that’s a mere blip in the music marketplace could drive a small comics publisher out of business.
SRS
“Assuming that his research is correct, reaching some of those potential buyers will be sufficient for profitability. LongBox doesn’t have to be the only digital comics reader to be viable, just as there are online book vendors besides Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.”
Well is Mr Hoseley in the business of just being viable? From everything I read from him and about him I thought Longbox was planned to be THE major distribution channel for digital comics. Obviously that is not going to happen now.
“If the impulse buyers Hoseley wants to reach”
Once more he is not going to get casual impulse buyers if they have to go through all the trouble of installing the Longbox software first. I don’t think for example Comixology on iPhone is getting a lot of casual readers (they download the stand-alone ‘Archie’ or ‘Star Trek’ apps instead).
What Longbox seems to be targeting at this point is hardcore indie comic readers, people who buy Image titles for example, know their way around a computer and prefer digital comics to loaded shelves. And that is WAY less than 5% of the print market, in my opinion anyway. If he can get 1% of the market, he will be very lucky, especially knowing that he can’t be a big player on iPhone, Android, or iPad – only PC and maybe Mac are still open.
As for subscriptions they only work for DC/Marvel title really, so I don’t know why so many people are talking so much about subscriptions. It’s a moot point right now.
“Piracy that’s a mere blip in the music marketplace could drive a small comics publisher out of business.”
Everything that is released is *already* pirated and freely available generally within three hours of it being released so how is that going to make any difference?
“If you want to capture the impulse market and want to grow that market you need to go where they are and they’re online.”
… and price it cheaply!!! In my opinion, the price point is really going to be the key to success for Longbox. I am really hoping for a 99 cent price per issue. Through browsing selections on Comixology (on my iTouch), and the Playstation store (on my PSP) it appears that Marvel (and some of the others) are trying to go for a $1.99 price point. I have yet to buy a $1.99 digital comic. I have “bought” several free samplers, and some 99 cent comics (e.g. Mike Allred’s Madman the Oddity Odyssey #1-3 for $1.98 total on Comixology — 1st issue free, and #2 and #3 at 99cents each).
Also, quality of both user interface and quality of content are important. From the interview, it appears the interface is going to be top notch; however, I have concerns that the content available will be filled with “shovelware comics” from the untalented who are drawn by a low hurdle that lacks quality control of content.
Nice interview… I look forward to the follow-up in weeks to come, and wish Longbox success!
If there are people who are so committed to the “All information should be free” principle, or who benefit in some way from piracy that they scan and upload “everything,” then they should be prosecuted. Tracking them down wouldn’t be difficult.
I don’t think much of the idea that someone should be able to make a living off of one or two monthly comic book series, but if someone tries to do that, then every sale counts. If he were to make issues free in an attempt to reach readers, then he’d hurt himself financially, and risk the loss of readers when he began charging.
People who pirate material published by small presses are thieves, and they’re deluding themselves if they think they’re something else.
SRS
Which actually tackles my question how?
You have answered a question about why piracy is bad, I asked a question about why DRM would make any difference to anyone but legit consumers who will have the usual problems with it.
The pirates are stealing and will carrying on steal, I’m a legit consumer who wants to buy a product but will not buy it with DRM. The idea that makes them DRM will make a difference to the bottom line seems nonsense to me because there is nothing stopping that at present!
So..em.. where is it?
More platforms and more options can only help. Anyone thinking they have all the answers is deluding themselves, because if they were they’d be warren fucking buffet raking in all that dough. Longbox will do some thing very very well, and some things very very differently, and some things quite badly. If there is room to adapt and to change, I see no reason why this won’t be viable.
Good question, Charles Knight. Especially in the wake of announcements like this, I’d guess that they’d want to get LongBox in front of consumers soon.
Any word on LongBox, Heidi?