The New Graphicly: A Whole Bunch of Awesomeness

Some breaking news from Graphicly about their new website which has been in Beta for a little while!

The New Graphicly: A Whole Bunch of Awesomeness

When we started Graphicly, we knew we loved stories. And not just the art, or the story-telling. Or the sharing and discussion. But all of it.

And as we began to add publishers and creators to the Graphicly Network (close to 200 now!) and users numbers began to grow and double, fast surpassing hundreds of thousands, something became extremely clear.

The comic book industry wasn’t just made up of awesome publishers or awesome fans or even awesome creators. It was all of that. But it was extremely difficult for them to share, collaborate and promote each other.

In early January, we began to discuss Graphicly and its future. We knew that we had to continue to champion the importance of community and cutting edge technology. We also knew that if all we did was grow into a gigantic online store or even the “Diamond of digital,” we were doing nothing more than putting a Walmart in the middle of a vibrant downtown.

Being a store is easy. Get content. Sell lots of content. Repeat as necessary.

But building a platform that allowed for the intersection of story-tellers and story-lovers— well, thats hard. Every day wonderful creators are told that their work isn’t good enough simply because someone determined that their stories may not sell.

Fans are disappointed as stories are discontinued and the creators they love find it difficult to work. Publishers are repackaging, renumbering and rebooting stories and character lines in an attempt to keep the interest of fans.

It’s a vicious cycle, one that we have decided to opt out of. We will continue to sell books from the greatest publishers out there. But we will also help stories, regardless of medium—be they graphic novels, film, audio, games or some amazing aggregation—be accessible, immersive and engaging.

We released our new Graphicly.com last night, and it is a wonderful first step in that direction. Beyond the refreshed look and feel, you will find that there is no Flash on the site anywhere. It is completely HTML5 (for my fellow geeks) and will soon be optimized to be viewed on any device. We have worked closely with Google to extract all the benefits of HTML5 and the Chrome browser, and as those features (offline browsing, in-app purchases and others) get rolled out, you will see them activated on the site.

We even released a new version of our Android app, which closely resembles the functionality of the website.

That’s not the exciting part. What is?

Each comic that is available on Graphicly.com can be taken and embedded, just like a video, anywhere. Thats right. Love Stan Lee’s new books with BOOM! Studios, like Starborn,  or In Maps & Legends from Mike Jasper and Nikki Smith? Take the comic and put it wherever you like. Show it off to your friends or the visitors to your website or blog. And the conversation that occurs around the story on your site?

Well, that carries to every single place the comic book is installed. Imagine having a conversation about Top Cow’s Angelus across a thousand sites in real time?

Its a pretty powerful concept. Think about how you were introduced to great stories. Someone introduced you to Spider-man or Wanted or any of the stories you love. Now, with a couple of clicks, you can do that for hundreds or thousands of people.

For creators this is a compelling promotional tool, and one that many creators have already taken advantage of, and over the course of the next few months, many more creators and sites large and will will do the same.

We are committed to continue to produce and develop creator tools to 1) be supportive and 2) make it easier for their fans to connect with them.

Initially, we have set it up where any creator can submit their work to submissions@graphicly.com and within 24-48 hours, their book will appear within the network — and more importantly, the community will help curate the content. Over time, we will introduce more and more ways for the community to directly interact and collaborate with their favorite creators.

It will be a fantastic connection of awesome.

By the way, when a book is submitted to Graphicly, if its approved, we will work with the creators to help them to submit their work to places outside the Graphicly Network, be it the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble NOOK, or even other digital comic online stores.

We are also starting to work with creators of all types of stories. Soon, you will see video and other story mediums within the Graphicly Network, and in many cases the stories will be presented with multiple mediums used. (As an example, imagine clicking on a tv screen in a graphic novel, and having a video play that extends the story.

The stories that will be discovered and curated by the community will be, well, awesome.

At the conclusion of our meeting in January we decided that our mantra was“Connect Awesome.”

We want to help define what online storytelling becomes. We want to reach inside the minds of the most creative people in the world, and provide technology that empowers them to tell their stories in the way they want, and watch those stories be shared and enjoyed by the most amazing community in the world.

Today, we have begun that adventure with this release. I hope that like us, you will find being part of this awesome is as important as it is amazing, and will choose to join us and help us do it right.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Micah

—————

Micah Baldwin
CEO and Chief Community Caretaker
Graphicly
+1-720-248-8499 direct
micah@graphicly.com (GTALK too)
@micah

ps. Oh, and if you are wondering, we dropped the dot from our name. No real reason other than it made our logo a bit wonky and people pronounced our name a bit funny. After all, with a name like Micah, I can totally relate. So we applied a bit of Dot B Gone, and away it went. Long live Graphicly!

 

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