OxiComics are doing great digital things, and this write up by Nuge from Geek Syndicate is well worth reading!
I’ve been following the rise of  the digital comics distributor Oxicomics with great interest. Their latest announcement should be worth looking at for every indie comic creator out there looking to get there comics into the digital market.
In a bold step forward the company have been working on a way to put the digital comics creative process into the hands of the indie (or professional) comic creator and now they have launched their answer to that question -  Oxicomics Digital Comics Distribution Platform (ODCDP). The team is still fine tuning everything but is, as far as I know, ready for business.
Today, Oxicomics has finally launched Oxicomics Digital Comics Distribution Platform (ODCDP) – their self-service digital comics platform – allowing publishers of all sizes to sell digital comics for use on smartphones, tablets, ebook readers and computers.
The guys at Oxicomics have released a fair amount of information via a press release and other such info on their website but I thought as there may be a lot of indie creators out there interested in this I would pick  out some of the more important points.
Publish your comic your way, at your price and in a  timescale of your choosing promises Oxicomics “You can publish your comics within the hour from getting set up. You handle the process yourself, there is no waiting period or approval process for individual comics, and you specify the price entirely as you want.
One of the things many publishers have complained about with the existing digital distributors out there is the time-to-market. “ It can take quite a long time from the files have been sent to they are available to the consumer. With ODCDP the publisher can create and publish the comic at their own leisure. This makes it much easier to plan releases to coincide with events like Conventions or special appearances.â€â€˜
Censorship  hasn’t been a problem for me as my comic happily sits on the iTunes store but I do know some creators who have a problem getting their comics onto iTunes. Oxicomics promised that although you want be able to put just anything through their site it will be a lot more fleixible than Apple.
After having several comics refused from distribution through the AppStore, Oxicomics decided to build a platform that would give the same, easy user-experience to the reader, a much bigger chunk of the sales price to the publishers as well as no censorship on the content. The only way to accomplish this, while still offering features like Panel-by-Panel reading for mobile phones, was to use HTML5.
One of titles on the website Wankan Unlimted was rejected by Apple for being extremely racist which came as a massive shock to it’s creators.
The Wakan Unwanted series was originally submitted to the Apple App Store in July 2010. After reviewing the comic, Apple deemed the comic “extremely racist†and not suitable for distribution.
Wakan Unwanted
The creators, Seth Piper and Lars Schwed Nygård, were very surprised and upset that their work was labelled as representing the exact opposite of the intention of the series and not least their own views. They are both staunch anti-racists, and the decision by Apple has caused many Wakan readers to scratch their heads.
This decision effectively ruled out digital distribution for Wakan Unwanted – a venue that is of great interest for many independent publisher, like Anakata Comics – the publisher of Wakan Unwanted.
What are the current downsides?
Currently, iOS has significant limitations to the amount of offline data that can be stored between sessions, making it necessary to provide a means for offline reading of the comics. “We are evaluating several different native comics apps to support offline reading with Panel-by-Panel mode as well†says Thomsen. “If we can’t find a good enough partner, we will develop our own native app as well†he says.
Ok that’s about the sum of it so far. I’ve not tried the system at length yet but I plan to in the next week so I’ll report back my experiences. However I think the potential benefits of this new platform for indie creators to publish comics in the growing digital market should not be ignored.
There are also several free comics on the site so you can get an idea how they look. Instructions on how to view the comics on your computer, iPhone, iPad etc are here
For more information head over to Oxicomics and if you do decide to get involved let us know how you get on.
GS Reporter: Nuge
Source: Oxicomics
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