Amazon, like its competitor Netflix, has been making some moves to increase the amount of exclusive, original content under its brand, and today it took one more step in that direction with the news that Amazon Studios will be launching its first self-commissioned digital comic, a version of the “Blackburn Burrow” Civil War story. The first copy is now free in the Kindle store.
Originally a screenplay from Jay Levy from December 2010, the story is also being used by Amazon to try something else: more crowdsourced creation. The company says that the idea to launch the digital comic comes out of its own community feedback — so essential to Amazon’s whole business model in the form of user reviews, and now being introduced around the work coming out of Amazon Studios. The project, it says, will be used to continue to gather further feedback to decide whether it should then develop the Levy screenplay into a full motion picture, which would also be developed by Amazon Studios.
This means that Amazon will be to test out how many people will put their money where their mouth is when it comes to consuming the stuff they say they would like to consume. (And it also helps it drum up some PR for the brand, and gives them a headstart on the whole franchise opportunity.)
Read the rest at: Amazon Tries Its Hand At More Original (And Crowdsourced) Content With Blackburn Burrow Digital Comic | TechCrunch.