Heroic Publishing just announced their plan for putting their entire library of comics online. What struck me as most interesting is that it specifically includes Liberty Girl, which I happened to know was already available as a download through Wowio. I know because I already downloaded the first two issues and have them sitting on my hard drive!So I did some digging and realized that Heroic only has two issues of Liberty Girl on Wowio, and nothing else. None of the other issues, nor any other titles. I pulled them down in late January, but they only came out in late 2006 in the first place, so I have to presume that Heroic knew that these two issues would be available for free in direct "competition" with what they were going to be making available through ComicsOnScreen.com.
That further means that the Wowio downloads were set up as a loss-leader. The idea being that you get your Wowio account for free, download the two issues of Liberty Girl for free, and then head over to CoS to get the subsequent issues.
I'm not sure that Heroic's business plan with CoS is entirely sound -- I think the price point is too high and the delivery format is questionable -- but I do think they hit the marketing on this fairly well.
As with these different ideas in online comic distribution coming about these days, it'll be interesting to watch the players and see which ideas take hold and which are left by the wayside. I'd hate to be a publisher having to deal with it myself, but I think it's a fascinating study from a third-party perspective.
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