Vertical Comic PDF Sales Support - Feedback Needed! - GC Forums
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Vertical Comic PDF Sales Support - Feedback Needed!
Hi everyone,
We are currently in the process of researching the best way to support vertical scroll comics in a PDF format. Part of that research means defining the rules and requirements for having vertical releases be eligible to be put for sale. One example of that from traditional pages that we’re putting in place is having a minimum of 6 pages in a release in order to put it for sale.
However, the problem we are looking to solve here is that the count of panels / length of vertical comics varies greatly on an episode-to-episode, and creator-to-creator basis. With traditional comic formatting, a page is always going to be a page, so it’s easy to say “We want a PDF to be at least 6 pages (since traditional pages average 5-7 panels)” to ensure some level of storytelling-to-pricing consistency.
After some research and looking at over 5000 releases with vertical comics, we’ve found that the average panel size is roughly the height of a phone screen, or 1600-2000 pixels tall.
In keeping with the same model of calculation as with traditional pages, this means that the rough equivalent of “one traditional page” for vertical would be 6 panels * 1800 pixels height, or 10800 pixels.
With this in mind, we can say that somewhere between 50k and 70k pixels is a similar number of panels to the number you would find in 6 pages of a traditional comic. Further analysis of vertical releases on GlobalComix finds that while a large number of published releases do in fact meet this criteria, more than 40% do not. Therefore we might consider making the requirement somewhere in the range of 35-50k pixels tall as a minimum to give some leeway to creators who have smaller releases.
Our goal here is to ensure the most consistent experience for your readers when they decide to purchase a PDF version of your story and thus transition to become your customers. Within the GC reader, it’s easy to provide a seamless transition between smaller episodes, but that isn’t always the case for PDFs. We also want to make sure that they are able to enjoy as much of a completed chapter as possible with each PDF purchase.
We’re establishing best practices and guidelines to ensure that we are able to deliver the highest quality product possible for your readers, and that is why we are asking for your input to make sure that we are strongly delivering on the expectations of both creators and readers.
We would love to get your thoughts on this so that we can begin developing vertical comic PDF support.
My experience with selling vertical scroll pdfs is by page count per episode, or release. A few months ago I emailed about this with an example of my title, Regnum Antiquum. Each page has specific measurements, and at least 350 DPI. With a little know how a vertical scroll creator can make these PDFs.
My pages are 1600 x 10000 typically, and I have 4-6 pages per episode.
I'd be quite happy to sell PDF's with episodes collected together as an anthology if that would work better.
You've put a lot of work into it. the phone screen thing works..
Since I publish on multiple platforms, I format my vertical scroll according to the most strict platform- which mandates 800px wide and whatever long.
With my editing program, that leaves me with a max 800x20000 "page"...Which, I don't count pages, I just draw panels and insert them into the long canvas so I can adjust gaps as I want them... Sometimes I'll have one, sometimes four....
Is the GC team considering an option to make a "compiled" pdf option, with multiple releases in one pdf? I would prefer to sell my vertical scroll by "season" rather than individual episodes...if that's something you guys are considering. It would require some editing on my part (and perhaps other creators) who copy the tail end of one release into the beginning of the next one...but it could be cool!
@BlueRabbitComics wrote:
Is the GC team considering an option to make a "compiled" pdf option, with multiple releases in one pdf?
We have this - it's called "Merge Releases". You can find that in your comics admin!
My comic is 800px width with a variable height at 300 dpi. I don't envy you in trying to find a solution. This is so hard. Vertical scroll varies so, so much. I typically have 6 panels per page, but sometimes there are more panels and sometimes less. There are many times I use long visual panels with more narration. In those instances, there are only 2 panels on that page. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I also feel like vertical scroll creators like to find ways to make the panels more dynamic instead of box after box all the time. That dynamic thinking also causes this to be a difficult way to "measure" vertical scroll. At the end of the day, I feel like the consumer will pay to read more or read ahead regardless. If they don't get the content they expect from the creator, they will stop paying. I've paid many times for "credits" to read ahead on other platforms. Some of the episodes were shorter than others. I didn't care because I was invested in the story and they gave me enough to keep me coming back.