Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The problem with digital comics

As you may know, I bought a shiny new ipad the other week – and I love it! I even love reading comics on it – they look so pristine – and for someone who simply has no room left for books/comics/DVDs in his flat, it’s great that they take up no physical room! 

But all is not well in ipad land! 


You see, if you go to buy a new comic – say, Astonishing X-Men 49 – it costs pretty much the same as in the shops - £2.49. 2000AD costs the same as in shops. How can this be?
And if you go to buy, say, the new Stephen King hardback, you can get it for 8 quid on Amazon – but 11 quid on Amazon Kindle! Shocking!


Methinks they need to sort this out, think it thru, come up with better deals. After all, you’re essentially buying nothing – you don’t really own it, you can’t sell it at a car boot sale.
Plus – it’s such a rip-off! If you can buy a pop song for 99p or so, you should be able to buy a comic for around the same price. 


And the other problem is that I currently get a discount at Forbidden Planet (because I work for sister company Titan) - I get 30% off the comics and books. So if I buy a digital comic from Comixology, I mostly lost out, because I lose my discount!


And don’t get me started on manga, which isn’t available to buy in UK digital shops!


It’s a bit of a mess, and I hope they sort it out soon!

2 comments:

Rol said...

I had a similar problem buying audio books for my mum. It's much cheaper to buy them on CD than download them from the Amazon audiobook store. Mental. Especially as you can sell a CD audiobook on eBay once you've listened to it!

JamieB said...

Rol, have you checked out Project Gutenberg? They do audiobooks for free. Haven't tried out any of them, myself, must confess...