Friday, February 05, 2010

The Digital Book in Practice: Valentine's 14 Languages, Multiple Formats, Wireless Delivery

By Alex de Campi

BROOKLYN: Imagine a graphic novel series, released every month simultaneously in 14 languages and across all major wireless platforms (Kindle, e-Reader, Android phone, iPhone), hopefully soon via the Web and, eventually, in collected print editions. Every month, you pay 99 cents and get 70-75 screens of action, adventure and suspense. In its first fortnight after launch, in the difficult final weeks of December and with no marketing and without all our distributors yet on stream, the first episode had 5,000 downloads -- of which English was in the minority.

(read on ...)

Are Graphic Novels Ideally Suited to Digital?

By Edward Nawotka

Today's lead story by Alex de Campi describes the publication of Valentine, a serialized, digital-first graphic novel that is being translated and published simultaneously in 14 languages. It's an amazing feat, and one that makes sense when one considers the relatively small amount of text on the typical page of a graphic novel.

At the same time, de Campi also points out that the digital format allows "a true right-to-left reading experience for our Japanese, Hebrew, and (eventually) Arabic readers as well as our native left-to-right."

(read on ...)

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