Over the last month Graphicly, a digital comics distributor and software vendor, has launched a Facebook app offering Facebook users access to a complete list of its comics; released a widget providing access via blogs and websites and debuted on Apple’s Newsstand, a new iOS5 service that allows subscriptions and automatic downloads for monthly comics and other periodicals. Launched in 2010, Graphicly is growing fast, adding more publishers and titles and offering imaginative ways to get digital comics in front of potential new readers.
The digital comics distributor added Image comics—and Robert Kirkman’s wildly popular zombie series, The Walking Dead—as a client in October, releasing most of Image’s comics same day for digital and print. Graphicly makes its publisher-clients’ comics available on iOS and Android OS devices, B&N’s NookColor as well as via web browsers and on Amazon’s forthcoming Kindle Fire tablet, in addition to offering itself as a publishing/distribution platform for self-publishers. Graphicly now offers access to more than 5,000 digital comics from 300 publishers, according to Graphicly v-p of external relations Ron Richards.
The Graphicly Facebook app puts its publisher-clients’ comics in front of Facebook’s 800 million or so users, Richards said, and can be installed on personal Facebook pages. It offers a free preview of every comic and allows the user to purchase any Graphicly comic (this reporter's purchase went through his Google eBooks account) and read it right on Facebook. The Graphicly Facebook app also offers the opportunity for creators or comics fans to show off their comics or find new ones to read; and it gives Image and other publishers an easy and effective way to market its list on the social media site by using their own Facebook pages. Much the same way, The Graphicly Widget, which gives users the same kind of access to Graphicly’s comics as the Facebook app, allows anyone to embed access to Graphicly’s list of comics into a website, blog or social media site.
Just before New York Comic con, Graphicly debuted on Apple’s Newsstand, a new Apple storefront service focused on digital periodical subscriptions, Richards said. “Fans can subscribe to Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead or Invincible series and other periodical comics and have them delivered through the iPad app each month,” said Richards. Graphicly is putting comics on all kinds of devices, including B&N’s NookColor tablet, where you can find comics from Archaia, Top Cow and others, and on Amazon’s forthcoming Kindle Fire, which goes on sale in November.
Taking note of B&N’s conflict with DC Comics over DC’s “exclusive” digital deal with Amazon to sell its classic graphic novels via the Kindle Fire, Richards said that purchasing full graphic novels in digital format is “an upward trend,” at Graphicly. Most digital vendors currently offer only the original comics serials rather than the complete digital graphic novel that collects all the serial issues. Richards said Graphicly is offering some complete graphic novel collections through the NookColor and are in talks with Amazon to offer full graphic novel collections through the Kindle Fire once it goes on sale.
Graphicly worked with Legendary Comics to offer previews of Frank Miller’s new graphic novel, Holy Terror, through the Legendary Facebook page, “we’re helping promote print sales,” Richards said, and Archaia, also “uses our technology for previews.” Richards said, “We’re out to help publishers in any way we can. We’re looking for more titles to offer through Newsstand, the NookColor and other devices and we’re adding hundreds more titles to our list every week.”
