Draft: 1
Some of the best comic work happening now is coming from indie comic creators who are distributing their work through the web. From what I can tell they are using traditional CMSs to publish and manage their work and readership.
This document will attempt to layout ideas around an application designed specifically for comic publishers. The mantra of this app is;
To be the wordpress for comic creators
Creators will need a way to manage their pages.
Creators should be able to pre-schedule their comic stip releases. Most publish on a timed schedule.
Standard CMS management.
Creators should be able to upload a high res version of the final art which will be auto scaled to different resolutions. Providing readers the most performant reading experience for their device.
Should support multiple image formats. Specifically .gif so creators who want to incorporate motion into their work can.
A lot of comic creators make their living off of their work so it’s important to include a way for creators to generate revenue.
Have an option for a payment gateway built into the application. Could integrate with stripe/paypal and allow creators to collect payment for readership. Potentially one time or subscription payments.
Include ways for creators to connect advertising accounts and have designated advertising space when activated. For creators who prefer an advertising revenue model we could integrate with common ad platforms, e.g. google adwords. Sound: potential idea Although sound has been used in terrible ways on pages in the past. It might be kind of cool to allow creators to associate a background track with their work. Could be a great way for creators to build a multi sensory experience for their readers.
The viewing experience must be excellent across all devices.
The app must maintain a reader's history and be able to place them back on their last sheet read.
Readers should have a quick way to jump around to different pages.
Should preview the next page to give readers context to what will be next so they can make a quicker choice to continue reading or pause on the current page.
Like wordpress the ideal setup for this application would be a self hosted instance. This way the creator’s own and maintain complete control of their work. As such it needs to be built in a fashion that allows for easy of setup.
My initial thoughts are to construct it so it works with a PaaS out of the box. I think this is key since one of the largest constraints, even for developers, is knowledge of how to provision a server to host an application.
Something like the Heroku Deploy button could make it accessible even to the non-technical user. Using Heroku’s free tier will also reduce the barrier to entry but allow a path to scale if a creator's readership base takes off.
http://www.20thingsilearned.com/
This book project from google was published a few years ago but is an amazing example of using the web medium as the new book. Surprised there hasn’t been more experiences created like this.