What Your iPad Is Missing

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That’s just a few of the legitimately-free PDFs I downloaded yesterday from the list I’ve been compiling.

Go get some.

And contribute to the list!

PDFs For Free

Note that some of these will be scans of zines once in print — that’s history! All of these are legitimately free. No piracy. And all of these links lead to a website where you will find the download link. Direct-download links tend to mess people up.

The Death Of The Hacker: InfoWorld 1985

Update: Date typo in post title fixed!

I came across this on Google Books, going through some old issues of InfoWorld I’d read back in the day:

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For those who want text, see after the break.

We’ll Always Have Print. No. Wait. We Won’t!

The print fetishists are getting another kick in the butt from The Future.

Marvel “Greatly Reduces” Newsstand Distribution

I now understand that Marvel is all but withdrawing from newsstand distribution. The phase is a “greatly reduced” newsstand service and I’ve heard from some comic stores who use the newsstand distribution system for some stock that there are no Marvels coming in to them at all.

I’m told that newsstand accounts no longer being serviced by older methods are being turned into direct market Diamond accounts with Marvel’s assistance and any account looking to order comics can contact Diamond.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Gorgeous PDF Magazines For Free

PDF-Mags.com is a site that spreads the word about free design and art magazines done in PDF format. The iPad has made PDFs live up to the “P” — portable. And on the new iPad’s Retina Display, these should be absolutely stunning.

One thing. See where I’ve circled in red below?

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That tiny target is the link to go to each magazine’s website. So pinch-out to zoom or you’ll go mad. It was difficult enough seeing that on my desktop screen.

The Comic Book Conundrum

Today's Kindle announcement just reinforces we have to stop making comics formatted for legacy printing. tinyurl.com/3vbp35p—
John Rogers (@jonrog1) September 28, 2011

And which screen size?

3.8″ LCD (smartphone)?
6″ eInk?
7″ LCD?
8.9″ LCD?
10″ LCD?

Additional:

ComiXology + DC + Kindle Fire = ?

Does HP Actually Have A webOS Licensee?

What’s contained in this post is pure speculation, but intriguing.

Why would HP state that it’s going to continue webOS development when no other company has professed any interest in it?

What if HP already has a licensee but can’t say so?

Comic Books Come To HP TouchPad

Aquafadas’ AveComics App To Support HP TouchPad

To see the selection of comics before getting the app, go here.

Warren Ellis On About Digital Comics

A Collection Of Rambling On The Subject Of Digital Comics

I’m talking with various publishers about digital right now — mostly in a conversational, advisory way — and the one thing I’m trying to impress on everyone is that digital comics revenues are going to stay small for as long as everyone treats digital comics stores as back issue bins. While day-and-date digital releases of print comics is going to help with that, it won’t help enough on its own. It’s going to be the combination of day-and-date AND original digital material that drives the use of these services. (And remember that digital comics aren’t tablet-bound, all these services have web ends too.) And, further, original digital material should not and probably CANNOT be bound to the old model. Forget monthly release patterns. Original Digital Comics — Digital Original? — I need an acronym like my OGN, Original Graphic Novel — could drive people to these services fortnightly or even weekly. And they don’t have to be 22 pages or 20 pages or whatever the current print standard shakes out at. And the price, so far as I know, only has to end with a 9. I’m okay with, say, 10 or 11 pages a fortnight at USD 0.99. Or maybe even 8 pages a week at USD 0.79.

Two points:

1) Say seventy-nine cents a week for 8 pages. That’s about one-third the amount of content for about one-third the price what a classic print comic book is. Hm, so we’re back to the three bucks an issue thing?

2) Original digital material as extras would help. It would push the audience to digital, but also sorely piss off the obsolete stores.

Two other points:

1) I’m not the core fan audience, so what I think probably doesn’t matter.

2) Leaving out eInk devices with eInk screens might not be wise. Why pass up that potential audience? But including eInk would be very difficult. Is this where things cleanly differentiate between color and monochrome?

Comic Books: Change The Damn Model

Comics Alliance: ‘Wired’ Magazine Forecasts the Death of the Printed Monthly Comic

There’s a bit of a ComicsAlliance teamup over at Wired, where CA contributor Douglas Wolk forecasts a bleak future for the printed monthly comic book in an increasingly digital world, in a piece that includes typically astonishing illustration by occasional CA artist Ulises Farinas. Wolk calls the weekly pull list of pamphlet comics a “dying tradition” whose customers have been “trickling away for years,” but adds that the comics audience has been supplemented by graphic novel readers who buy their books in collections (often at bookstores) and digital readers who want to download their comics either through legal or illegal means.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Bleeding Cool: Marvel To Change The Face Of Newsstand Comics

Bleeding Cool has been the first to bring you news as to how both Hastings and Barnes & Noble have been massively increasing the amount of comic book material they carry.

Well, Marvel seems to have sat up and noticed. I understand that they are launching a massive amount of new ongoing titles for this market, that will anthologise existing material and flood the growing market.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.