Cartoons, that venerable section in the newspaper, home to Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Beatle Bailey, and a thousand others…are dying. The entire newspaper industry is flailing, struggling to go online and capture readers.
News and shopping will always havean obvious home. People will actively search for information about the world and for items to buy, but what about comics? It’s not a necessity. It’s entertainment…it’s art. It has to compete, not with better comics, but with television, online video, music, video games, animation…etc etc etc.
And so our fates are intertwined. Fiction writing and comics are two industries that have classically been rooted in print publications that are moving and will have to continue moving to digital distribution methods. Newspapers are going to die faster than books will though, so the publishing industry should be watching closely. If cartoonists can succeed in setting up a subscription model to send comics to iPhones/iPods, there will be room to push fiction writing into the same domain. Looking at a picture and reading are not the same by any means, I’ve said before that I don’t think the technology is completely there for e-books to be popular, but it’s a path to follow.
I can’t quite see it from your end in all my honesty. maybe it is since i’m very new on that field but I will continue reading and shoot an email when I’ve some questions if you don’t mind?