Graphicly to challenge One Book Shelf? Empower publishers?

Geek Native was lucky enough to interview Graphicly’s CEO Micah Baldwin back in the day In fact, back then Graphicly was known as Graphic.ly and was part of the whole .ly domain doom.

Since then Graphicly has faced some fierce competition in the digital comic market from the likes of comiXology, made some acquisitions, introduced an embeddable reader and continued to evolve.

The latest evolution comes in the form of a publishing platform that includes a free option.

Graphicly offers authors and publisher the ability to select the type of distribution they need, as well as the revenue model that best suits them – from a basic free offering to a flat rate per conversion, with a number of options in between. Web and Facebook posting via the self-service platform are free, with other platforms and services requiring additional commitment.

The platform is already open to Graphicly’s current authors and publishers but there’s a sign up queue here.

My first thought was to wonder whether this is a challenge to One Book Shelf – the people behind RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. It’s certainly news that DriveThruComics will pay attention too.

We can only speculate at Graphicly’s business plans but it seems that they may be looking to do whatever it takes to ensure that the comic content goes out through the channels they control or, at least, that they become an indispensable part of the process. Graphicly will then monetise around the community that forms. As Graphicly grows with their community then the paid-for options become more tempting to publishers.

Of course, RPGs are not comics. However, it strikes me that it wouldn’t take that much of a leap for an indie publisher to produce a visual-heavy game (perhaps one that uses cards as mechanics) to be lured in by the “free to publish” option. That temptation must be much stronger for game publishers looking to tap into a superhero audience or other comic book dominated area.

Lastly, comics with RPGs are not unusual. Even if game publishers stick to tried and tested delivery mechanisms then the option of using Graphicly’s free publishing suite to push out a game-related comic book to a new audience is a good one. A free comic book that does well would surely recruit new blood for any game.