The comic strip is not only in Angoulême, where the comic book festival opens this Thursday. It is literally everywhere, and more precisely on all screens: in the cinema with the advent (saturation?) Of superhero films, on television with ever more works (youth) adapted in series, but also on computer, tablet, smartphone. Finally, a little. If there are several BD digital reading platforms and applications (Izneo, Sequencity, Comixology, Webtoo Factory, Graphite, Kobo…), the practice remains marginal in France, especially compared to the United States and Asia.
🆕 Announcement - Several big names in manga, comics and comics will be available in French in October on Nintendo Switch with the izneo app. pic.twitter.com/6THPRAJwjY
- NintendHOME (@NintendHOME) September 4, 2018"The digital comic strip market represents 1.5% of global comic book turnover in France, compared to more than 50% in Japan and more than 10% in the United States," explains Luc Boursier, CEO of Izneo, the n ° 1 in the sector in Europe, created by several major publishers in 2010 and 50% owned by Fnac since 2016. The National Publishing Union mentioned the figure of 2% of digital purchases in 2017. figures which of course do not take into account the illegal reading, still widespread (especially in the manga) and main competitor of the legal platforms. "Clearly, Europe and France are late, but we feel an evolution, an acceleration," adds the CEO.
Democratization underway, more targeted readership
Very attached to the object, to the book, France could be more hesitant, especially the historic publishers. However, readerships are not necessarily the same. “Izneo has changed its strategy. We were close to an online bookseller, and now we're targeting the users who are most likely to read digital comics, and not necessarily paper comics, that is to say the 15-30 year olds. an identified production: SF and fantasy, manga and simultrad, or webtoon, a new format. We are at the heart of the attention war, competing with other digital entertainment. "
To make a place for itself, the Sequencity platform has partnered with the Leclerc chain of stores. "We said to ourselves that to democratize digital comics, we needed a powerful player," specifies its co-founder Denis Lefebvre. It is an exclusive partnership, but Sequencity does not belong to Leclerc. We share the margin on sales, and Leclerc gives us visibility in its cultural centers with demonstration terminals, in its magazines with advertisements… "The service also includes the advice of Leclerc booksellers and brings" human curation to within a digital bookseller ”. The catalog is more or less the same as that of Izneo.
The place of the authors
The classics of the classics Asterix , Blake & Mortimer or Walking Dead remain the bestsellers of digital, like paper. “Izneo works with all known French publishers, but also English, German, Dutch publishers… in their original language. And we will continue, "says its president, stating that he pays them 50% of his turnover. What about self-published designers? "There are a few, African authors, but our first concern is to develop the market, answers Luc Boursier. An author cannot be paid only with digital, the market is too small. In fact, French authors of comics cannot be paid at all, with alarming figures like 150 out of 200 cartoonists at RSA or 36% of authors below the poverty line. This is where Bayday wants to play a role.
The comic book YouTube
Launched at the end of December, a month from Angoulême, this new platform created by Sébastien Ruchet (the Nolife channel) and Thomas Astruc (the Miraculous series) wants to fill a void in the landscape of French comics. "A platform for authors, for their freedom, their rights, their money, with a social aspect ... It didn't exist," says Sébastien Ruchet. Bayday was born to meet this need. »Where in classic publishing designers draw approximately 10% of royalties, on Bayday, they receive 70% of the purchase price excluding taxes. The platform deals with contracts, with fifteen different legal and tax cases, and the authors keep their rights, "which allows them to publish on a blog, to make special prints or to sign with a paper editor ”.
The co-founder speaks of “pro author activism”, and wants the digital platform to become obvious for all designers. "Bayday is open to everyone, we are not an editor," says Sébastien Ruchet. It's like on YouTube, anyone can publish, then the algorithms, the discovery options, the personal recommendations take over. But the service is still in its infancy, and online production is currently rather amateurish. "It's normal, it takes time, like YouTube again, reassures the former director of Nolife. The different functionalities will be set up over time, with a social network to bring readers and authors closer together, or different translation and enrichment tools: animations, effects, sounds, etc. ”
New ways to read comics
Digital indeed makes it possible to create and read comics differently. Sébastien Ruchet recalls the existence of the Turbomedia format, of comics released in the form of applications like Phallaina , while Luc Boursier lists the possible “readings” on Izneo: “The whole page, box by box for Franco-Belgian comics and, finally, the webtoon. It is a format originating in Korea, specially adapted for the telephone screen, with vertical scrolling and publication by episode. Each episode is read in three to four minutes, and each series has 50 to 70 episodes, which eventually form seasons, based on TV series. In 2019, out of three million reads, 14% were webtoons. There is therefore a real craze, even if we stay on a poorly answered practice. The Horizon , a post-apo story, worked well, for example, because a YouTuber dedicated a video to it and aroused interest. "For Denis Lefebvre of Sequencity, 2020 will not only be the year of comics, as announced by the Minister of Culture, but also the year of the webtoon:" The Korean giant Naver, one of the leaders of the market, has just opened its French portrait, webtoons.com. They are arriving directly in France, bypassing local platforms and publishers ”. Sequencity of course intends to get started.
As for increasing the number of new formats, and therefore the readership, it is not for now, not at Izneo. “Start-ups are working on enriched content, animation in the boxes for example, etc. And that comes at a cost, comments the CEO of the platform. However, we are not in experimentation, but in the economy. The webtoon, for its part, is already based on an economy, with content, players ... We do not define our role in advance, we will evolve with formats, prototypes. In addition to the sale by the act, Izneo and Sequencity thus offer various subscriptions, on the model of SVOD services. The comic book Neftlix? These subscriptions never concern the entire catalog, the majority of publishers still refuse to do so. And besides, Netflix launched itself into comics with the repurchase of the label of Mark Millar and the publication of titles like The Magic Order or Prodigy .
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