Comichaus – The Streaming App For Discovering Indie Comics

Published Sat, 27 May 2017 14:00:42 -0500

Last updated Sun, 28 May 2017 08:01:17 -0500

Pete Genepool writes,

A quick intro to us – Comichaus is a 44 page B&W British anthology that features six stories each month from indie creators. We have established legends doing the covers to tempt in new readers and so far Glenn Fabry, John McCrea, Carlos Ezquerra, Steve Yeowell, Gary Erskine, Tess Fowler and Boo Cook have all lent their support. We also have a database/marketplace site at Comichaus.com

So we all know the pitfalls of being a small press publisher. Although Comichaus has only been in existence a few years, it didn't take us long to discover that it's a tough ole game. You source your pages, pay your creators, print your books and only then does the really hard work start – selling the bloody things!

Diamond have been very supportive, we also sell a lot through the Comichaus marketplace and the creators are out at cons…but we are still relatively unknown, and although stores have stocked us (thanks to you all!!!) selling a bunch more would always be nice

So we got to thinking…

Here at Comichaus we love our print comic books. We make sure our monthly looks as good as it can as we have the mantra 'go hard or go home' ringing in our ears, and my mum always said "if a jobs worth doing well…blahblahblah"

But we know from our workings in the music industry that digital is also vital to getting your work out there, and can work alongside the physical copies quite nicely. People like what they hear on streaming sites and buy some vinyl.

So the idea for the Comichaus app was born. A Netflix for indie comics if you will, where creators/publishers get a share of the subscription and advert revenue. So the more subscribers the more everyone benefits! We will be 'streaming' comic books only, no downloads apart from the offline facility, and we will be tracking how many of each book is read so we can fairly split revenue

We started developing at the back end of last year and it will be in the App stores in July/August – and over 150 indie/small press publishers are already on board waiting to deliver their digital books. If you want to include your content go to Comichaus.com/app and join the mailer, instructions will be forthcoming next few weeks

For £3 a month readers can get access to an 'all you eat' raft of indie titles, browse by Title, Publisher, Creator and Characters. Leave reviews, recommend and share what they are reading on social media platforms.

We have just got a selection of IDW's top GN titles included as well, and are approaching the other bigger companies for a selection to entice readers in – but we will be concentrating on the promotion of small press indie titles within the app.

The Kickstarter has just launched to give us a helping hand with development costs and, more importantly, some awareness within the community. But for Bleeding Cool readers and anyone who has already pledged, if we get to £2500 this weekend everyone gets another two months added to their subscriptions – There are still some early bird cheaper subscriptions available.

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