I didn't plan to blog today, but then I saw a tweet from PW that some publishers are working on making comics readable on a Kindle. I love my Kindle, but I think this will require a color Kindle to take off. It's true that reformatting content specifically for the Kindle is immensely helpful, which is one reason Amazon can make money offering subscription to free blogs. But still, comics need color. It's as simple as that. The Kindle screen savers look great in gray-scale but even the pictures of writers look like etchings. There are no Renoir or Monet reproductions because the Impressionists don't translate to black and white. I don't know of any black and white print comics, even though I'm sure they would be cheaper to produce. I'm not counting true graphic novels, by the way, but real comics.
Even the glitzy Plastic Logic device will come out only in black and white. I'll bet comics would look better on it than on Kindle, because of the larger screen, but still, they will loose something in black and white. Besides, comics readers are often also collectors, and with Kindle, all you collect is a pile of bytes. And will the mobile business traveler that is PL's target audience overlap the comic book market?
Time will tell. Of course, time will also bring color screens.
