Digital disruption in the creative industries: the case of the American comic book market

Digital disruption toppled or transformed most of the incumbent business models in the creative industries. The American comic book market faced the same processes driven by digitalisation that disrupted music and audio-visual industries. Yet, the traditional distribution channels and print formats of the comic book market continued to grow even when new digital formats and intermediaries emerged. This thesis analyses and describes the processes that allowed for this unique development. It first describes digitalisation and the ways it led to disruption of incumbent business models. Afterwards, the thesis provides an overview of how creative industries changed in the XXI century in the presence of digital intermediaries and online piracy. The issue of piracy is then elaborated upon with a rigorous literature review of the available empirical evidence. Finally, the American comic book market and its recent changes is for the first time described in a comprehensive and thorough manner. To achieve this task, data is collected from numerous sources and collated to achieve new conclusions and insight. New panel survey data is presented and used to provide empirical validation of several of the concepts related to digitalisation in the comic book industry, such as the willingness to pay for digital formats and the impact of comic book piracy. The results of the thesis highlight several key points. The American comic book market did evidence the processes that triggered disruption in other creative industries. However, simultaneously, the market was affected by three large developments. First, the comic book audience expanded to numerous diverse and casual readers, with the expansion largely driven by popularisation from comics-based media (cinema blockbusters) and an easier access to diverse stories brought by online retailers. Second, the digital formats have so far been considered as inferior by the incumbent audience – mainly due to their lack of collecting value combined with high prices. As such, the print reading audience is more likely to turn to the free piracy than to the officially released digital formats. Third, the comic book publishers shifted their strategies to cater more to the new readers as well as to collectors who place additional value in the variant comics covers. These three changes allowed the American comic book market to prosper even in terms of print sales and the number of comic book stores. Yet, the current actions of the digital intermediaries, the unsustainability of the comic book publishers’ strategies and the theory of disruptive innovation suggest that the disruption might have been delayed rather than avoided. Likely, the comic book issue market will soon reverse its growth trend and decrease to a base level defined by the stable popularity of some of the top comic book storylines. These results provide insight into the interaction between piracy, digital formats and traditional distribution as well as contribute to the existing knowledge on the workings of the American comic book market.