Comics on Your Mobile - Exclusive

Well, it's been five years (at least) in the making -- but I'm delighted to report that I'm in the middle of a first round testing of a new comics-to-mobile service for ROK Media, that should launch soon, and we'll be rolling out in full this May.

Several British creators here will know I've been touting comics-on-mobile to anyone who will listen for simply ages, but ROK picked up the ball and ran with the idea last year, and it's been non-stop ever since. In pure business terms, you can't ignore the massive rise in digital comic demand – one comics aggregator says it's delivering some 350,000 comics a day to mobile.

The system will let creators upload their own comics and create them using a suite of characters, props and backgrounds: all can then be offered to comic readers to buy and view on their mobiles. Creators will then receive a percentage of every sale.

We're also looking at distributing a range of comic strips from various publishers to mobile and we've had several encouraging discussions so far with a range of companies, both small and large.

In addition to mobile comics, we're also considering print – including publishing titles based on licenses on intellectual properties we've signed, although I can't reveal the names of those properties at this stage. I can say we have solicited samples from some terrific artists for our first project and I hope to be able to say more about that very soon.

Exciting times!