Held in conjunction with New York Comic-Con, the ICv2 Comics and Digital Conference is scheduled to be held on October 7, the day before the show opens at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. Much like the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference held in conjunction with the con in previous years, the ICv2 Comics and Digital Conference will bring together professionals from every part of the comics industry to discuss the category’s biggest and most timely trends—in this instance, it will be the impact of digital delivery on the future of comics publishing and retailing.

Organized by Milton Griepp, CEO of ICv2.com, a comics and pop culture trade news website, the conference will offer a broad overview of discussion on the challenges and opportunities offered by digital delivery. Panels will address everything from the impact of digital sales on the direct market and physical retail stores to the growth of digital sales in the wake of the launch of the iPad. Griepp will also distribute a short essay on the potential of digital delivery to not only expand the sales of comics to new readers but also—unlike what happened in other media like music and video—its potential to actually increase the sales of print comics at comics shops and bookstores. Publishers Weekly is a cosponsor of the conference and this reporter as well as my PWCW co-editor Heidi “The Beat” MacDonald will participate as moderators. PWCW talked with Milton Griepp, CEO of ICv2 about the new conference and its goals and the impact of digital delivery on the future of the comics industry.

PWCW: Where is the comics industry on digital delivery now? Are comics publishers on board?

MG: The big two [Marvel and DC Comics] have launched their own digital programs. Marvel has offered digital subscriptions for awhile but not DC, which launched its app and a broader program this summer. It’s all been tied to and driven by the iPad. While you could read books on the Kindle there hasn’t been a device available that allowed you to read comics a full page at a time.

Independent comics publishers like Image, Top Cow and Boom Studios! have aggressive digital programs. IDW was very early, ahead of the big two. What I’ve been looking to see but haven’t found, is any kind of digital strategies for comics from the big New York trade book publishers. Right now it seems that they’re trying to figure out how their regular books will fare digitally, so when it comes to comics they’ve held back.

PWCW: What about the concerns of physical store retailers who are fearful of the effects of digital delivery on their businesses?

MG: We’ll have a retailer at the conference as well as a specific panel aimed at that question: Print vs Digital, War, Co-Existence, or Collaboration. Retailers are worried after seeing what happened to the music stores and in video and now, in print books. I think comics are different and the reason why they are different is a story about the relationship between comics and other media. Comics are a tiny marketplace in comparison with other media. We will get much more exposure to far more readers through digital delivery. The question will be what will we gain and what we might lose.

Historically changes in distribution—the direct market in the 1980s, online retail in the 1990s and general bookstore distribution in 2000s—have driven growth in the category. But we believe that with increasing sales to the iPhone and iPod, the release of the iPad, comics for the desktop and more tablets with color screens on the way, we expect digital sales to increase and we believe that, unlike music and video, packaged comics—floppies and graphic novels—have the potential to grow at the same time as digital sales grow. We’ll have more details on our reasons why at the conference.

PWCW: Who will be on the panels?

MG: Among the panelists will be Mark Waid, CCO of BOOM! Studios, who recently made a few controversial remarks about copyright and file sharing at the Harvey Awards; David Gabriel, senior v-p from Marvel who will be on the Print vs. Digital panel; Dave Baxter, deputy director of the digital comics platform Robot Comic and senior literary agent at Killing the Grizzly, who will be on the panel on digital and creativity looking at the impact of digital on the making of comics.We have Lindsey Levinsohn, a collection development specialist at digital distributor OverDrive, which specializes in libraries. And we’ll be talking about Japan, where this has been going on a while. We’ll have Masaaki Shimizu, general Manager at Bitway, a Japanese digital distribution company. We’ll have a nice range of perspectives on all the panels.

PWCW: What else can we expect from the conference?

MG: We’re going to offer a preview of the 2010 ICv2 white paper on the graphic novel market. It’s a half year update on trends in paper comics. It will look at the rapid growth of digital sales on the iPad against a backdrop of print sales, which haven’t been great this year.

PWCW: What about preregistration for the panel? How’s the response?

MG: Press response has been good and the mix of attendees looks like our past conferences. This conference will be of interest to anyone focused on the category: publishers, artists, librarians, agents, retailers and the like. We’ve got a broad response and a lot of our usual constituencies will be there. The main point of conference is the breadth of interest in digital and the importance of the topic. This is our future. Our graphic novel conference was terrifically important when we started it and it has changed the business and this digital conference is the new version of that. Digital is revolutionizing the industry and people want and need to talk about it.