Sometimes it's hard to recognize change when you're living in the midst of it. "The things they can do now!" my mom often exclaims when I show her my latest digital gadget. "You don't know how amazing it is because you're used to it." Maybe that's why when it comes to digital comics, my attitude is one of pragmatism and not Oh my god, it's going to change everything!

Right now, there are two main avenues for the comics to be distributed digitally: illegal download sites and web comics, neither of which have yet proven to be of great benefit to publishers. Illegal download sites might get your comics in front of more people, but I suspect that sales lost to people content with their free comics cancel out sales gained from new readers who want to make their entertainment legitimate. Web comics are a great way for creators to gain followers, and this has been good for marketing—but as an end in and of themselves, they aren't a great source of revenue (either for publishers or most individual authors).

There are new players in the marketplace, though, most notably the iPhone and the Kindle. A few comics publishers have signed on with new iPhone applications, like Panelfly and comiXology, which bring comics to the iPhone. SLG Publishing, where I work, is among those. The process is easy—I give them the same files we print from (or in the case of the Diamond-rejected The Warlord of Io by James Turner, the same files we would print from), and they take care of formatting them for their applications. That means we've been able to get some of our most popular books, like Faith Erin Hicks' Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere or Serena Valentino's series Nightmares and Fairy Tales; our newest books, like Captain Blood; and books that didn't get the recognition they should have when they were published, like Midnight Sun by Ben Towle, up quickly and in a way that is, for us, blessedly free of hassle.

This is not the case with the Kindle. Amazon is seeking to attract comics publishers to be among those who make their books available for their e-book reader and their iPhone application, but the process of getting a comic on the Kindle is much more onerous. To be acceptable to Amazon's Kindle store, a comic needs to be "reflowed," which means breaking each page into individual panels and saving each as a separate file. This is a process that could take hours for every graphic novel—and that means additional costs for a publisher. Then it must be uploaded to Amazon using proprietary software (which only works on a PC—we're an all-Mac office at SLG, and running Windows on a Mac is a hassle). I have a Kindle myself and I love it, but the time and resources that it takes to make our comics into Kindle books have hampered SLG from getting into this market.

Right now, sales from digital comics aren't going to mean we can pack up print publishing. Not even close. But despite being in the midst of it rather than a wide-eyed observer, I can see that in the near future digital comics are going to be playing a bigger role for all publishers than they do now. And it's better to be so integrated in the change that you don't notice that it's happening than to find yourself left behind and marveling at "the things they can do now."