Amazon Unveils Kindle Comic Creator For eBook Conversion

Comic creators looking to sell their self-published or indie comics in Amazon's Kindle store now have a way to make it happen with the new Kindle Comic Creator, a tool the e-commerce giant quietly rolled out last week.

From the looks of it, the tool is just about as easy to use as advertised. Creators simply upload their comics in jpg, pdf, tiff, png or ppm format, and use the software's auto-detect features to enable guided, panel-by-panel navigation. Creators can import EPUB and KF8 files as well. The tool also supports double-page spreads, facing pages and right-to-left page turns common in manga.

Of course, there is something of a downside. As GoodEReader points out, Amazon can alter the sale price of books sold in its Kindle store to match a competitor's price, either in print or digital formats. So while authors set list prices, Amazon can end up lowering those.

Creators can pick a royalty scheme in which that doesn't matter -- they get 35 percent of the list price no matter what -- but it certainly would affect the more appealing of the two schemes, which offers 70 percent of the actual sale price.

For more about Kindle Comic Creator, check out Amazon's information page, which includes a four-minute tutorial video, featuring Thom Zahler's Love and Capes from IDW.

Self-publishers have other options, too. For instance, there's also ComiXology Submit, that digital distributor's similar tool.

[Via GoodEReader]